As Libya began to descend into chaos, Gaddafi attempted to respond militarily to repel the uprising. By October 2011, Gaddafi had been killed, the rebels had succeeded taking most of the country and the civil war came to an end.
Libya overthrew its dictator and democracy was in the air or was it? As soon as the media shifted its focus elsewhere, everyone disregarded Libya but the war had just begun. Foreign intervention and support for the uprising helped turn a stable nation into a hornet’s nest of chaos, discord, and terror. Today, despite the neglect by the media, Libya is engaged in an existential battle for its identity. With tribes fighting one another for power and ISIS using the disarray to expand its caliphate of terror, the future of Libya appears to be bleak at best.
Gadaffi’s Libya
In order to understand the present-day situation in Libya and evaluate NATO’s success, one must understand the pre-intervention history of the country. Early in the 20th century, Libya was an Italian colony. Typical of most European colonies, Libya was an artificial construct from three distinct areas; Cyrenaica, Fezzan, and Tripolitania. It is along these three areas that the country is now divided, more or less. After Italy's World War II defeat, the British and French administered Libya until 1951 when Libya declared independence under King Idris . Idris established a constitutional monarchy. With the discovery of major oil reserves, Libya became a wealthy state but unfortunately most of the wealth had been concentrated in the hands of the king and other elites. Around this time, many former colonial nations were swept by secular revolutions, Libya was no exception. Muammar Gaddafi and a group of fellow officers launched the Al-Fateh revolution in 1969.
Similar to other Arab revolutionaries, Gaddafi claimed to create a democratic system, only to disguise his dictatorial government. Using the massive wealth from petroleum sales and a relatively small population, Libya was able to become a wealthy nation in Africa. Gaddafi used the money to purchase arms to supply allies and terrorist groups around the world. But unlike King Idris or other Arab dictators, Gaddafi also modernized Libya. He developed Libya's education system, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. He achieved the highest human development index in Africa and surpassed nations in the Midd le East including Saudi Arabia in terms of development. The GDP rose leaps and bounds reaching the top five (5) in Africa, financial support for university education became universal, employment programs helped train people for skilled jobs, and freshwater was made readily available in a country overwhelmingly buried in a desert.
Despite being a dictator and making many enemies abroad including the US, Gaddafi had worked intently to develop his nation. The living standard was relatively great in Libya compared to other nations of the region. While lacking civil liberties, most Libyans did well in the oasis of stability the ostentatious Libyan dictator had created.
Gaddafi fell out of favor with the international community after his involvement in the bombing of Pan Am 103 and of a Berlin nightclub frequented by US service members. From the 1990s through early 2000s, the UN had sanctioned Libya. After witnessing the downfall of fellow dictator Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi gave up his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and began a rapprochement with the West. For a short while everything seemed to be going well. It was not until the Arab Spring and the Libyan uprising that everything turned upside down. Vowing to depose the uprising against his government, Gaddafi did not expect a NATO intervention. President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton claimed that it was imperative for the US and its allies to intervene on the grounds that a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions would occur.
Veni, Vidi, Vici
The basis for the intervention was that the world, especially the US, cannot sit idly by as a dictator massacred its own people. Under such pretenses, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 with abstentions from Russia, Germany, Brazil, China, and India. The resolution established no-fly zones and authorized any necessary actions to protect Libyan civilians. NATO led the campaign to enforce the resolution with the US, France, and the UK being the largest proponent for it. The civil war ended with approximately 30,000 dead. Despite the request by Libya’s interim government to extend NATO’s mission for another year, NATO ceased its mission and declared victory.
After the withdrawal of NATO and the media, Libya had become a failed state. Different tribes battle one another for territory while Islamists attempt to carve out their fiefdom and on top of all this; ISIS has managed to establish a foothold in the country. Libya is another strategic territory for ISIS to expand its tentacles into. It is geographically situated at the doorstep of Europe and contains a vast amount of petroleum reserves that ISIS hopes to use as an asset to finance its campaign of terror. Simultaneously, Libya can become the safe haven that ISIS needs to expand its burgeoning ties with Boko Haram in Nigeria, potentially Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Islamists in Mali, and other groups on the continent. On top of all this travesty and strategic blunder, neither President Obama nor Secretary Clinton has ever totally owned up to one of their larger foreign policy disasters. Instead Secretary Clinton is famous for her saying “We Came, we saw, he died.”
The disaster in Libya, while neglected by most mainstream media outlets and characterized as a minuscule nuisance, can become the fuse that reduces the entire North African region into chaos, disarray, and war. To make matters worse, recently declassified emails by Secretary Clinton demonstrates that she was the one who spearheaded the campaign for Gaddafi's ouster. Furthermore, Secretary Clinton was the main catalyst in fomenting the chaos and extremism that currently exists in Libya due to the vacuum created by the ousting of Gaddafi. Recent emails outline that there was not any real threat to the Libyan civilian population from Gaddafi, instead the Secretary had hyped up the threat of mass murder and rape to get the UN resolution passed through the Security Council.
One of the main rationales behind the war appears to be revealed in an email exchange between Sidney Blumenthal, her top adviser, and Hilary Clinton. Blumenthal stresses the vitality of achieving a “final win” by removing Gaddafi to help President Obama boost his low approval rating at the time. Moreover, Blumenthal discussed the necessity of removing Libya in terms of counterbalancing Iran and establishing security in North Africa but ignoring the potentially disastrous outcomes.
Outcome
With almost 5 years since the ouster of Gaddafi, Libya is a failed state with infighting, killing, and terror-related activities at an all-time high. While many in the media typically and understandably point to the failed Bush policies of Iraq as a leading cause of instability in the Middle East, the omission of the failed Obama/Clinton policies in Libya ignores the rise of extremism and chaos in North Africa. The consequence of Obama’s failed war in Libya has not fully materialized, but with time the world will endure more problems as a result of this war. Thus far, the consequences have been:
- A Nation Destroyed – Without a shadow of a doubt, Gaddafi was a dictator and a one-time supporter of terror organizations globally. But all was forgiven by the US and EU as they began to mend their ties and move to closer relations. Whatever one may think of Gaddafi, it cannot be denied he developed the tattered desert villages of Libya into a nation and provided services for the people. Nevertheless, today Libya is without any infrastructure thanks to infighting and foreign intervention.
- Immigration to Europe – While Americans do not feel the consequences of their actions in Libya directly, Europe’s participation in the war has affected them. The recent migration wave into Europe has people from Libya who are attempting to escape the dire and horrific scene in their nation thanks to the European intervention.
- ISIS – Aside from Donald Trump's recent acknowledgment of ISIS’s growing capabilities in Libya, the media has largely been moot on the topic. Perhaps one of, if not worst, imminent consequences from this entire tragedy is the expansion of ISIS's territorial holdings into Libya. They have managed to find local support and solidify their influence. Libya will be used as a springboard for ISIS to garner more influence into Nigeria, Somalia, Chad, Mali, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and eventually Europe itself.
- Disaffected Generations – Something that is almost never discussed in most analyses of these wars is the effect of death, and mayhem on the younger generations. Any conflict always brings with it trauma, disillusion, hopelessness and an array of psychological issues. After these countries spiral into destruction, there are not any sorts of institutions to help these children and youth to cope with the death and destruction around them. As a result, they fall prey to extremist recruiters. As these children mature, what will begin to emerge are Taliban-style nations.
The removal of Gaddafi, for whatever reason, was an illogical misstep that resulted in a much more unstable world. Even though the failures in Iraq were a lesson for all, President Obama and Secretary Clinton appear to have neglected it in their preparation for war in Libya. Even worse, President Obama came to power on the basis of ending "useless" wars. As the world continues to be fixated on ISIS and Syria, the forgotten conflicts such as Libya will not always remain in the background, sometimes sooner than later it will rear its head in an unpleasant way. While the world neglects Libya, the cou ntry has become an inhumane dystopia thanks to the “humanitarian” intervention.
