The restless ghost of Libya

The ghost of Libya has come back to haunt the US and her Western allies. An attempt to have the UN Security Council pass a resolution that would back an Arab League plan to resolve the crisis in Syria, failed when Russia and China vetoed it. At the same time North African stability is also threatened by further fallout from the Libyan conflict; another development over which the Western allies should be losing sleep – lots of it.

This weekend 13 of the 15 members of the UN Security Council, including South Africa, voted in favour of a draft resolution submitted by Morocco outlining the Arab League-led plan. But Russia and China used their veto right, as two of the council’s five permanent members.

This led to an outburst by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who called the outcome a “travesty” and called for friends of Syria to unite and mobilise against the violently repressive regime of President Bashar Assad that stands accused of already having killed more than 5 000 Syrians.

Such a group of friends of Syria could be similar to the Contact Group on Libya which led the campaign to assist Libyan factions opposed to Muammar Gaddafi to overthrow and kill him. In the case of Libya the group also co-ordinated, funded and led the Nato military strikes against Gaddafi. Military operations by rebels were also assisted by Western military elements on the ground.

While this is not envisaged in the Syrian settlement plan, the Libyan military action was also never spelt out in the initial UN resolution that merely sought to declare Libya a no-fly zone.

The Syrian crisis began in March last year when protests erupted as part of the broader Arab Spring movement that toppled the dictatorial regimes of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen in the Middle East and North Africa.

The vetoed Arab League plan called for "a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal regardless of their affiliations or ethnicities or beliefs, including through commencing a serious political dialogue between the Syrian government and the whole spectrum of the Syrian opposition under the auspices of the League of Arab States, in accordance with the timetable set out by the League of Arab States."

Replay Libya?

This is similar to the plan for Libya proposed last year by the African Union, and promoted strongly by South Africa, for a negotiated, all-inclusive peaceful settlement. The plan was bluntly ignored on several occasions by the US, Britain and France, among others. They opted instead for a bloody military conflict that cost thousands of innocent lives. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

Ironically Clinton warned that failure to act would increase the chances for "a brutal civil war" in Syria, just like she and other Western leaders had warned about Libya and then went on to foment that very civil war.

Clinton is proving to be a dangerous American leader in the mould of George W Bush.

For this, abuse by the Western allies of a UN resolution to pursue a military solution to satisfy their oil greed in Libya has caused them to lose the trust of important potential allies in Russia and China they now really need, more so than they did in Libya.

While they were pursuing their goals in Libya, for almost a year they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to Syria where the country’s regime was unleashing a far greater terror upon its civilian population than Gaddafi had ever done. Friends of Syria indeed!

Not that the Chinese and Russians will emerge with clean hands and high morals intact from this. They too have their commercial and other interests dictating to how they deal with Syria. But they certainly do not trust the US, France and Britain and they definitely are not about to give them carte blanche to do in Syria what they did in Libya.

This time it is not the oil the US or its allies are after but much rather enhancing the US’ prestige with the Arab League (where oil does ultimately play a major role), creating client states and securing undisputed dominance and control in the Middle East.

Ironically Clinton, this weekend, said that “we will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons to be used against defenseless Syrians, including women and children”.

But, she had been more or less silent about Western arms having gone to Gaddafi prior to his falling from favour. For example, as recently as 2007 Sarkozy signed a security and immigration deal with Libya that sold Gaddafi missiles worth US$230-million. In return Gaddafi had to stop African immigrants from reaching France.

Libyan fallout

Meanwhile the Western campaign in Libya to oust Gaddafi has left in its wake some seriously unfinished business that now threatens to destabilise the entire region. The US, France, Britain and Italy have pretty much left the Libyans to mop up the mess in a situation which does not seem to be getting any better – nor does it seem to have replaced evil with good.

Only this past week three international organisations, the UN human rights body, the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, and AMNI International have all separately reported gross human rights abuses and the torture and killing of former Gaddafi supporters being held in custody by the new regime in Libya. Does it surprise anyone that the Western allies have not said a word?

Probably more dangerously, in the wake of Nato’s destructive work in Libya and the unceremonious pullout thereafter, much of Gaddafi’s extensive, deadly arsenal of heavy weapons – mostly supplied by Western countries before they turned on him – has landed in the hands of some one thousand Tuareg rebels in Mali.

The rebels fought for Gaddafi and after his death returned to Mali where they had long campaigned militarily – though ineffectively – for the “liberation” of a northern region of Mali.Now, with Gaddafi’s weapons and led by a former Libyan colonel, they are for the first time a real military threat and have already attacked several towns.

Western powers had better take note. The Tuareg rebels have formed a new group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) which the government of Mali, a strong US ally in the region against al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), claim is linked to the organisation. The MNLA, however, has strongly denied any link to AQIM, saying it will serve as a bulwark against AQIM.

Which side is the US going to choose?

Some ghosts will just never rest.

Stef Terblanche