Defeat in Victory for Libyan Rebels?

Barry Biddulph rejects the notion that Western intervention in Libya has shown the possibility of any new, ethical, or progressive content to imperialism.

The victory of the rebels in Tripoli was seen to be dependent on NATO bombing, western weaponry, special forces, and planning by strategists in Paris, London and Washington. From the start of imperialist intervention in Benghazi, NATO has been bending the rebellion towards imperialist aims to secure a transition to a new regime compatible with western interests. This loss of independence and undermining of the rebellion from below was the reason why communists opposed the intervention and the no-fly zone.

Gilbert Achcar, moralising from the University of London, has argued it was not decent to oppose NATO Intervention and the no fly zone. He condemned the anti-imperialist left for not caring for real people on the ground (‘Popular Rebellion and Imperialist Designs’). The Alliance for Workers Liberty has echoed this denunciation, describing those who opposed imperialist intervention in Libya as morally degenerate. But anti imperialists cannot oppose revolutionaries in the Arab Spring and revolutionaries in general for supporting revolts by unarmed people’s against professional armies in Libya, Syria and elsewhere. Revolutions are violent and even attempts at peaceful revolution, as in Chile in 1970-3 can result in mass killings and defeat. Marx opposed any insurrection in Paris in 1871, but when the commune was crushed , he did not claim the leaders of the Paris Commune were morally responsible for 25,000 deaths. Fighting counter-revolution was an inspiration for the socialist future.

any hope for libya?

Joe Thorne writes on NATO’s role in post-Gaddafi Libya, and whether its ‘humanitarian intervention’ is really cause to re-think anti-imperialism 

Less than a month before the fall of Tripoli, the BBC suggested that rather than a rebel victory, “what may emerge is a complicated deal struck between rebels and erstwhile Gaddafi loyalists to get the Libyan leader out of the picture and open up the way for a national transitional government.”

no tears for Gaddafi, no cheers for NATO

Indeed, I argued in the last issue of The Commune that this was precisely NATO’s strategy.  They saw such a compromise as the best means to ensure the political stability they want.  It would allow the NATO powers, as the brokers of any compromise, to play king-maker, and perhaps facilitate acceptance of foreign troops on Libyan soil, as ‘peace-keepers. But this was far from certain: the rebels were neither  NATO pawns nor idiots, and many would oppose such impositions.

In the event, Gaddafi’s army collapsed quicker than most had predicted.  The stalemate which had prevailed since late March was broken on 29th July, when rebel fighters in the West took five small villages in the plain below the Nafusa mountains.  This opened the way for the push to the coast and the taking of Zawiyah on 19th August, and the severing of the coastal artery supplying Tripoli with petrol and food.  Thus followed a collapse of morale in the loyalist army.

The end, then, was not so much the “grubbier” compromise that the Western powers were hoping for, but a far more straightforward rebel victory.  In consequence, the Libyan rebels are in a much stronger position to define the form of a new Libya than they otherwise would have been, and than NATO hoped they would be.  In consequence it seems, for example, that a Western base is off the agenda and there are signs that some rebel elements are resisting the imposition of ex-Gaddafi loyalists.

what is NATO doing in libya?

Joe Thorne looks at the evidence, and draws some conclusions

The calamity of a people is beneficial to others 

Libyan Proverb [1]

The NATO powers are not intervening in Syria or Bahrain, where pro-democracy movements are also subject to brutal suppression.  They did not intervene in Gaza during Cast Lead, or in Tamil Eelam during the offensive which wiped out thousands of Tamils.  While millions of dollars are spent on cruise missiles and aerial bombing, UNICEF, the same powers in their guise as protectors of children, say they are worried that because of insufficient resources to deal with famine “65,000 children in Kenya alone are at acute risk of dying.”  Indeed, “Britain trained and equipped some of the Libyan special forces who inflicted such horrors on cities like Misrata. Western states continue to train Saudi forces, and this may well have much the same effect.”

We don’t need to labour the point: the NATO powers are not ‘humanitarians’, their motives are not ‘humanitarian’, and what they do has nothing to do with the defence of human life.  Could it be the case that their malign motives are a given, but the objective outcome of their policy may nonetheless be welcome?  It was not the case in Kosovo or Iraq.  The point of reminding ourselves of NATO’s hypocrisy is not just that they are hypocrites: it is to understand how the specific, very much non-humanitarian, objectives of the NATO powers will play out in their actual policy in the coming weeks, months, and years.

east against west… or class against class?

text of leaflet for the 6th september student stop the war meeting (from 3pm, birkbeck college, malet st, central london).

The recent Russian-Georgian war and the ensuing crisis in the Kremlin’s relations with the European Union and USA have little to do with the fate of South Ossetia. The territory and the 70,000 people who live there – a third of the population of Hackney – are merely an insignificant pawn in the current bout of great power rivalry. Although we have not yet seen an attack on Iran, conflict zones and fronts of tension are expanding at a canter.