Chances for stability look slim

The African Union (AU) and the South African government have to date refused to recognise  Libya’s so-called rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) as that  country’s new legitimate or sole representative political body. There seem to be solid grounds for such a stance.

Much of what is presently dominating the nature of the Libyan conflict, seems to be at best an enormously twisted misrepresentation of the truth and even outright lies. Most of it seems aimed at serving the West’s own selfish strategic interests and not necessarily those of the people of Libya.

No-one claims that Libya’s fugitive erstwhile leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, or his regime and his security forces are innocent ­– indeed they have much to answer for, but it is also becoming increasingly clear that there is also another side to the story.

As former president Thabo Mbeki pointed out in an address to Stellenbosch students last week, Libya did not display the same spontaneous youth-led uprising as Egypt and Tunisia; the UN resolution, resulting in Nato’s bombing of Libya, was the result of the Western allies being “bent on regime change in Libya, regardless of the cost to this African country, intended to produce a political outcome which would serve their interests.”

In contrast, the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia had taken place without “significant interference by foreign powers”.

More people were being killed in Syria without any Western intervention because Syria had little oil.

Mbeki also said the International Crisis Group (ICG), which is not sympathetic to Gaddafi, had found that the Libyan protest movement had exhibited a “violent aspect” from an early stage, while the view that Gaddafi would massacre thousands of unarmed protesters was created by one-sided Western media reports.

Concurring with this view, Russia at one point also told the Nato allies that their bombing campaign was costing as many Libyan civilian lives as Gaddafi’s forces may have taken.

Accusations against Gaddafi made by Western sources, include: Gaddafi ordered the killing of opponents and innocent civilians; Gaddafi ordered the rape of women suspected of rebel sympathies; Gaddafi himself raped his female bodyguards; Gaddafi stole all of Libya’s oil wealth and did nothing for his people; Gaddafi was a hated tyrant and dictator; and many more.

To date few witnesses and hardly a shred of evidence have been produced for most of the accusations of atrocities and crimes. In anyone’s language this amounts to propaganda – the thing that usually replaces the truth in any conflict.

Following the fall of Tripoli, evidence of mass killings has been found, but without clarity as to who may have been responsible. There are implicit signs that both sides of the conflict have blood on their hands.

What is absent from the statements made by Western leaders and officials and the reports in their media are facts (from the Encyclopaedia of Nations and various other sources including even the US State Department) such as:

• Libya, the world’s poorest nation 60 years ago, under Gaddafi attained one of the highest living standards in Africa;
• Gaddafi gave his people free health services, education, housing and basic foodstuffs, 97% of whom have access to safe drinking water, a low infant mortality rate, a 78.1% literacy rate in 1998, and much more.

This is hardly the stuff that fuels a revolution.

Gaddafi also already in 2008 embarked on a programme of political reform and he tasked his son Saif al-islam Gaddafi with setting up a committee to put together the specifics of such a programme. This was work in progress when hostilities broke out.

The rebels are being portrayed as part of a hugely popular, national uprising against Gaddafi. But the rebel “uprising” started in eastern Libya, a region where there has long been some opposition to Gaddafi. But this has its roots in east-west rivalry in Libya based on tribal differences dating back some 2 00 years. Libyan dissidents, many from the Benghazi area, staged several past coup attempts without success and being ruthlessly suppressed by Gaddafi’s security forces.

This time round, however, they had Western and Nato support. Their military successes were undoubtedly due to the Western allies – the US, Britain, France and Italy - abusing a UN Security Council resolution.

And the rebel fighters on the ground were being armed, trained, supplied, fuelled and even led by Nato forces. It was members of the British elite SAS dressed as Arabs who led the charge on Tripoli.

Both South Africa and the AU want an all-inclusive reconstruction of Libya, which must also include elements of Gaddafi’s fallen regime. Several attempts by the AU to facilitate a negotiated settlement in Libya these past months were ignored and sabotaged by the Western allies.

How representative is NTC?

For one, it was not the only transitional council initially set up by Gaddafi’s opponents in Libya. There is also said to be disunity in its ranks, as demonstrated by the arrest and assassination by fellow rebels of rebel general Abdul Fattah Younis in July.

The NTC is also not recognised everywhere in Libya. In Misrata, Libya’s third biggest city, other transitional factions have also been recognised and the NTC rejected as the sole representative of Libya’s people. There is also strong resistance to the NTC in western Libya and in the cities of Tripoli and Sirte in particular.

The motives of some members of the NTC is also suspect. Some of them have, on the surface, good track records of working for human rights and reform in Libya, but quite a number of them happily served as Gaddafi-government ministers and high-ranking state officials for many years – until their interests were threatened by the Nato-led military campaign against Gaddafi.

Others were erstwhile comrades of Gaddafi who later fell out with him. Still others had strong links with Western governments and almost all hail from the anti-Gaddafi eastern city of Benghazi from where the Western allies and the rebels dictated their offensive.

The NTC chairman, Abdul Jalil previously was Gaddafi’s Justice Minister. The de facto Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, was chairman of Gaddafi’s Economic Development Board ... and, according to leaked diplomatic cables, close to Washington. Omar al-Hariri was a military officer who helped Gaddafi stage his 1969 coup, but later jailed after a fallout with Gaddafi. Ali Issawi the NTC’s foreign affairs minister who was once Gaddafi’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Investment but later dropped after accusations of corruption against him. And, so the list goes on.

Whether the NTC, with remote-controlled assistance from the US and other Western powers, will be able to avoid the same kind of chaos and bloodshed that tore Iraq to pieces after the US-British led invasion remains an open question.

Already there are signs of impending chaos as the NTC struggles to restore basic health services, repair infrastructure, and facilitate supplies of basic goods and more.

Stef Terblanche