asianaffairs

Libya's far from fairytale ending

The death of Muammar Gaddafi may have brought closure for many but his removal has cost the people of Libya dear, and the West seems to have learned little from the Libyan story, warns David Watts.

By David Watts

DEATH WITHOUT DIGNITY: Gaddafi's degrading end reflected the latter years of his rule

In the end his death was grubby and ugly just as had been the latter years of his rule in Libya.
But for Gaddafi's victims there was surely some instant satisfaction.

The grubby metaphor applied equally to the West, its motives and the NATO campaign, which no military analyst in his right mind could call a success.

The triumphalism echoing around Europe and America had a hollow ring to it, matched only by President George W Bush's grotesque equivalent claim of victory, made long before the real war in Iraq had got going.

But for the long-term future of his country, Gaddafi's passing before he could face his accusers is a boon to the West if not to the citizens of his country, who are left without answers to the myriad questions arising from 42 years of dictatorship.'

In retrospect, it seems clear that Gaddafi's death was really the only outcome the Western powers had in mind. There really was no Plan B. There would have been far too many awkward questions arising from any testimony he might have given to the International Court of Justice in The Hague after the years of the West cozying up to him.
But it is a measure of how little those in power in the West have learned from recent incidences of regime change and how they have affected the image of the West, particularly in the Arab world, that there were several swift claims of success.

It was always important that this particular regime change, like those in Egypt and Tunisia, should be 'home-made'. But so little do those in the Pentagon and the French military establishment understand this that they both claimed decisive roles in Gaddafi's demise.

The Pentagon claimed that he was scared into his drain pipe by a Predator drone strike, while Paris said it was the work of a French Air Force Rafale jet fighter-bomber. In reality it was probably a bit of both, but why take anything away from the triumph of the Libyan people at this crucial point?

The key point is that a bullet in the chest and one in the head from a 'rebel' were the mortal blows that ended his life. In the final analysis, Libyans put an end to the life of their tormentor. Appearances matter in this age of instant media-made history.

But that is about as happy as the ending gets. The price Libya has paid is monstrous: just look at what's left of Sirte, the dictator's benighted birthplace. It looks like Stalingrad with palm trees. Not to mention the human toll that can only be guessed at for the moment. The bitter irony, apparently completely lost on the NATO secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is that the whole rubric for the NATO operation was R2P ('responsibility to protect') civilians. 'NATO and our partners have successfully implemented the historic mandate of the United Nations to protect the people of Libya,' he said.

Even more chilling was the US vice president Joe Biden's analysis of the operation and what it will mean for those who displease the United States in the future: 'In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past.'

Only slightly less bizarre was President Obama's trumpeting that the death of Gaddafi meant that 'we are seeing the strength of American leadership'. Clearly he has forgotten that it was only a few short months ago that America wanted nothing to do with the operation and very publicly left it to its NATO allies.

The contest for Libyan oil has already got underway for some, with the Italian oil company Eni in the lead to be the principal beneficiary of oil rights, having already restarted production and having had a long historical connection with the country, as well as supplying the rebels with free oil from the start of their campaign.

Politically, the future of the country is up for grabs. Already there are strong signals that al-Qaeda related groups have a strong influence in Tripoli and the success of the moderate Islamists along the coast in Tunisia's elections shows that they are going to play a role in the future of north Africa one way or another.

Washington has probably noticed that the modern democratic history of the Middle East is passing it by but, more importantly, Libya is but part of a new strategy that is aimed at boosting American influence in Africa to try and help counter-balance the inroads being made by the Chinese.

Not only will Libya now provide the opportunity to establish Western air and army bases on African soil, the ending of the Gaddafi drama neatly opens the way for a new international geo-political soap opera. Shortly before the demise of the self-styled 'king of kings', 100 American Special Forces troops landed in Uganda to prop up president Yoweri Museveni. If this sounds like an upside down version of the Libyan story so it is.

Museveni may not be an irresponsible, corrupt leader on the scale of Gaddafi but that is not for want of trying.
The troops are there ostensibly to protect the regime against the radical Christian Lord Resistance Army (LRA), which is based in the north of the country.

The LRA does some very unpleasant things, press-ganging its fighters and brainwashing child soldiers into fighting for it while destroying families in the process. This it has been doing for a long time but its activities have never attracted the attention of the US government into doing anything about it. The LRA poses no threat to the central government of Uganda let alone to the stability of the region in general.

But, as you might expect, there is more to it than that: Museveni has sent thousands of Ugandan troops to join the African Union force fighting the Islamist al-Shabaab movement in Somalia.

In return for that effort, the US has already fed $45m in military aid to Uganda as it is set to become the new operations centre for the US' Africom, which is now centred in Stuttgart, in the contest for the future of Africa.
Uganda is important to that contest because its northern regions, and the LRA area of influence, abut the world's newest country of South Sudan. Uganda is said to have several billion barrels of oil in reserves while the nation provides a suitable jumping off point for some seriously valuable real estate in eastern Congo, where Chinese influence is already extensive.

The list of valuable minerals to be found there is exhaustive and includes a number of rare earth minerals on which China, up to this point, has had a virtual monopoly.

In the great contest for African resources, China already has a lead but the Europeans and Americans can be expected to start catching up fast. Others in the contest include India, Australia, South Africa and Russia. Expect east Africa to start hitting the headlines.

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