If the period we are living in now is going to be marked by anything at all in history, it will be the so-called Arab Spring. The Spring rose in Tunisia, escalated in Egypt, but it is Libya that will define it – at least for us outsiders. But western involvement in Libya has once again poisoned the chalice. This article is meant to put the whole thing in a larger perspective, to the extent that I understand it.

Current Updates
The haphazardly cobbled together rebel army, made up of ordinary people, managed to free Misurata on May 11, 2011. Tripoli is still the stronghold of Qaddafi and is holding out, although NATO forces have now stepped up the bombing campaign. In two days of heavy shelling of the capital 19 people (don’t know who they are) have reportedly been killed. The war has turned out to be a stalemate.

Meanwhile, Benghazi (where it all began) has become a thriving hub of revolutionary activities – and the seat of the Transitional National Council (TNC). The TNC is an unelected, ad hoc body of ‘leaders’ who came together when it all kicked off. Some of them are defectors from the regime, including the head of the Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, ex Justice Minister. Others are Libyan academics who taught abroad until the uprising, such as Ali Tarhouni, TNC’s Finance Minister, who had been a lecturer of Economics at the University of Washington at Seattle.

A genuine people’s revolution
Whatever the trajectory of the political development (which I shall get to in the next section), there can be no doubt about the popular character of this revolution, and how ordinary people have taken charge at the grassroots level. According to Portia Walker of Foreign policy, “[Volunteers] sweep the streets, search for mines and make food for rebel fighters. They have set up newspapers, radio stations, and television channels to fill the void left by decades of stultifying state-run media.” A documentary film produced by the Benghazi rebel media centre (brought here by comrades who travelled to Libya) shows how the rebel army is made up mostly of students, doctors, professors, artists etc, and women of all ages shouting that they themselves are willing to fight and die on the frontline.

And what about money? How are the rebels funding this war? If there are spurious sponsors, we don’t know about them yet. Initially, Libyans under the ‘direction’ of Tarhouni robbed (appropriated) the 505 million dollars stashed at the Benghazi branch of the Central Bank of Libya (as reported by The Washington Post 24/05/2011). Apparently, the bank managers themselves helped carry out the heist. The TNC’s head, Jalil, is currently on a world tour to gather funds, which are mostly Libyan assets held in various countries. According to TWP, “Tarhouni estimates that the assets could be worth as much as 165 billion dollars.”

Oops, enter the West
Continuing the theme of money, $32 billion of those frozen assets are in the US alone, and the TNC has already requested $3 billion, which the US seems to be reluctant to release as of now. However, the US has already given $53.5 million in aid and $25 million in ‘non-lethal military supply’. The TNC’s idea is to ‘borrow’ this money (Libyans’ own to begin with) against a loan (which will tie the country’s economy to their western benefactors, and which will have to be paid off through noxious ‘free trade’ means).

Also, the TNC, however necessary it is deemed to be, is not an elected body, but has already been officially recognized by a few countries such as France, Italy and Qatar. Those that haven’t done so officially, such as the US, UK, Turkey etc, have established de facto diplomatic relations with the TNC. It is entirely plausible that even if elections are held soon after the conflict is over, most of its ‘leaders’ (who are already entangled with the western powers) will end up in power with strings attached to them.

Consider the case of Khalifa Hifter, who according to some (including the rebel military spokesperson) is the leader of the rebel army. [Others, including the TNC, argue that the military leader is in fact Abdal Fattah Younes.] Hifter, after falling out with Qaddafi, lived for twenty years in Virginia, USA, where he is supposed to have been trained by the CIA, or at least had some sort of contact or relation with the US government (http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/04/22/the-cia-s-man-in-libya/). Whether that is true or not – and I don’t doubt that he hates Qaddafi’s guts -  how do you trust a man who has served in a psychopathic army?

Already, according to Guardian’s Ranj Alaaldin, ‘Rumours of assassinations in Benghazi of regime loyalists or anyone “perceived” to be a loyalist have increased.’ If these ‘rumours’ are true then who could be carrying out these assassinations? Surely, not the ordinary people of Benghazi?

The story gets even murkier. According to the Guardian website, NATO lists 16 targets seven of which are categorized suspiciously as ‘Other’, as distinct from clearly military targets which have been listed. Asia Times Online quotes Robert Haddick of Foreign Policy: “NATO’s bombardment strategy is now likely more focused on applying political and psychological coercion against the regime rather than inflicting battlefield damage against military forces”, implying infrastructure, in turn implying that anyone could be fair game – if they got in the way.

According to www.fair.org, a media watchdog, ‘There are legal questions surrounding the Libya War relating to international as well as domestic law. The London Sunday Telegraph (5/14/11) published an interview with NATO commander David Richards, who stressed his desire to expand the war. As the Telegraph put it: “Richards said he wanted the rules of engagement changed so that direct attacks can be launched against the infrastructure propping up Gadhafi’s regime. Otherwise he fears the Libyan dictator will survive in power.” Richards spoke of the need to “tighten the vice” on Moammar Gadhafi, adding: “At present NATO is not attacking infrastructure targets in Libya…. But if we want to increase the pressure on Gadhafi’s regime then we need to give serious consideration to increasing the range of targets we can hit”. Mainstream media, who are covering none of this, are being their usual who-gives-a-shit, uncritical self.

No one doubts that Libyans need help. But how is that to be achieved? Shouldn’t decisions be made democratically, on a large platform, involving as many people as is humanly possible, especially when it involves going to war, and at a time of financial scarcity? The President of USA ratified the war against Qaddafi without congressional approval. Although according to their War Powers Act, such a war is legal, it is so only up to 60 days after which congressional approval is mandatory. The Libya war ran out of that deadline on May 20, but there is no sign of Barack Obama abiding by those legalities.

Even though this information may seem irrelevant to non-Americans, it is essential for radicals to deal with because it goes to the heart of the concept of the ‘just war’ or the ‘war of necessity’, and how and if decisions of that nature and scale can be made democratically and by due process. I am no fan of the current judicial system anywhere, but it is the closest we have to justice and accountability, and to the extent that it is useful and productive, we must ensure that it is applied when dealing with the great powers.

Multiple hypocrisies
Those that are grudgingly supporting NATO intervention in Libya because they fear a mass slaughter by Qaddafi’s forces in the absence of a superior power need to think about the fact that slaughters of that nature occur in dozens of countries worldwide, including several in the Middle East, especially since the uprising in the Arab world. Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times Online reports, ‘Two diplomatic sources at the UN independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbour in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly-zone [NFZ] over Libya.’ If this is true, how does it make the Libyan war acceptable? Out of the 22 members of the Arab League only 9 had voted for the NFZ. The African Union has been opposed to the war from the beginning. Ideally, mechanisms should be put in place for regional powers and institutions to deal with situations like the present one.

All this is not mere hysteria, since the war is entering its fourth month, and Qaddafi is still holding out. Impatience can lead NATO to go wild west on Tripoli, or consider putting troops on the ground. Fears are rife that if the war drags on, and if NATO is unable to remove Qaddafi through air strikes alone, “A de facto partition of Libya looks possible. So does a collapse into Somalia-like factional chaos.” [The Independent, 25/05/2011] If we do not watch the backs of our wildly out-of-control governments, we might end up with another martial disaster that we’ll never be able to fix.

That is not all. Keeping in mind the afore-mentioned rumours of extra-judicial killings in Benghazi reported by the Guardian, one must take the case of Ivory Coast if one wants to really put the whole thing in perspective. NATO intervened in the internal affairs of this west-African country to oust the West’s bad guy, Laurent Gbagbo, and to forcibly install the West’s favourite, Alassane Outtara who apparently won a fair election. There were brief reports on BBC and Channel 4 news at the very end of the campaign, showing jubilant pro-Outtara supporters and forces oozing joy for having been rid of a great evil.

There has been nothing of the matter subsequently on UK media. However, a recent Amnesty International report [25/05/2011] has this to say of the current situation in the Ivory Coast, “The statement [by witnesses questioned by Amnesty] all indicate a systematic and targeted series of killings committed by uniformed FRCI forces [created by Alassane Outtara] who executed hundreds of men of all ages on political and ethnic grounds.” There has been systematic burning of villages as well as anti-Muslim slaughters by Gbagbo’s forces. According to Amnesty’s report the United Nations has done nothing about it despite repeated pleas.

They came, they mucked up and they left, but it is the ordinary Ivorians including the tens of thousands of Ivorian refugees who are now left to pick up the pieces even as they try to deal with all the violence on their own. How does this square with West’s eagerness for humanitarian intervention in Libya when they weren’t even directly involved in Libya’s politics?

The UK angle
It has now been confirmed that the UK will be sending four Apache attack helicopters, along with 12 of France, to Libya. Notwithstanding official naysayers, observers and analysts think of this move as an escalation of the war. The cost of war for UK until now (24/05/2011) has been estimated to be between £100 million (on the conservative end) and £300 million, and is supposed to exceed £1 billion if the war continues into the fall.

This is another issue that we as radicals need to address seriously: how is it that a government manages to find this kind of money to not only pay for mega-galas like the Olympics but also to fund wars at a time that it is implementing unprecedented cuts to social spending by citing shortage of money? Where does the money come from? Even though everybody has these questions in mind, they haven’t been posed as serious challenges to government’s innumerable rationalizations. This is also a question of policy – how far do we take the idea of solidarity? Does it include fighting other people’s wars? And if the answer is ‘Yes’, then can the exceptional circumstances (under which I assume this will be done) be defined?

These are serious questions that need to be discussed in the near future. The Libyan case is already a fait accompli. There can be no going back now. However, these are extreme dilemmas not to be simply left to the governments to deal with, but will continue to arise in future societies – whatever shape they might take – and it is one of the best examples of the contradictions and difficulties involved in the principle of international solidarity that we, as anarchists, profess.