OpinionIntervention, occupation, and nation building in Middle Eastern Libya

Intervention, occupation, and nation building in Middle Eastern Libya

This article was published on November 21, 2011 and may be out of date. To maintain our historical record, The Cascade does not update or remove outdated articles.
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By Joe Johnson (The Cascade) – Email

Print Edition: November 16, 2011

Intervention, occupation and nation building best define Western policies towards the Middle East. Over the past decade it’s been Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and now Libya, who have all seen what it means to have external involvement in their sovereign affairs. Of course, their experiences are unique for each country, but one question has reappeared every time. Why this country?

The simple answer would be the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; Saddam Hussein’s WMDs in Iraq; terrorists in Pakistan; and the revolution in Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. However, this isn’t a simple world we live in and rarely is anything so straight forward. Each of the reasons here are based on the fact that the international community, with the West in particular, has some kind of interest to advance.

Perhaps this question can best be analyzed by taking a deeper look into Libya. As a country whose change came with the Arab Spring, the people now have an opportunity to become a beacon of freedom across the region. It had been four decades under Gaddafi’s rule when the rebels finally pushed through with the backing of NATO. But now the question becomes how did they get to that point, and for that matter, could they have done it without intervention?

The rebellion against Gaddafi began on February 15, 2011, as a small conflict between the people and Gaddafi’s security forces. It then broke out to the initial stages of a revolt, and then a full blown revolution. Soon after, the National Transitional Council was formed to direct the resistance. However, a month after the rebellion began the Gaddafi’s military gained the initiative, pushing back as far as the rebel’s home base of Benghazi. Intervention had to take place to prevent a massacre, and so NATO stepped in with substantial air power, eventually leading to the success of the rebels in overthrowing Gaddafi.

So once again, the question changes: Why intervene with Libya and not in countries such as Syria, where horrible acts of abuse are being committed against its own citizens?

According to Scott Fast, Professor Emeritus in Political Science, Gaddafi, “In practice, his policies… had a reputation for doing a pretty good job in terms of housing and food and that sort of thing, if you compared it to other North African countries.” Now, Gaddafi was a supporter of terrorism and committed brutalities on his people. But these brutalities are not on the same level as the crackdown by Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria, who has had 3,500 of his own people openly slaughtered on the streets.

To further answer the question posed, Edward Akuffo, another Professor of Political Science, identified “it is all because Syria, as Assad has said, is the fault line of the Middle East and any kind of intervention there might have very bad replications with regards to instability to the whole of the Middle East. So that is the calculation that policy makers have to make in terms of intervening in a place like Syria.”

And now this is where things get messy, while a further question comes forth. Do we accept that while we provide military protection for some people, others are out of reach due to political implications? Of course, there are economic actions that can be taken, but in Assad’s case these have limited effect. It’s a hard fact to take that we live in a world where people can live and die at the hands of their government, while all we can do is take a political course of action.

However, let’s move onto a final question: is it possible to successfully occupy a nation in hopes of rebuilding it for the better?

Fast often uses this Russian proverb in his classes, “We know you can turn an aquarium into fish soup. The question is can you turn fish soup back into an aquarium?” When a government is overthrown, a vacuum is created. Fast went on to say, “There are business fragments, and socialist fragments, and religious fragments, and secular fragments, and dominational fragments, that all want to now… use this opportunity.”

This is why occupations designed to facilitate the move from a transitional government to a strong and sovereign state often take at least a decade. But with that, and if history is any indicator, the odds for success still aren’t optimistic. The Americans have been in Iraq for eight-years and counting. Their withdrawal is looming and future of Iraq remains questionable.

The issues that face nations in this fragile time are very serious. Take the guns that found their way into the hands of all the rebels in Libya. Akuffo made the point that, “now the international community will have to find a way of getting those guns out of the hands of potential people like terrorists”, as many will begin to flow freely. “Africa has one of the highest incidents of small arms and light weapons circulating around that region. So the truth is that the rebuilding of Libya is linked to the general peace and security of the African continent because of the amount of arms that is circulating right now in that part of the world,” continued Akuffo.

The Arab Spring has brought on a wave of change in numerous countries. Some will succeed in freeing their selves from the oppression of dictators, while some won’t. But the time will come when all governments must face their people.

I’ll close with this line from Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator: “The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people, and so long as men die – liberty will never perish…”

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