Sunday 13 March 2011

Into Libya


One of the few things I got out of my four years of university politics, along with heavy debt and absolutely no advantage in the jobs market, was the near-certainty that foreign intervention was almost always a foolish mistake.

Look at the history of English and American interventionism: the Empire, Vietnam, Afghanistan (each and every time) and, of course, unfolding in front of my eyes at the time, Iraq. A sorry set of sorties, it has to be said. There are one or two that are more open to debate: World Wars 1 and 2, for example. Generally speaking, though, I'm a non-interventionist. It's about as firm a principle as I have.

I realise now, though, that it's easy to hold such a view when the evidence is so crashingly in your favour, as I believe it is in all the above cases. Right now, though, my "faith" in non-interventionism is being sorely tested by the unfolding events in Libya.

I certainly don't profess to be any sort of expert on north African politics, so was quite happy to blithely assume that Libya would go the way of Egypt and Tunisia before it - with the dictator being run out of town by the popular uprising of the masses. That's how it looked in the beginning here, too. The rebel forces were said to be sweeping through the coastal towns between their base, Benghazi, and Gaddafi's in the capital, Tripoli. There was even excited talk of Gaddafi throwing in the towel immediately and making for the presumably safer haven of Venezuela.

Clearly, though, talk was all it was. As I/we wrung our hands, Gaddafi's forces launched a brutal counter-offensive against the rebels, pushing them out of many of the towns they'd recently occupied/liberated with a view to launching a sustained assault on Benghazi itself. The previously triumphal talk turned to the bloodshed that would inevitably follow if and when Gaddafi's troops conquered that city for the Government. The rebel chief, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, claimed that such a victory for Gaddafi would lead to the deaths of 500,000 rebels.

That possibility was taken seriously, clearly, by the international community, because as I write we are now into the fourth night of UN-sanctioned NATO airstrikes on Gaddafi's forces. I hear that the NATO countries making the intervention are keen not to be seen as the air force of the rebels, but are merely levelling the playing field by knocking out much of Gaddafi's heavy armour (which the rebels lack the means to do themselves).

So, here we go again - military action overseas, where the UK's direct interests aren't threatened. It certainly seems like a purely humanitarian intervention. That's good news, because the Muslim world has very few honourable Western interventions to bring to mind when contemplating extremism.

I have to admit, against my stated principles, a significant part of my was thrilled when the UN passed the resolution that sanctioned this intervention. As the Times journalist (and noted interventionist) David Aaronovitch tweeted before the decision to intervene was made "I fear that we're about to see the reality of non-intervention before our eyes in Libya". The bloody crushing of the supposed Arab Spring by Gaddafi's forces was an awful prospect.

When push comes to shove, I probably still wouldn't have made the decision to intervene were it up to me (ha!), but, now that someone else has taken the responsibility on themselves, I really, truly hope it all goes to plan.