Op-Ed

Libyan Conflict Highly “Arabised”

The Arabisation of the Libyan conflict can be viewed based on the postulate that besides France, the UK, USA, Spain, Italy, Qatar is also participating in the coalition forces’ military operation against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. In the Middle East, it seems as if the final period of the revolution is coming.

Courtesy: The Guardian

The Libyan campaign differs from the Yugoslavian one of 1999, from the Kuwaiti one of 1991, and the Iraqi one of 2003 by the active and broad participation of “aboriginals”, the Arab partners. Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt have been already involved or are in the process of being involved therein. Even Tunisia and Jordan are mentioned.

These phenomena without any control are dangerous things and should be “assigned” to be ceased. One should not always play in democracy near such dangerous substances as oil, gas, the Suez Canal, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the war in Iraq, Afghanistan … And “the Libyan revolution”. The latter will certainly become the last violent change of the bad regime. The degree consists only in painfulness of the exercise for Libyans themselves.

Amazing things are happening in the region. While the UN was formalizing methods to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi for his undemocraticity, crimes against the people and so on, in the near Bahrain the completely opposite was taking place. Saudi Arabia (admittedly, not being the most democratic country in the world) brought troops into Manama to suppress local opposition in support of the democratization of the regime and for political rights. It is hard to imagine a more vivid illustration that in the Middle East democracy and stability are incompatible things.

There is no doubt that Gaddafi will not reign long. Of course, it is now more difficult to exert additional pressure on Gaddafi than it was three or two weeks ago. But it is doubtful whether someone will feel sorry for him, the satrap having 41 years experience. He has no fellow fighters at all in the leadership of the Arab countries.  He was expelled from the League of Arab States (LAS). LAS demanded on March 12 to introduce an air space reservation over Libya, recognized the Provisional National Council as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The regional forum being in composition not the most democratic one in the world.

The President Obama should not have been reproached that America let the revolutionary Libya to be eaten by Gaddafi. It was late in interfering – yes. But Gaddafi seems to have prepared some elixir of dead and living water of the Arab and Western ingredients. The Libyan zone operation was indeed very skillfully conducted by the U.S., which did not want at all to set the pace and lead the military intervention in another Muslim country, after Afghanistan and Iraq. Two weeks before the UN Security Council Resolution Americans had developed a rabid democratic activity. Even Russia and China just abstained from voting on the “pilotless zone”. And now, powered by the UN “core measures” the Allies decided to go much further than quarantine over the Libyan air.

The “arabization” of the quarantine around Libya is to deprive foes to any military interventions and especially to ground invasion (all Arab countries are against it) of the main argument: a solution favourable to the West is again imposed on Arabs through military intervention. Without arabization of the UN Security Council Resolution it would be a “stolen revolution”.

The biggest problem with the military aid to Libya is that no one is sure who will actually receive this aid? Opposition groups are still fragmented and amorphous. And the leadership mostly consists of former loyalists of Gaddafi.

Egypt, in coordination with the U.S., has already begun to transfer arms and ammunition to the Libyan rebels. It can also join the Libyan air patrol. Egypt has in service more than 100 of the US F-16 fighters. And Saudi Arabia is supposedly to send to Libya its F-15s fighters. They are about 100 too. Gaddafi has only about a dozen French “Mirages” and a little more than a hundred old Soviet MIGs. Among other things, Washington is now insisting that the Arabs, members of the League of Arab States not only join in the “suppression of Gaddafi” financially, but also finance a significant part of the whole operation.

From Editorial of Newsfromafrica.org. Published in Exclusive Partnership.

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