After Qaddafi: Arab Spring Looks More Like Spring
Fever
"Once the intoxication of victory is over, Libyans
must get down to the massive task of installing a credible democracy. This
victory will be all the more tricky to manage because it must inevitably be
shared - by way of commercial contracts - with the powers that actively
contributed to it."
It
was from a "rat hole" - a narrow underground hiding place - that a
bearded and disheveled Saddam Hussein was hauled, before he
stood trial and completed his grim career swinging from the end of a rope. And
it was from a sewer pipe, the preferred haunt of such unpopular rodents, that a
fugitive Muammar Qaddafi - who took pleasure in treating the Libyan rebels like
rats, or indeed cockroaches - was flushed out before being manhandled and shot
down. For other deposed tyrants, such as Egypt's Mubarak who is appearing before a tribunal on a cot,
or Tunisia's Ben Ali, who took refuge
in Saudi Arabia with a portion of his loot, it has truly been a spring fever,
Arab style.
Here,
a sham trial with the verdict fixed in advance; there, an all-out lynching/summary
execution, which caused the U.N. to call for an inquiry and Amnesty
International to cry "war crime." The terrible fates of Saddam and
Qaddafi have more in common than an ignominious end. These megalomaniacs bent
on oppressing and pillaging their own people as well as generously supporting
terrorist networks, led their populations on a descent into hell. There is also
the rather disturbing fact that in the past, each was courted by the same
powers that ended up decreeing their fall from grace. And, to differing
degrees, both the Iraqi and the Libyan owe their fatal misfortune to foreign
military interventions carried out in favorable international contexts and
driven by motives often left unspoken, as there was more than a whiff of oil
about them ...
Launched
under pretexts that were quickly proven false, the Bush expedition undeniably
rid Iraq and the region of a true monster, but it also plunged the country into
appalling chaos. Bloody sectarian tension and secessionist plots were triggered
by the invasion. These are precedents that the new masters of Libya, just
emerging from 42 years of dictatorship, would do well to ponder: once the
intoxication of victory is over, they must get down to the massive task of
installing a credible democracy. This victory will be all the more tricky to
manage because it must inevitably be shared - by way of commercial contracts -
with the powers that actively contributed to it. The support provided by NATO's
aerial strikes, which disrupted the deposed regime's machinery of repression,
appears to have been decisive in every respect. The air force even seems to
have gone so far as to track Qaddafi in his final attempt to escape, attacking
his convoy and thus sealing his fate - although NATO insists with great aplomb
that it was not aware of the presence of the ousted dictator in the convoy it attacked
...
Whose
turn is it now? Crisis-hit Yemen and Syria were clearly the intended targets of
a recent address by Barack Obama: Brandishing Libya as proof, he warned that
rule of the iron fist must inevitably come to an end. Just yesterday, the first
of these two nations endured a scathing rebuke of its president and a firm condemnation
of state repression from the U.N.: Syria, which benefited from a
Russian and Chinese veto, was recently spared such a humiliation. In both Yemen
and Syria, however, the Libyan dénouement is likely to have the effect of
galvanizing the protest movement, even if foreign intervention remains out of
the question until further notice (or until further unrest?)
[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US]
We
Lebanese must also heed the lesson: the era of impunity in this part of the
world is indeed drawing to a close - even if, in fits and starts, it is doing
so only slowly - and this phenomenon can only benefit us. From the Arab Deterrent Force to Syrian
occupation forces through to a short-lived multinational force, Lebanon's painful past has not lacked armed interventions by
foreigners. Today, however, the country gets to try out a very different type
of intervention, with an international court offering a rare
opportunity to see punishment imposed for a political crime, an assassination masterminded from afar
- the ultimate anomaly for a state that likes to think of itself as a haven of
freedom and democracy. For this reason, Lebanon's spring will arrive via The
Hague.
[Editor's
Note: The author refers to the U.N. investigation into the assassination of
former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri].
