NATO and the Destruction of Libya: Reviewing so Called Humanitarian Intervention (R2P)
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Date
2016-10-11
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University of Ghana
Abstract
In April 2016, President Obama noted that the decision to invade Libya in 2011 was the worst mistake of his Presidency. Five months later a select Parliamentary Committee of the House of Commons, London, lamented the waste and suffering in Libya and stated that: “The result of the French, British and US intervention, was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil [Islamic State] in north Africa.” Yet, while the British and the US governments are contorted over the continued warfare, French lust for African oil continue to insure near silence in France on the quagmire in Libya.
While the debates about what happened Benghazi on September 11, 2012 dominate the e mail scandals of the US electoral process, there has been insufficient debate in Africa on the ongoing farce in Libya that had been predicated on ‘humanitarian grounds to protect innocent civilians.’ With each passing pay and more information on the fighting between three rival ‘governments,’ even the efforts of the UN Security Council to impose a government with authority over the Central bank has been unsuccessful in the face of the permanent members of the Security Council of the UN supporting different factions of this prolonged battle for the control of Libyan resources. Indeed, the NATO leaders have been exposed as the war that had been used the fig leaf of ‘responsibility to protect’ churn out death, refugees and extremists in Libya. Objectively, NATO provided military and material support for elements that were later called ISIS.
Western news sources ruminate on the fact that that Libya has become a safe haven for ISIS and pose an imminent threat to Europe. However, the debates about intensified western presence fail to acknowledge the role of NATO in laying the basis for the current foothold of ISIS in Libya.
In the immediate aftermath of the Libyan intervention, the Western media had portrayed NATO's campaign as an unmitigated success. ‘Libya had been ushered into a new era of democratic progress’, ran the mantra of the day. Its brave and noble people had thrown off a brutal despot against all odds, assisted by the humanitarian military forces of the Western world. Peace and democracy were soon to arrive for the Libyan people; the NATO intervention was held up as a noble endeavour to be exported throughout Africa and Arabia.” It was after the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi that some citizens of the United States began to grasp the depth of the Destruction in Libya. The presentation will note that the 2011 Libya campaign, far from demonstrating NATO's abiding strength, rather exposed its manifold, and growing, weaknesses. In the aftermath of this failed intervention, the destruction of Libya highlights the need for the African Union to take a more robust stand on external military interventions in Africa. Western militarists who support destruction have used the so called war on terror to undermine people’s solidarity all over Africa. One major challenge will be to challenge this military management of the international system so that the intervention in Libya does not have the same repercussions for humanity as the Italian Invasion of Abyssinia in 1935.
Description
Horace Campbell is the Kwame Nkrumah Chair of African Studies in the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. He is on leave from Syracuse University where he holds a joint Professorship in the Department of African American Studies and Department of Political Science, Maxwell School, Syracuse University. The talk will be based on his new book Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya (Monthly Review Press 2013). Previous books include Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA (2010), and his most well-known book Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey To Walter Rodney (Africa World Press 1987).
Keywords
NATO, Libya, Humanitarian Intervention, Africa