“There is a growing belief, not least within the ranks of latter-day new Labour missionaries, that appears to favour the reconquest of Africa. No one really suggests how this would come about, nor is there a ‘plan’ available for discussion. Yet the implicit suggestion of recent reporting from Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, sometimes echoed in London, is that imperial intervention might indeed be welcomed by peoples threatened with mayhem, anarchy and civil war. In the process, several decades of revisionist imperial history and leftist criticism of ‘neocolonialism’ have been easily ignored or forgotten, and external interference is once again being made respectable.” (Gott, 2001/1/15)
A single “plan” as such there may not be, even if the commentary on British interventions by Richard Gott above already flagged some of the key elements of the new imperial mission in Africa. These are military interventions in the name of humanitarian protection, the restoration of order to nations inevitably seen as helpless and in need of external assistance, and the reformulation of dominant ideologies. Yet that is still just part of an explanation, for it retains the suggestion that intervention may occur simply and only because “we” believe that our actions are conducted in order to benefit “them.” Gott is right to pinpoint the ideological sources of the new imperialism. In the war against Libya some of the most prominent anti-war criticisms did not come from “liberals” or vaguely self-nominated “leftists,” but rather from avowed “conservatives” and those in the Realist school of U.S. foreign policy: Ron Paul (2011/8/29), Patrick Buchanan (2011/3/8), George Will (2011/3/8), and Leslie Gelb (2011/3/8) among others. Few recognized that liberal imperialism was the driving force in new American conquests even under putative conservatives such as George W. Bush, and thus many did not recognize “neoconservativism” whose ideological principles and goals are that of a “new” liberal imperialism: direct intervention, regime-change, nation-building, counterinsurgency, pacification, aid, development. The hard-line conservatives in the U.S. instead proclaim that America is a republic, and not an empire. Others clearly disagree. The result is the creation of a renewed hierarchy that not accidentally mirrors old ethnocentric theories of “cultural evolution” from the nineteenth century and some of the racial typologies of the time: the West, white, developed, and superior has the right to intervene in Africa, and Africa has the “right” to be intervened in, and should be barred from even intervening in its own affairs. We are not dealing with coincidences and accidents, not at this level of expenditure and obsessive strategizing: the U.S. military’s new Africa Command (AFRICOM), the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), the work of the USAID, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) with its nearly exclusive focus on Africa— none of these things are “accidents.”
“What Africa really needs,” Gott continued, highlighting conclusions of published works on Africa funded by George Soros and the U.S. Institute for Peace, “is the advice of a new generation of foreign missionaries, imbued with the new, secular religion of good governance and human rights.” As Gott also rightly spotlights:
“Other contemporary witnesses, the innumerable representatives of the non-governmental and humanitarian organisations that clog the airwaves and pollute the outside world’s coverage of African affairs with their endless one-sided accounts of tragedy and disaster, echo the same message. With the reporting and analysis of today’s Africa in the hands of such people, it is not surprising that public opinion is often confused and disarmed when governments embark on neocolonial interventions. The new missionaries are much like the old ones, an advance guard preparing the way for military and economic conquest.” (Gott, 2001/1/15)
It also helps when, within “public opinion,” the anxious motivators, the militarized altruists, and the imperial humanists are working as amplifiers and repeaters of interventionist doctrine, seeking to rally public support for the causes of the U.S. State Department. Sometimes, they even provide the appropriate emotional cues hoping to spread outrage: “my hand is trembling as I write this,” or “no time to play with my five-year old daughter, she can’t understand why, and I dare not tell her of these horrors” (conveyed by the endless supply of Internet videos posted by unidentified “activists”). One scathing and very memorable British op-ed characterized this element of public opinion as consisting of “iPad imperialists”:
“From the comfort of his Home Counties home, possibly to the sound of birds tweeting on the windowsill, the liberal interventionist will write furious, spittle-stained articles about the need to invade faraway countries in order to topple their dictators. As casually and thoughtlessly as the rest of us write shopping lists, he will pen a 10-point plan for the bombing of Yugoslavia or Afghanistan or Iraq and not give a second thought to the potentially disastrous consequences. Now, having learned nothing from the horrors that they cheer-led like excitable teenage girls over the past 15 years, these bohemian bombers, these latte-sipping lieutenants, these iPad imperialists are back. This time they’re demanding the invasion of Libya.” (O’Neill, 2011/2/25)
Rather than stopping and taking comfort from mocking caricatures, this book takes the tenets and claims of the assemblage of “humanitarian” arguments for military intervention in Libya seriously. But taking them seriously does not mean the same thing as taking them at face value, or being unduly deferential. Instead, if we take them on their very own terms the arguments for “humanitarian” intervention and “protection” soon fall apart in the face of actual evidence from practice. The real challenge is not to get the humanitarian interventionists to stake a position, but rather to get them to maintain that position when events and processes go exactly counter to all of their stated ideals, when “saving lives” soon becomes overwhelmed by the deliberate destruction of lives, and when “protection” becomes a mere fig-leaf for regime change. It is not enough to dismiss them after showing and recognizng the nullification of dogma by practice. We still need to see why such arguments were deployed to begin with and what purposes they serve, and in turn, what purposes we are called upon to serve when orchestrators of mass opinion pointedly ask us, “how can we stand idly by?”
That question has always perplexed me. We can stand idly because we have been well trained to do so, just like the majority of U.S. and British citizens stood idly by as their troops wrought destruction, death and pain on Iraq. Citizens of NATO states whose troops went to Afghanistan did the same, as was the case in our countless other ongoing covert wars and employment of proxy torture states. We even stand idly by as protesters in our own societies get beaten, arrested, or worse, for daring to exercise their supposed rights to assembly without first submitting notice and asking the authorities for permission, sometimes well in advance— indeed, the protesters are inevitably excoriated by mass mediated opinion. So what is so special about Libya that we could not continue to stand idly by? Had all of us developed a strong, intimate affection for these people? What did we know about these protesting Libyans that we could so readily commit ourselves to some undefined cause that mouthed suspiciously predictable buzzwords of democracy and freedom but only when spoken in some grand hall in a European capital, under the glare of camera lights? On what basis would we always be willing to credit these “rebels” with noble intentions and always give them the benefit of the doubt, while launching flaming invective at those defending the existing social order? And how could we engage with such intense evangelical sternness that we could permit ourselves to denounce and condemn those among us who would hold back and question the campaign to demolish another state? Perhaps some of us saw how we could benefit from being on “the right side of history,” which was code for being pro-military intervention by our side. Suddenly, we could feel very comfortable about being on the same team with the CIA, the Pentagon, and a battery of so-called “neocon” commentators who all supported the war; we would all be on “the winning team,” Team West.
This book is thus largely about our intervention, and about making ourselves accountable for it. It is true that some Libyans, often expatriates, complained loudly and severely against “anti-imperialists” and “Gaddafi apologists.” However, since they invited Western intervention, appealed to us to spend money on bombs, missiles, jets and ships to change their history for them, then whether they like it or not they invited all of us into their conflict and the least they could have done was to courteously desist from demanding silence of those whose support they requested. This too offered an important lesson: neocolonialism is not just about Western agency, but also of local collaborators and upholders of Western power. Anti-imperialism, most clearly and persistently articulated by some African and Latin American leaders during the war against Libya, was therefore never just a confrontation with Western opponents alone.
Among the ranks of those who remain critical of U.S. adventures are those who would entirely dismiss as nonsensical propaganda all U.S. government talk of supporting democracy, freedom, and human rights abroad (often for excellent reasons). Nonetheless, it is still necessary to take these claims seriously by understanding what they are meant to mean in actual practice.
“Democracy,” defined by way of comparison to the U.S. political system, can represent a significant strategic gain of importance for the U.S. A society unprotected by a hard shell of state-organized resistance is one that can be more easily penetrated when it has multiple parties in competition, subject to external lobbying, influence, and financing. The U.S. has thus worked covertly in manipulating electoral outcomes to its advantage even in supposed ally states such as Italy and the Philippines, on numerous occasions, while able to cover its tracks with a gloss of legitimacy. Currently, one of the favourite vehicles for the U.S. to pursue its interests are local NGOs. They are funded and aided in other ways by U.S.-government funded bodies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, or NGOs affiliated with either of the two dominant political parties in the U.S., such as the National Democratic Institute, or the International Republican Institute, or trade union bodies such as the AFL-CIO. Thus far the U.S. has been very successful in convincing many that they should confuse a method with a process, namely that they should equate multi-party elections with democracy. In practical and strategic terms, “democracy” means access, and in Libya as the U.S. Embassy cables published by WikiLeaks have shown, U.S. officials routinely complained of the frustrations, setbacks, unpredictability, and unreliability of access to local authorities and competing local interests.
As with “democracy,” the idea of “freedom” also means a great deal in the pursuit of U.S. interests, but what can it mean when the U.S. has over many decades intervened directly or indirectly to install or support repressive regimes around the globe? Freedom, when one examines the corrollaries outlined by U.S. officials, especially in the speeches of presidents, State Department officials, or in legislation passed by Congress, usually involves free enterprise, free markets, free trade, and a general withdrawal of the state from a given economy. Freedom also means the relatively unrestrained ability of wealthy private interests to operate and act to maximize their gains, such as by launching or acquiring media companies in order to better influence public opinion in their favour, and to advance the culture of international consumption. Freedom can additionally mean the unfettered action of those who wish to mobilize to make their society more and more like a replica of American, i.e. “developed” society. Freedom can mean that foreign investors are free to strike deals with local agents and collaborators, without having to answer too much to state authorities.
In U.S. strategic thinking, “human rights” performs similar functions to the above. This is especially the case as the concept focuses on the rights of the individual, further reduced by U.S. political action in international and other fora to mean essentially individual civil liberties, not social and economic rights, and even less so the rights of collectivities. It is strategically valuable then to multiply the access points for U.S. influence, to act while appearing to be legitimate, to open economies to U.S. corporate control and foster greater consumerism, and to create networks that can unsettle a society should its leadership pursue greater independence or outright defiance. In other words, ideological and symbolic strategies matter even if they often appear to be tissue-thin.
It cannot be denied that the key motor force of historical change in Libya would be symbolized by the air-dropped bomb. Interestingly, 2011 was the 100th anniversary of aerial bombardment. It began in 1911 with Italy bombing Libya, and in 2011 Italy was bombing Libya again, this time as part of NATO, and with the pleas and thanks of Benghazi “revolutionaries.” Some may wish to argue the point of agency, of who won the “war against Gaddafi,” but the argument is without merit. The central protagonist in the story of the war became NATO, led by the U.S., with aerial bombardment and special forces on the ground. Whatever happened in Libya, happened because of this presence, and it cannot be erased from any credible analysis. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, formerly the Libyan justice minister, who then defected immediately to lead the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), candidly admitted to the press: “We asked for a no-fly zone to be imposed from day one” (AFP, 2011/3/13). This was not the only such indication of where the rebels were placing the power to chart their course, as evidenced by numerous appeals and early frustration when there was even a hint that their calls might not get the intended response. Either way a relationship of dependency was articulated and made clear to anyone closely watching the Libyan crisis unfold. The following statements illustrate this dependency.
“‘The international community has failed us,’ Mr. [Ahmed] Omar [a rebel commander] said by phone.” (Koring, 2011/3/16)
“‘People are fed up. They are waiting impatiently for an international move,’ said Saadoun al-Misrati, a rebel spokesman in the city of Misrata, the last rebel-held city in western Libya, which came under heavy shelling Wednesday. ‘What Gadhafi is doing, he is exploiting delays by the international community. People are very angry that no action is being taken against Gadhafi’s weaponry’.” (Michael, 2011/3/16)
“Gheriani, the rebel spokesman, said by telephone from Benghazi that the opposition was hoping for a positive U.N. Security Council vote.” (Lucas, 2011/3/17)
“‘We think that in the coming hours we will see real genocide in Ajdabiya,’ he said. ‘The international community has to act within the next 10 hours’— Dabbashi said Gadhafi’s forces would unleash ‘ethnic cleansing’ on villages in the mountain region of the western part of the country. ‘I think something will be in the resolution to allow air strikes’.” (Charbonneau, 2011/3/16)
“‘The world is sleeping,’ he [a rebel fighter interviewed by AP] said. ‘They (the West) drunk of Gadhafi’s oil and now they won’t stand against him. They didn’t give us a no-fly zone’.” (Lucas & Hadid, 2011/3/15)
“‘We feel so, so, isolated here. We are pleading with the international community to help us in this very difficult time’.” (AP, 2011/3/15)
“Libya’s revolutionary leadership is pressing western powers to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi and launch military strikes against his forces to protect rebel-held cities from the threat of bloody assault. Mustafa Gheriani, spokesman for the revolutionary national council in its stronghold of Benghazi, said the appeal was to be made by a delegation meeting the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in Paris on Monday, as G8 foreign ministers gathered there to consider whether to back French and British calls for a no-fly zone over Libya…. ‘We are telling the west we want a no-fly zone, we want tactical strikes against those tanks and rockets that are being used against us and we want a strike against Gaddafi’s compound,’ said Gheriani. ‘This is the message from our delegation in Europe.’….‘The west is missing the point. The revolution was started because people were feeling despair from poverty, from oppression. Their last hope was freedom. If the west takes too long— where people say it’s too little, too late —then people become a target for extremists who say the west doesn’t care about them. Most people in this country are moderates and extremists have not been able to penetrate them. But if they get to the point of disillusionment with the west there will be no going back’.” (McGreal, 2011/3/14)
“The founding statement of the ITNC (later changing its name to NTC) said: ‘Finally, even though the balance of power is uneven between the defenceless protestors and the tyrant regime’s mercenaries and private battalions, we will relay on the will of our people for a free and dignified existence. Furthermore, we request from the international community to fulfill its obligations to protect the Libyan people from any further genocide and crimes against humanity without any direct military intervention on Libyan soil’.” (Boyle, 2011/3/13)
“‘This was a rare decision of the Arab League,’ rebel spokesman Abdul Basit al-Muzayrik told Al-Jazeera. ‘We call on the international community to quickly make a firm decision against these crimes’.” (CBC, 2011/3/13)
“‘Where is the West? How are they helping? What are they doing,’ shouted one fighter.” (AJE, 2011/3/12)
“‘People are losing faith in the international community,’ said Essam Gheriani, a spokesman for the rebel movement in Libya…. ‘They are not pleased with all the procrastination,’ Gheriani said. ‘What are they waiting for?’…. ‘The United States has a lot it can do to support the Libyans,’ Ali said. ‘I wonder why they are taking it slow?’” (Michaels, 2011/3/12)
U.S. Senator John Kerry also wrote an influential op-ed, urging immediate, high-speed intervention, which would of course limit the time for debate, for formulating and answering questions, and for stronger Congressional criticism to emerge. Repairing damage to the image of the U.S. as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan, clearly weighed on Kerry’s mind: “The US and the world community should also make clear— as we did in Bosnia and Kosovo —that we are taking a united stand against a thug who is killing Muslims” (Kerry, 2011/3/14). In virtually erecting himself to the position of “protector of Muslims,” Kerry eerily echoed another leader who took on the name, “Protector of Islam”: Benito Mussolini, waving a gold sword as he entered Tripoli on horseback on March 20, 1937.
Not to “appear to be seen” (as Washington strategists like to say) to be leading the crusade against Libya, the U.S. attempted various poorly executed magic tricks in public. The desire was to be seen as “leading from behind” (which is still leading), or having followed others into war. First the stated desire was to have the African Union and the Arab League call for a no-fly zone and a UN resolution calling for intervention in Libya. The AU resisted. The Arab League, with only half of its members present, and two of those abstaining, voted for foreign intervention. It then seemed that the AU’s consent and approval was no longer important. While the U.S. led the war campaign with the majority of bombs, missiles, drones, jets and ships, it still had to masquerade as something else: hence Obama proudly, perhaps carelessly, revealed that even French jets were sometimes flown by U.S. pilots. Leading from behind NATO is also a peculiar notion, as the U.S. is NATO’s own commanding power: the U.S. ran the show that ran the show.
The political leaders of NATO states at the forefront of the war against Libya also seemed to have some recurring difficulty in trying a duplicitous rhetorical balancing act, arguing that they really were not determining what Libya’s internal affairs should be, but that they would and should. Thus UK Prime Minister David Cameron in his opening speech at the “London Conference on Libya” on March 29, 2011 stated:
“Today is about a new beginning for Libya— a future in which the people of Libya can determine their own destiny, free from violence and oppression. But the Libyan people cannot reach that future on their own….we must help the Libyan people plan for their future after the conflict is over….A new beginning for Libya is within their grasp.…and we will help them seize it.” (Cameron, 2011/3/29)
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague fared no better, seemingly unable to make one plea of innocence without immediately contradicting it. He stated, “We agreed that it is not for any of the participants here today to choose the government of Libya: only the Libyan people can do that.” But then he said, “Participants agreed that Qadhafi and his regime have completely lost legitimacy and will be held accountable for their actions.” Then Hague reaffirmed that, “the Libyan people must be free to determine their own future,” and then he reversed himself saying, “participants recognised the need for all Libyans…” etcetera (Hague, 2011/3/29). Which participants agreed to that? Not even the NTC was invited to the event. Indeed, the “participants” referred to in the speeches above, besides representatives of multilateral institutions such as the UN, NATO and EU, and one priest, were: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, and the U.S. One has difficulty imagining how Estonia thought that it too should have a say in Libya’s future, but at least its presence helped to complete the portrait of imperial whiteness we see in Figure I.1.
The U.S. stood to gain in many ways from intervening in Libya. Having such a diverse range made the intervention much more attractive to those who had to first conceive it and weigh its possible results, and then commit when a “window of opportunity” presented itself in the form of street protests that sought to emulate those of Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. Among the gains were: 1) increased access for U.S. corporations to massive Libyan expenditures on infrastructure development (and now reconstruction), from which U.S. corporations had frequently been locked out when Gaddafi was in power; 2) warding off any increased acquisition of Libyan oil contracts by Chinese and Russian firms; 3) ensuring that a friendly regime was in place that was not influenced by ideas of “resource nationalism;” 4) increasing the presence of AFRICOM in African affairs, in an attempt to substitute for the African Union and to entirely displace the Libyan-led Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD); 5) expanding the U.S. hold on key geostrategic locations and resources; 6) promoting U.S. claims to be serious about freedom, democracy, and human rights, and of being on the side of the people of Africa, as a benign benefactor; 7) politically stabilizing the North African region in a way that locked out opponents of the U.S.; and, 8) drafting other nations to undertake the work of defending and advancing U.S. political and economic interests, under the guise of humanitarianism and protecting civilians.
FIGURE I.1. Group photograph of the participants in the London Conference on Libya, March 29, 2011. (Source: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in the public domain.)
This book does not readily subscribe to a number of arguments commonly made in either the mainstream or independent electronic media. One is usually summed up colloquially as, “Gaddafi was in bed with the West” since at least 2003 when sanctions were lifted and the U.S. and Libya appeared to pursue a mutual strategy of reconciliation and normalization. That reveals a superficial understanding of the actual content of their relations, which remained tense, on the brink of breaking on numerous occasions, and fraught with mutual suspicion. Ample evidence exists of course to show increased cooperation, exchange, and even the appearance of friendship between Gaddafi and certain Western leaders, as well as his heightened desire to be admitted into the mainstream of Western capitalism. Few (if any) commentators seem prepared to consider that it was this very “friendliness” that made Gaddafi more of a liability to those states that had previously attacked and isolated Libya, previously plotted his overthrow, supported previous uprisings, and continued to be a home to several opposition groups. Gaddafi became more of a liability because Western powers had now allowed a historical enemy to buy his way into the circuits of influence. Now he appeared to be using the momentary peace to pursue new goals that were ultimately far more threatening than any supply of weapons to the IRA had been, and those goals involved a central Libyan leadership role in an integrated Africa. In addition, no sanctions, new wealth, and influential friends in the West, along with promised reforms, threatened to extend the life of the Libyan Jamahiriya under Gaddafi. Otherwise, as revealed in the diplomatic cables, the Libyan government was constantly seeking assurances from the U.S. that it would not be undermined or attacked, seeking a defensive pact, and worrying that it had given up too much (support for armed groups, and advanced weapons programs of a chemical and nuclear nature), for too little in return. Indeed, the Libyan experience will, and arguably already has been, a piercingly loud wakeup call to those states considering “coming in from the cold” by engaging in compromise and surrendering the weapons programs that appear now, more than ever, to be their best bet against U.S. aggression.
Another prominent and entrenched viewpoint holds that in any analysis of what happened in Libya, attention must be devoted to the Gaddafi government’s “human rights record” (usually framed in terms that exclude social and economic rights that are also recognized as human rights in the U.N. Charter). In other words, that we must reinforce the portrait of Gaddafi as a “brutal dictator,” as if this somehow explains either the rebellion or justifies the need for foreign military intervention. I will therefore state boldly and directly that Gaddafi’s so-called human rights record is almost completely irrelevant. That is except insofar as it featured in roughly hewn, everyday propaganda that served to demonize him and to reduce the discussion of Libya down to one man, while deflecting attention away from the human rights records of the accusers, or the atrocities of the insurgents whose abuses have now amply rivalled all of those of which Gaddafi had ever been accused. Attacking one man is an approach that makes for good caricatures and graffiti, and for awful analysis, and so such viewpoints will not be dignified in this book. At least on paper, regime change is still illegal under international law— it does not become more permissible depending on what we may think is the nature of a regime.
It is also not the case that the rebellion happened either because of high unemployment or anger with dictatorial rule. That is a very poor theory of political revolt and has little currency among serious scholars of politics, probably because nowhere has it been proven to be valid. Nor is it tenable that the best way to understand the rebellion is by isolating Libyan affairs, actors, social relations and political processes from the wider world that impinged upon and shaped them. For example, the sanctions imposed on Libya, the inevitably diminished consumption of foreign goods, and the diminished ability to hire foreign services, clearly had an impact on the Libyan leadership’s ability to respond to heightened demands and expectations for an “improved” lifestyle. But by no measure were Libyans living in poverty— indeed, one of the crying complaints phoned in to CNN during one of the nights of the protests, purportedly from someone in Libya, lamented that daily life consisted only of eating, sleeping and working. The lifting of sanctions only exacerbated these tensions: suddenly Libya was awash in many billions of dollars, and while hundreds of new infrastructure projects were undertaken, with tens of thousands of new homes being built, the issue of how the money would be spent was hotly debated and caused dissatisfaction. The Libyan leadership was very aware of that discontent, as the cables published by WikiLeaks repeatedly show. The idea that Gaddafi would steer some of that newly acquired wealth toward Africa and to pursuing ambitious plans for accelerated African integration, irked many Libyans. The discontent with the leadership’s Pan-African realignment was thus ever present well before 2011, and it converged with U.S. interests in also seeking unrivalled dominance in shaping African initiatives.
Sirte is the starting point of this book, for in many ways the story of Sirte— and not Benghazi —is central to understanding the war against Libya and Africa. From even before Gaddafi was born in Sirte, to when he came to power, and through the war in 2011 and the bombing campaign that ended in Sirte with Gaddafi’s horrific murder and the near total devastation of the city, Sirte is what offers the central reference point for understanding what happened. Place of birth, final resting place, Sirte was also envisioned as a possible new capital for a United States of Africa. That dream has been abruptly and brutally terminated, with the determined persecution of African migrants in Libya, extending to black Libyans, and the new regime promising to close the door on Africa. In some ways, however, some in Africa have decided to slam the door back in Libya’s face: witness the deliberate refusal of Algeria, Mauritania, and Niger to comply with demands from the new regime in Libya to hand over government officials and Gaddafi family members who fled to their countries. The loop locking Libya out of Africa is thus pulled tighter. In Libya, what was much romanticized in the media and by activists as the “Arab Spring,” was wedded to xenophobia, racism, and a Eurocentric alliance of NATO states. The two chapters on Sirte, offering painful detail on the destruction of the city, also trace the historical role of Sirte in the development of the Libyan Jamahiriya, and its site as one of confrontation with imperialism, from bombings that occurred when Ronald Reagan was president, to attempted assassinations of Gaddafi that occurred with covert support from British intelligence. Sirte in post-sanctions Libya also offers key insights on the nature of Libyan relations with the West, and U.S. anxiety about its own inability to steer developments exactly as it wished. The chapters on Sirte also put to a severe test the claims that NATO’s intervention was humanitarian and intended to protect civilians, while also showing the nature of the insurgency and its conceptions of what human rights practice meant.
As described and analyzed throughout, the U.S. had many more pressing and pertinent reasons to pursue regime change in Libya than that of supposedly saving lives. This is not to say that boasting of its success in saving Benghazi could not help satisfy some of its larger aims, while also enabling local forces on the ground to do some of the dirty work of the war. “Protecting civilians” in and of itself— as a stated goal —could, if unchallenged, help to enhance U.S. credibility and legitimacy in international arenas, while also creating the basis for forging alliances with local proxies, and open the door to regime change. Regime change in turn, while not an end in itself, would help to open the door to achieving some larger U.S. goals on the African continent: disrupting an emerging pattern of independence and network of collaboration that would facilitate increased African self-reliance, at odds with the geostrategic and political economic ambitions of the U.S. The creation of AFRICOM directly followed suit from U.S. policy makers and strategists identifying Africa as a key source of oil and minerals. Libya, along with China, was named as one of the adversaries of U.S. interests in Africa. As Sirte symbolizes a resurgent Pan-Africanism in the making, so the termination of NATO’s military operations in that city and the insurgents’ devastation of it and the overthrow of Gaddafi would spell the unmaking of the Pan-Africanist project, as some might have hoped.
Following two chapters showing how Sirte was a stage for many of the currents and developments leading up to and following from the U.S.-led NATO intervention, two chapters focus on Pan-Africanism and AFRICOM. In as much detail as possible we learn of the strong bonds formed between Gaddafi and key African leaders; the development of Gaddafi’s Pan-Africanist thinking; the resurgence of Kwame Nkrumah’s ideals for African integration; and the extensive nature of Libyan aid and investment throughout Africa. The second chapter on Africa deals with AFRICOM and Libyan defiance, followed by a detailed presentation of the argument that war against the Libyan Jamahiriya was a fundamentally racist one.
Chapter 5 provides a wider discussion of humanitarian intervention and the protection of civilians, as well as claims that Benghazi was saved, and that “genocide” was prevented. The popular myths that worked to legitimate military intervention are critically examined and put to the test in light of available evidence. The role of the UN and human rights NGOs in ensuring that only one story of events in Libya could be told in international fora is also examined. That story was the one told by the opposition. We look at how Libya was repeatedly prevented from speaking for itself at the UN, and also at the revolving door between some NGOs and the U.S. State Department. The chapter then asks the reader to consider what were the alternatives to foreign intervention.
The concluding chapter ends with an extension of one of the key themes in this book, namely that the war against Libya was also a war against Africa. This is best illustrated by the critical perspectives on regime change in Libya as voiced by prominent African leaders. In addition, we look at the impact of the war on leadership within the African Union itself, which has had an unsettling effect to say the least. We end by considering how the war in Libya has destabilized the immediate region, and how this too represents further opportunity for U.S. intervention, and a thus continued need on our part for vigilance and skepticism in the face of the heady claims of our own inherent goodness which can only find its highest expression in the form of aerial bombardment.