As troops aligned with the Libyan interim government continue to
advance on the few remaining strongholds of Gaddafi loyalists —
such as Bani Walid (where the tribal elders are
refusing to surrender) — much debate is still raging over
Libya’s future. Will the country emerge as a stable liberal
democracy, will it be torn by ethnic and tribal divisions, or will
it transform into an Islamist state?
Of course, there is always a degree of uncertainty in
prediction here, but some signs appear to have emerged that
strongly discount the first, desirable outcome. To begin with,
despite the assurances of the National Transitional Council (NTC)
that there will be a focus on reconciliation to avoid punishing all
those associated with the Gaddafi regime and thus not repeat the
“mistakes of Iraq,” it is not at all clear that these soothing
words are being put into practice.
Indeed, recently concerns have been raised over the
treatment of blacks residing in Libya at the hands of forces loyal
to the interim government, and even outlets like the
New York Times are starting to pay attention. It is true
that a few of these blacks have been employed as mercenaries by
Gaddafi, but the overwhelming majority are simply innocent migrant
workers imported during Libya’s oil boom for construction and
menial work. Yet blacks are being targeted by anti-Gaddafi
insurgents as though they are all mercenaries guilty of the crimes
of the Gaddafi regime.
In fact,
as the Wall Street Journal noted, in one town called
Tawergha, a brigade of anti-Gaddafi troops that describes itself as
dedicated to “purging slaves” and “black skin” has engaged in
ethnic cleansing of blacks in the town, and has vowed that in the
“new Libya” all remaining blacks in Tawergha would be denied access
to health care and schooling in nearby Misrata, from which all
blacks have already been expelled.
Similarly, the BBC recently showed a video of hundreds of
bodies found in the Abu Salim hospital in Tripoli, but failed to
mention, either through genuine neglect or a deliberate intention
to mislead, that most of the corpses were those of black people,
who had obviously been killed by anti-Gaddafi forces when the city
was taken.
The “blacks are mercenaries” myth has been useful to those
wishing to downplay the idea that Gaddafi could be receiving
support from any native Libyans, and portray the entire conflict as
“Gaddafi vs. the people.” However, if collective punishment is the
way the rebel forces are going to treat those suspected — rightly
or wrongly — of links to Gaddafi’s regime, on what grounds should
we presume that there will be no punitive measures implemented
against native Libyan groups who have backed Gaddafi during the
conflict, including many of the rural Arabized tribes of southwest
Fezzan? As I predicted, the rebel forces have
recently been giving the Berber Touareg in the far south this
kind of harsh treatment.
Clearly, the horrific treatment of blacks is not only a
result of racism but also part of an attempt to dismantle anything
associated with Gaddafi’s legacy (the importation of Africans was
one aspect of Gaddafi’s eccentric turn towards notions of
pan-Africanism and a vision of a “United States of Africa” after
1998).
In any event, it is worth recalling that the Iraqi Shi’a
politicians and public figures who pushed for the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq in 2003 (e.g. Ahmad Chalabi, who is the first cousin of my
aunt’s husband in Baghdad) repeatedly affirmed that their sole
interest was in creating a genuinely free and democratic Iraq after
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Yet once in power through
the interim Iraqi Governing Council, whether for reasons of
ideological conviction or political expediency, they effectively
turned the de-Baa’thification process into “de-Sunnification” in
the hope of creating a majoritarian Shi’a democracy. This only
aggravated sectarian tensions and culminated in the civil war
around Baghdad in 2006.
Even so, it is also evident that there are deep tensions
within the anti-Gaddafi forces. In particular, there is good reason
to expect a forthcoming conflict between the Amazigh Berbers and
the Islamists. The Amazigh Berbers, denied civil rights for decades
by Gaddafi and forbidden to speak Tamazight, played a key role in
the fighting in the western Nafusa
Mountains that eventually led to the successful push towards
Tripoli. Quite rightly, they are keen to assert their rights to
celebrate their Berber culture and language, and will undoubtedly
take further inspiration from the success of Berber activists in
Morocco, which has now given Tamazight the status of an official
language alongside Arabic.
Meanwhile, the Islamist presence among the anti-Gaddafi
forces is now something that cannot be ignored.
As Barry Rubin points out, Abdul al-Hakim al-Hasadi has just
been named commander of the Tripoli Military Council. This man was
formerly head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a
U.S.-designated terrorist organization affiliated with al-Qa’ida,
and although he claims to have disavowed his record of extremism,
many rebel fighters around Misrata are highly suspicious of him. It
does not follow from this that Libya will necessarily become an
Islamist state, but as the experiences in Algeria, Sudan and Iraq
show, Islamists in the Middle East and North Africa despise any
assertion of a non-Arab identity and aim to suppress it by
instilling terror through indiscriminate attacks.
I sincerely hope that I am proven wrong and that the
post-Gaddafi government will promote liberal democracy (nor do I
believe that it was wrong to stop Gaddafi’s forces from taking
Benghazi back in March). Nevertheless, idealistic wishes cannot
obscure hard evidence on the ground. At best, NATO can now only
make it clear to the NTC that any Islamist aggression originating
from Libya will be met with severe retaliation.
