Arab Spring, Libyan war, and exporting democracy
Photo: Filipspagnoli, Dominic Xavier
The recent Arab Spring truly renders the democratic aspiration of the people of the entire Middle East and North African region. When it was sparked in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, it was just a matter of time for the other dictatorial regimes in this region to face the similar fate. However, for the USA and its allies, the democratic Middle East has always been a hard choice to make. As the political and economic landscape of this region has attached much importance to the global peace and security, the USA and its allies never wanted to loose the grip over this region. Therefore, although the initiation of Arab Spring has jostled the USA and its allies for a while, it did not take much toll for them to come back fine. The interesting facets of the Arab Spring include the application of a new method of regime-change-game and also how cleverly the United States and its allies have managed to turn the spring in their favor. They have succeeded to prop up the downfall of other friendly dictators and simultaneously have seized the opportunity to unsettle, and if possible to oust, the refractory governments in the region. The success is staggering; on the one hand they have been successful in protecting the governments in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan and on the other very aggressively capitalized the opportunity to oust the Libyan government as well as to profoundly unsettle the Syrian regime. However, what we have experienced in the Arab resurgence so far is clearly a double-faced game played by the US-led allies. And they purposely used the NATO and UN Security Council to achieve their own goals. One would struggle to correlate the reason why NATO should bomb in Libya and why it should not in Bahrain where, like Libya, the police and security forces brutally crushed the peaceful demonstrators who were clearly the majority and asking for a meaningful democratic change. Bahrain is even the worst case where a foreign country (Saudi Arabia) was allowed to send its tanks and armored vehicles to quell the protest. It has to be said that Muammar Gaddafi is one of the heinous characters and weird rulers in the region and there is no reason one should support his regime. But the point has been rather the two different approaches the allied forces took and their pick-and-choose strategy to address the human rights violation issue. Many skeptics find the oil-link in the Libyan intervention and there is a reason for that. The way European energy giants rushed into Libya soon after Gaddafi left Tripoli has further raised the suspicion. Besides, the way UN Security Council treated similar atrocities differently hurt its very credibility as a global institution further. UNSC once again proved that it has a discriminatory look at the views of the global events and that the institution is increasingly becoming incapable of serving the interest of nations instead the interest of a certain coterie. Nevertheless, the apparent success of the 'new' regime change method may not sustain as well. Although the USA and its allies have been confident that they have learnt enough lessons from Iraq and Afghan debacle and the mistakes have not been repeated here, analysts say that this top-down exercise of regime change (top down in a sense that the rebels have been armed and protected by the foreign governments and their so-called win over Gaddafi does not seem inclusive) is the same old game and is destined to fail. The propagation that there were no 'foreign troops' in the Libyan soil, hence no allegation of foreign occupation this time, proved ridiculous when the satellite news channels telecast the audio-visual evidences of the presence of foreign forces actively involve in the ground operation. Besides, Gaddafi's strategic retreat without fighting much also causes concerns for the National Transitional Council (NTC) and the allied forces. It seems, not only the USA and its allies have applied the lessons learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan, Gaddafi has learnt and applied a lesson too. While Saddam Hussain and Mulla Omar gave a hard fight to defend their regime until the last moment, which was militarily impossible given the military superiority of the allied forces, Gaddafi approached entirely differently. Gaddafi, unlike Saddam and Mulla Omar, did not try to survive against that superior airpower and exhausted only moderate force to beg his time to relocate and regroup across the borders. He successfully did that in the end and by keeping almost whole of his army intact, he can still pose a good challenge to the NTC. He knows very well that NATO jets cannot protect the NTC government anymore once the rebels are stationed and scattered in the ground. We have to wait and see how far this battle goes. It is undeniable that the Libyan people have all the legitimate rights to enjoy the fruits of democracy. But what matters most is that the thrust for democracy amongst the countrymen has to be intense and bottom-up. If the people cannot rise up to their democratic aspirations and do not have the ability or agility to challenge the regime within, it will be difficult to say that collectively they are ready for the change. What Egyptian and Tunisian people did in the first place was a very good example of that collective-will where the people, the civil society, and the security forces all the important political actors, have realized the in-built pressures, understood the situation and behaved so far responsibly. We cannot blame the political actors of other countries who do not realize the same. Tunisia and Egypt was the ideal springboard for the Arab democracy. We should have focused on the good side of these revolutions and should have propagated that without much violence, the collective-will can even bring about a big meaningful change. But when people do not bend, ready to fight with their fellow brothers and countrymen with guns and bullets to win their arguments, it has to be realized that the society itself is deeply divided and contains some irreconcilable views. By arming such civilian groups to challenge their regime, we have either completely misunderstood the situation and the dynamics of that particular society, or we have other agendas which we will have to pursue in the name of exporting democracy. The Libya war will surely be judged in that context. What we have to realize is that the surgical top-down installation of democracy like the Iraqi, Afghan or Libyan model cannot offer a sustainable solution in the long run. Such intervening actions rather do more harm than good, derail and endanger the homogenous political processes, and invite more chaos and division within the respective society. The sooner we realize that the better.
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