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Libya
Of Principle and Peril
![[Voting at UN Security Council. Image from politics365.com]](/content_images/3/sm_prinper.jpg "[Voting at UN Security Council. Image from politics365.com]")
Reasonable, principled people can disagree about whether, in an ideal world, Western military intervention in Libya’s internal war would be a moral imperative. With Saddam Hussein dead and gone, there is arguably no more capricious and overbearing dictator in the Arab world than Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. The uprising of the Libyan people against him, beginning on February 17, was courageous beyond measure. It seems certain that, absent outside help, the subsequent armed insurrection would have been doomed to sputter amidst the colonel’s bloody reprisals. But the world is not an ideal one. It is not clear what principle differentiates Libya from other countries in ...
Keep Reading »Solidarity and Intervention in Libya
![[Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_libya.jpg "[Image from unknown archive.]")
The Libyan uprising is entering its fourth week. The courage and persistence of the Libyan people’s efforts to overthrow al-Qaddafi have been met with ongoing regime brutality ranging from shoot-to-kill policies to the indiscriminate use of artillery against unarmed civilians. When we last wrote on this subject, we already recognized that the situation in Libya was dire. Since that time the violence of the regime’s unhinged bid to subdue the armed insurgency has only escalated. The mounting civilian death toll resulting from regime brutality has amplified previous calls for international intervention. The Security Council unanimously issued a resolution imposing tough ...
Keep Reading »Shades of Solidarity: Notes On Race-talk, Intervention, and Revolution
![[A Saudi mujahid teaches Bosnian soldiers how to shoot. Image fron unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_bahadhiq4.jpg "[A Saudi mujahid teaches Bosnian soldiers how to shoot. Image fron unknown archive.]")
In this season of revolution, the early and stunning toppling of dictators – if not necessarily entire regimes – in Tunisia and Egypt has been followed by what appear for the moment to be stalemates in Bahrain and Libya. And in these latter two countries, despite wildly different circumstances, a curious phenomenon has emerged: a concern over foreign, and often racially marked, “mercenaries.” In Tunisia and Egypt, armies have acted as relatively cohesive national institutions, able to define their interests distinctly from those of rulers and move accordingly to preserve their own positions in society. But in Libya and Bahrain, we are told, regimes have relied ...
Keep Reading »Killing in the Name of: Libya, Sovereignty, Humanity
Libyans are begging to be saved, we have been told. We are also told that the international community has the responsibility to protect Libyans. It is now March 11, 2011. Yesterday, the Republic of France recognized the sovereignty of the Interim Transitional National Council of the Libyan Republic, presumably as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. France is scheduled to send an ambassador to Benghazi soon, but she may arrive too late, or too early. Everything depends on how transitional or permanent the new “government” will be, located as it is “in the City of Benghazi, the temporary location, till the liberation of Tripoli the Capital City and the ...
Keep Reading »The Fabric of Democracy
![[Photgraph by Frederic Neema.]](/content_images/3/sm_gharavi7.jpg "[Photgraph by Frederic Neema.]")
When disturbed, they usually escape by running and rarely take to flight. (The Common Peacock) In Rogues, his 2003 volume on rogue states,[1] Jacques Derrida looked to Plato's Republic in order to assess the Grecian syntagma of democracy as ‘democracy to come.’ Passages from the Republic referring to ‘democratic man and his freedoms’ hold special relevance; Derrida used it to examine the rise of Islamism in Algeria but I would like to focus on the relationship between clothing, democracy and Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s embattled colonel-leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi. The Greek origin of aesthetics (aisthētikos) was largely ...
Keep Reading »"The Responsibility to Protect": Notes on Libya, Sovereignty, and the UN Security Council
![[The UN Security Council in session. Image from alphabetic.info]](/content_images/3/sm_UN-Security-Council-image-from-a-jan.-6-2009-meeting.jpg "[The UN Security Council in session. Image from alphabetic.info]")
I am writing on 27 February 2011, when there are calls for the international community to intervene, if necessary with violence, into Libyan affairs. Most recently, and “in a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.” Falling short of some expectations, and exceeding others, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution last night, on 26 February, imposing sanctions on Libya. “Considering that the widespread ...
Keep Reading »Libya's Significance
![[Qaddafi. Image from FoxNews]](/content_images/3/sm_1212-qaddafi.jpg "[Qaddafi. Image from FoxNews]")
With the 42-year reign of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi coming to a seemingly inevitable end, it is worth reflecting on the significance and regional implications of his ouster. Perhaps most importantly, Qaddafi’s removal cannot but result in genuine regime change. Unlike Egypt or Tunisia, Libya does not possess autonomous state institutions or state-sponsored elites with the capacity to force out the leader in order to perpetuate their custodianship of the state. If Qaddafi falls – and absent foreign intervention – Libya’s power elite will either go down with him, or remain masters of institutions and networks that no longer exist, are shattered beyond repair or have lost ...
Keep Reading »What Really Bothered Qaddafi (Speech Excerpt with Translation)
![[Image from Qaddafi's Customarily Concise Speech]](/content_images/3/sm_ss.jpg "[Image from Qaddafi's Customarily Concise Speech]")
On February 22nd, Qaddafi delivered a televised speech in which he appeared troubled and angry. Most observers assumed he was such because of his imminent dethroning. But that was not what was bothering him. Taking a break from superficial analysis at Jadaliyya, we put our minds to the task and excavated the phonetic meaning of his angry speech, captured by its finale.
Keep Reading »On International Intervention and the Dire Situation in Libya
![[Map of Libya. Image from wordtravels.com]](/content_images/3/sm_Libya_map.jpg "[Map of Libya. Image from wordtravels.com]")
Yesterday, the United Nations Security Council held a formal meeting in which they condemned the violence in Libya and threatened to hold violators of international law accountable. At the same time, the Arab League held an extraordinary session in which it suspended Libya’s membership. These measures, and others, come eight days into the Libyan people’s courage and persistence in the face of shoot-to-kill policies by police, military, and mercenary forces as well as the use of helicopter gunships, fighter jets, and other artillery to indiscriminately attack unarmed demonstrators. While this violence may have initially been intended as a strategy for maintaining power, ...
Keep Reading »Libya Update: The Violence of An Unraveling Regime [On Qaddafi's Speech]
![[Libyan demonstrators destroying a representation of al-Qaddafis' Green Book. Image from BBC.]](/content_images/3/sm_Libya.jpg "[Libyan demonstrators destroying a representation of al-Qaddafis' Green Book. Image from BBC.]")
On Sunday night, Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi—son of Libyan "leader" Colonel Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi—gave a televised speech in which he denied the existence of genuine grievances and protests for regime change in Libya, attributing the last six days of social unrest to both foreign interference as well as “drunken and drugged out” elements of society. The protests, which began in Benghazi in the eastern part of the country, have spread to all major urban and rural areas, including the capital city of Tripoli in the western part of the country. Typical of most existing and former authoritarian regimes in the Arab world, Saif al-Islam claimed that without the regime ...
Keep Reading »NYT Reporter Anthony Shadid Missing in Libya
[UPDATED March 21: The NYT announced that the Libyan government has released all four reporters, who are reportedly on their way home. Reports indicate the Turkish government played a key role in negotiating their freedom.] [UPDATED March 18: In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC, Saif Qadaffi said that the NYT reporters had been detained and were in Tripoli. The NYT announced that they believed the reporters would be released on Friday. We still await official word of their release.] “Weeks ...
Keep Reading »More Than a "Personal Error of Judgment": Seif Gaddafi and the London School of Economics
“Seif is committed to resolving contentious international and domestic issues through dialogue, debate, and peaceful negotiations.” These were the words with which Professor David Held introduced a public lecture by Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2009. Last week, British media revelled in replaying Held’s words, before cutting to Seif Gaddafi’s February 21, 2011, speech on Libyan state TV in which he predicted "rivers of blood" and vowed: "We'll fight ...
Keep Reading »عصافير العقيد [The Colonel's (Gaber) Asfours]
في لحظات احتضار نظامه، وسط الجنون والخراب، لا يبقى من العقيد الليبي سوى صورة المهرّج. مهرّج مغطى بالدم والريش والدولارات، يعيش الوحدة محاطاً ببعض ابنائه، عاجزاً عن التصديق بأن الزمن انقلب به، والهاوية في انتظاره.الاحتضار الدموي الطويل لنظام 'الكتاب الأخضر'، يأتي في سياق ثورة شعبية تجتاح العالم العربي، وتؤسس لشرعية سياسية جديدة، تقطع مع الانقلاب العسكري، ومع نظام الجمهوريات الوراثية، القائم على القمع والنهب والخوف. يستدعي هذا التحول نقداً جذرياً للخيانات الثقافية، التي اتخذت اشكالا مختلفة، في ...
Keep Reading »Intervention, Libya, Jadaliyya: A Documentary Remix
The following is an audio-visual documentary remix by VJ Um Amel of "On International Intervention and the Dire Situation in Libya," an article by Asli Bali and Ziad Abu-Rish originally published on Jadaliyya on February 23, 2011. See video below.
Keep Reading »The Arabs in Africa
As Libyans rise up against the 41-year-old dictatorship of Muammar al-Qaddafi, one of the most striking claims of state violence has been the hiring of “African mercenaries” to crush the revolt. Like Hosni Mubarak’s “thugs” (or baltagiya in Arabic, terms that gained widespread currency almost instantly), the mercenaries represent the anti-populist face of violence, those who are willing to take to the streets not for reasons of personal conviction or national duty, but for compensation from the embattled ...
Keep Reading »Exclusive Update from Benghazi: Inside Information on the Opposition Movement
This morning, I spoke to Mohammed Fannoush, an active dissident in Benghazi, who informed me that the liberated cities, in both the East and West, have come together and organized a committee which will serve as a collective organ from which they will continue to unwaveringly fight for the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Fannoush has been put in charge of communication and urged me and other Arab-Americans to be active in clarifying the situation of the anti-Gaddafi movement in Libya as being nationalist, ...
Keep Reading »Map of Libya According to Qaddafi Imagi-Nation
[This cartoon was prepared after Qaddafi's third speech on February 25, in which he equated Libya with himself . . . ]
Keep Reading »Jadaliyya Interview with Ali Ahmida
[Our first Interview is conducted by Jadaliyya Co-Editor, Noura Erakat] In this interview, Ali Ahmida (bio here) discusses how the recent civilian revolt began as a reformist movement and quickly transformed into a revolutionary one demanding regime change. Ahmida also places the opposition forces in their geo-political context in light of Libya's legacy of post-colonial state building. Ahmida concludes by exploring the three possible scenarios in the next phase of Libya's revolt. Please excuse the ...
Keep Reading »Qaddafi: "Song of the Rain"
This cartoon in Arabic is about Qaddafi's speech last night in response to the Libyan people's revolution which is at its height this week. Amid rumors that he fled to Venezuela and much news that the Libyan people have secured control on many of the cities, to give a speech and claim that he is still in control, Qaddafi appeared in a jeep! He opened the door only to acknowledge that it was raining outside, so he folded back his giant umbrella and decided not to give the speech. And there was ...
Keep Reading »Libya Erupts and Morocco Protests Planned for February 20th
The revolutionary wind is heading west as well. In addition to clashes in Benghazi, earlier today, one of al-Qadhdhafi’s murals went up in flames in al-Bayda. They chanted “It’s your turn Qadhdhafi, O dictator.”
Keep Reading »Infomous
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