Ian Martin, All Necessary Measures? The United Nations and International Intervention in Libya (New Texts Out Now)

Ian Martin, All Necessary Measures? The United Nations and International Intervention in Libya (New Texts Out Now)

Ian Martin, All Necessary Measures? The United Nations and International Intervention in Libya (New Texts Out Now)

By : Ian Martin

Ian Martin, All Necessary Measures? The United Nations and International Intervention in Libya (London, C. Hurst & Co., 2022).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Ian Martin (IM): I wanted to reassess the international intervention in Libya, to ask how it shaped Libya’s subsequent trajectory, and to explore what lessons there might be for international intervention more generally. My own involvement had begun when I became UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s post-conflict planning adviser on Libya during the military action in 2011, and I had then headed the UN Support Mission in Libya for its first year after the fall of Gaddafi. Since I left Libya in 2012, more information has become available in the writings of participants as well as in more academic studies. I find that many references to 2011 to 2012 miss or distort aspects of the events and the dynamics among the international actors. Revisiting the period from Libya’s February 2011 uprising to its first election in July 2012 provides no easy answers to the urgent question of how the country can recreate a unified state after its latest civil war, nor obvious lessons for future responses to crises elsewhere. But these are better served by a deeper and more nuanced analysis of that period than is found in the often superficial discourse today.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

How well-informed, or how ignorant, were policymakers about Libya and the regional implications of their decisions?

IM: In the book, I ask and offer personal answers to these questions: Was the international intervention in Libya a justified response to an impending massacre and wider threat to civilians, or were other motivations involved in seeking to oust Gaddafi and shape the future of an oil-rich country? What were the dynamics that brought about the resolutions of the UN Security Council, including the authorization of military action? How did NATO act upon that authorization, and did it exceed its mandate to protect civilians by seeking regime change? What role in the military victory of the rebels was played by the secretive special forces operations of bilateral actors, and with what consequences? Was there ever a possibility of a peaceful political transition being brought about by the mediation efforts of the UN, the African Union (AU) or others? How well-informed, or how ignorant, were policymakers about Libya and the regional implications of their decisions? What post-conflict planning was undertaken by the UN and other international actors, and by the Libyans themselves, and how did it play out during the first transitional government? Should and could there have been a major peacekeeping or stabilization mission to provide security during the transition, instead of a “light footprint” of the international community? Was the first national election held too soon? Who should and could have done more to help bring the proliferation of armed groups under government authority, and achieve their integration into state security forces or demobilization? In answering each of these questions, I offer my own reflections on the views I held at the time and my reassessment today.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

IM: I have written about the work of UN human rights field operations and peace operations which I led prior to my Libya role, in Haiti, Rwanda, East Timor (now Timor-Leste), and Nepal. My 2001 book, Self-Determination in East Timor: the United Nations, the Ballot and International Intervention, includes an analysis of another major international military intervention mandated by the UN Security Council. 

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

IM: I hope it will be read by Libyans and those still trying to play a constructive role in the future of Libya; by those assessing the difficult issues around past and future humanitarian intervention; and by those interested in how the UN can best shape its peace operations.

 

Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 3, pp. 79-84) 

To have achieved the greatest possibility of a negotiated transition, the efforts of all those with influence on either side of the conflict would have needed to be more effectively coordinated. The AU, especially in the person of Zuma, had the advantage of access to Gaddafi himself and could most directly tell him he had to step down. The western backers of the NTC—principally France and the UK—could have conditioned their support on its willingness to negotiate with the regime, but they were as determined as the NTC itself that Gaddafi must go and were committed to a path to military victory that left the NTC little incentive to compromise. If they had been more seriously invested in the mediation of Al-Khatib and less dismissive of the AU, their own messages to the parties could have been supportive of a coordinated process. But a mediation adviser who met senior UK officials in late April found no appetite for any initiative that sought to mediate a negotiated settlement with Gaddafi:

According to UK government experts then, defection was the key to success and any attempt to present potential defectors with an alternative diplomatic scenario was counter-productive to the ultimate objective of removing Gaddafi from power … I soon realised that the government’s support of the UN’s mandate to the exclusion of all others was based more on the UN’s inability as opposed to ability to effect reconciliation.

Obama would probably have been more open to a mediated outcome than Sarkozy and Cameron but was letting the Europeans lead. In the absence of a mutually agreed ceasefire, either Gaddafi or NATO could have paused their military action to test the willingness of the other side to talk realistically: neither was willing to do so.

Reflecting on Norway’s efforts, then Foreign Minister Støre accepts not knowing whether Gaddafi would have stepped down or if the rebels would have accepted a deal, but he also says that major western nations were not interested in a negotiated settlement: 

I felt that the mindset in London and Paris didn’t have openings for really reflecting on the diplomatic option … Had there been in the international community a willingness to pursue this track with some authority and dedication, I believe there could have been an opening to achieve a less dramatic outcome and avoid the collapse of the Libyan state. 

This view is shared from within the AU Commission:

A consensus could have been achieved had the West approached the AU in a more subtle and respectful way … a closer coordination and honest and respectful conversation between the AU and the west would have made it possible to build sufficient international leverage to compel Gaddafi to accept to exit the scene with the required security guarantees for himself and his close associates. 

An angry Zuma told the Security Council in September that ‘the AU initiative to ensure a political rather than military solution to the Libyan crisis was deliberately undermined’ despite the decision in Resolution 1973 to support the AU roadmap, and ‘such blatant acts of disregard for regional initiatives have the potential to undermine the confidence that regional organizations have in the United Nations as an impartial and widely respected mediator in conflicts’.

That said, there is reason to doubt that Gaddafi would ever have been willing to give up the real power he wielded—at the same time as he repeatedly said he held no offices to resign from, which added to the mediators’ difficulties in seeking a symbolic stepping aside; let alone that he would have agreed to leave Libya. The tone of his speeches remained defiant and belligerent throughout: there was no moment when he offered an olive branch to his opponents, whom he consistently denounced as ‘traitors’. Those who had been close to him testified to his state of mind: Koussa said from his exile that ‘he knew Qaddafi as well as anyone, and believed in the spring of 2011 that the mercurial Libyan leader was living in his own world, determined to fight to the end’. Libyan officials were said to have admitted after the war that at no time did Gaddafi’s family or inner circle think they would be defeated: they suffered from ‘supreme arrogance and miscalculation’. Sarkozy’s adviser Jean-David Levitte testified, on the basis of French intelligence contacts, that ‘[t]o our knowledge, the colonel never showed the slightest intention to negotiate. We never received a message that he understood what we were saying, that he was thinking about his resignation or that he considered opening negotiations.’

[…]

Attitudes within the NTC hardened over the months of fighting. Those whom Al-Khatib met in Tobruk on 21 March seemed open to a negotiated process of reform. There were some intra-Libyan efforts at dialogue with some of those close to Gaddafi. But as more blood was shed, such as in the bitter battle for Misrata, so the pressures not to ‘betray the revolution’ grew, and pent-up hatred of Gaddafi and his decades of repression found its expression. Those who had been reformers inside the system were joined by long-term opponents returning from exile, and Islamist fighters became a major element among the armed groups. Jibril and others who represented the NTC in its external relations had little room to compromise, even if they had wanted to. 

The NTC also had legitimate fears about the possible implications of a ceasefire and a transition with Gaddafi still in Libya. A ceasefire might become the basis for de facto division of the country. Gaddafi’s skill in manipulating divisions among Libyans to maintain his dominance over a period of forty years might outwit a rebellion composed of diverse individuals who hardly knew each other, which had had no time to develop strong and united leadership.

The marginalisation that the AU had protested left it feeling bitter as its persistent efforts petered out. It had consistently emphasised that it was Africa that would be the most affected region, exposed to the risks that continued fighting in Libya posed to regional stability and security, as migrant workers, former mercenaries and weapons crossed its borders: Chad’s President Déby could soon say that ‘my fears, alas, were not unfounded’. It also found its motives caricatured by those who alleged that it sought to protect Gaddafi and his regime, perhaps because of his past largesse to some African states and leaders. In fact, Gaddafi’s behaviour in Africa had left him few friends. Moreover, as Ping maintained, the AU had reacted creatively to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, basing its response not on a dogmatic interpretation of its rejection of unconstitutional changes of government but ‘on the need to contribute to the attainment of the overall AU objective of consolidating democracy in the continent’. From the very start, it made clear that any solution to the Libyan crisis had to be based on the fulfilment of the legitimate aspirations of the Libyan people for democracy, respect for human rights and good governance. In striving to secure a Libyan consensus on inclusive transitional institutions until elections were held, it ‘clearly implied Colonel Qaddafi’s relinquishing power to those institutions’. But it resented those outside the region declaring publicly that an African head of state must step down.

 

However, those who claimed a lead for Africa in the Libyan crisis perhaps did not sufficiently recognise that Libya did not identify itself only as an African country: its Arab identity was at least as strong. Many Libyans resented the way Gaddafi had squandered their country’s resources on his African ambitions; together with Gaddafi’s use of mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa, this contributed to Libyan racism towards black Africans, of which there were many victims in 2011. In his reflection, Ping deplored the reluctance of some members of the international community to fully acknowledge the AU’s role and said that lasting peace on the continent could only be achieved if efforts to that end were based on the full involvement of Africa and a recognition of its leadership role. But the circumstances of Libya in 2011 suggest that what was needed was a complementarity of UN and AU efforts, with consistent support from all actors. While this too might have failed, foundering on Gaddafi’s extreme obduracy and the virulence of the hatred he had engendered among many Libyans, it was far from what was tried.

 

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.