It
is amazing how events in international
affairs that would have been easily and accurately understood decades
ago are now surrounded by obfuscation and misunderstanding. Such is the
case with Libya and the U.S. role there.
The
facts are clear. Along with its NATO allies, the United States helped
overthrow the dictatorship of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya and installed a
new regime. This government, non-Islamist, technocratic, and led by
defected old regime politicians or former exiles, won the election and
is now in power.
What
does this mean? Simple. Libya is now a U.S. client state. In the eyes
of many Arabs and Muslims—especially the radicals but not just
them—Libya is now an American puppet state. Most important of all it is
not an Islamist Sharia state. The revolutionaries—a group including the
Muslim Brotherhood, radical small groups, and the local al-Qaida
affiliates--want to change that situation.
How
do you do that? One way is to attack the regime’s institutions,
including raiding police stations to get weapons. Another way is to
assassinate officials. A tempting way to build popular support is to
murder Americans.
The
killing of the ambassador and five other Americans (a Foreign Service
reserve officer, two bodyguards, and two Marines) has nothing to do with
a video made in California. It has everything to do with the Libyan
Islamist revolution. This revolution will go on for years and will
become increasingly bloodier. It is nothing short of amazing that U.S.
leaders don’t seem to recognize this.
Let’s sum it up in a slogan:
Bush
occupied Iraq
and Afghanistan; Obama occupied Libya and killed Usama bin Ladin. Have
no doubt that the revolutionaries—including the Muslim Brotherhood—and a
lot of others view Obama as just as bad as Bush. Obama’s attempts at
appeasement have further convinced them that America is finished and
easily bullied. In his speech of September 2010 calling for revolution
in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood leader Muhammad al-Badi explicitly said
that.
In
Iraq, a combination of factors has defused the situation directly,
though resentments born years ago still are part of the package of
genuinely popular but also Jihadi-stimulated anti-Americanism. The surge
won the war and the long-planned withdrawal was
implemented by Obama. A government exists which is hardly a model of
democracy but sufficiently stable for the foreseeable future. The Sunni
have basically given up trying to take over the country; the central
government accepts the Kurds having a de facto state in the north. A lot
of people are still being murdered by terrorism.
Afghanistan,
because it isn’t an Arab country, has a relatively small impact in the
Arabic-speaking world and eventually the U.S. forces will withdraw from
there as well. The Taliban, treacherously aided by forces including
official government agencies in Pakistan, will go on trying to overthrow
the U.S.-sponsored government and might succeed. But that’s a
problem for the future.
As
for bin Ladin, obviously his death is a cause for al-Qaida to seek
revenge. But, of course, they’d be attacking Americans and U.S.
installations even if he was still alive. It’s a myth that al-Qaida has
been defeated. Precisely because it is so decentralized, the group’s
local affiliates are quite active in North Africa, Yemen, Egypt
(especially the Sinai Peninsula for the first time ever), the Gaza
Strip, and increasingly in Syria.
Others
who are not al-Qaida and never saw bin Ladin as their leader will
opportunistically use the U.S. killing of the September 11 architect to
stir up anger. They will also use inevitable periodic incidents like
this You-Tube video. There will always be more such incidents. Jihadis
are surfing the Internet looking for some obscure incident or writing to
promote. That’s what happened with the video, which some of them
translated into Arabic and widely circulated. And when there is no real
such incident the revolutionaries will fabricate one, as they have been
doing against Israel for decades.
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Aside
from everything else, Libya has two special factors. First, it is beset
by tribalism and regionalism which create a complex web of conflicts.
Despite its oil wealth, this factor makes Libya extremely hard to
govern. Some tribal and regionalist forces will remain interest groups;
others will adopt a revolutionary Islamist ideology. There is no way of
resolving these issues. Any Libyan government will have to go for
massive repression—which Qadhafi did and the current government won’t—or
engage in a constant juggling game.
In
Iraq, a major plus for achieving a stable regime was the common
interest of Shias—though they quarreled endlessly among themselves—in
sticking together to keep the Sunnis from massacring them and reclaiming
power. The Kurds, while claiming autonomy, were also a stabilizing
force. No such powerful political glue exists in Libya.
Second,
the regime is very badly infiltrated—far more than Iraq or
Afghanistan—by revolutionary Islamist elements. Extremists did a lot of
the fighting against Qadhafi
and picked up a lot of arms. One of the most popular and important army
commanders is the former head of the Libyan al-Qaida affiliate.
Anything that the U.S. government tells its Libyan counterparts—where
the ambassador or embassy staff is located, for example—will quickly be
passed on to the terrorists.
Of
course there are many Libyans, probably a majority, who don’t want a
radical Sharia state. Some of them attacked the headquarters of an
Islamist militia they blamed for killing the Americans and forced out
the radicals. “I am sorry, America,” one man said. “This is the real
Libya.” But like those who are more moderate in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq
such people have a real
fight on their hands and they are not necessarily the better organized,
better-armed side.
All
of this is a nightmare. The United States is only at the start of a
nasty conflict in Libya which is going to be very anti-American. It is
shocking that there is so little recognition of that fact and an
apparently sincere belief that all the problems there are due to a
You-Tube video. Having a big problem is bad enough; refusing to
recognize that one has a bad problem is potentially fatal.
Note:
Remember the old argument that the Arab-Israel or Israel-Palestinian
conflict was the centerpiece of the region; all the Arabs cared about,
and what they judged the West by? Now there are a dozen other issues
more important to the extent that this cannot even be hidden by the
Western mass media and "experts."
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just
been published by Yale University Press. Other recent
books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His
original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
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