Posts by Gary Elshaw
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My partner is half Libyan, and for the last month we've barely slept and been glued to any source of media about the current situation in Libya (FWIW Twitter is king). Her father is in Benghazi and won't leave Lybia until Gaddafi is gone.
I too have the flu at the moment, so please forgive incomplete sentences and typos.
The revolt in Libya started as a peaceful protest in Benghazi and escalated after troops and foreign mercenaries indiscriminantly fired on the protesters. I have been waiting now for 2 weeks for the media to start describing Gadaffi's troops as the rebels, a number of governments have recognised the interim national council, and it is obvious that the UN response has been in concert with this council. I don't remember Gadaffi requesting the NFZ (or 'Operation Zenga Zenga' as we call it in our house) as the leader of Libya. Although he may do that shortly.
A couple of things that Juan Cole says:
5. None of the United Nations allies envisages landing troops on the ground, nor does the UNSC authorize it. Iraq was invaded by land forces.
The Libyan national council have been very specific in their requests (about 2 -3 weeks ago) that they do not want foreign troops. This is Libya's war, not any other nations. Their request for the NFZ has specifically been about evening the odds with Gadaffi, and some of us believe the 'any means necessary' clause has been included because it has taken over a month to get international agreement. Remember, there have been massacres of civilians for over a month now, disappearances, hostage-taking, brutal suppression. Gaddafi at one point took the parachutes out of his aircraft and was only fuelling his planes to a certain level so pilots couldn't cross the border or ditch them.
10. Iraq in 2002-3 no longer posed a credible threat to its neighbors. A resurgent Qaddafi in Libya with petroleum billions at his disposal would likely attempt to undermine the democratic experiments in Tunisia and Egypt, blighting the lives of millions.
Not just Tunisia and Egypt. Gadaffi has threatened everyone in the region and in the west for the last month. He was promising to shoot commercial airliners out of the sky (again) the other day, and ships in the mediterranean.
Russell says:
not least because we don’t really have a very clear idea of who exactly the rebels are and what they really want.
The anti-Gadaffi people of Libya (and i think we're talking the majority of the population) want a constitutional democracy, they want to have political parties and cast votes for those beliefs, they want the ability to say what they want about whomever. I take it for granted that i think and can say that John Key is a dick. People in Libya cannot. Don't forget, the 'rebels' are engineers, doctors, dentists, journalists, truck drivers etc. They are normal people in extraordinary circumstances. They are predominantly very young in age, mostly 20s and 30s.
If i could compare this war to any, it would be the Spanish Civil War, it's a war against fascism.
Oh, and don't underestimate foreign involvement, there are all sorts of behind the scenes deals going on: Gary's Posterous