What started as a genuine revolution
against Gaddafi, has been taken over by reactionary bourgeois elements.
In the Interim Council, and now the newly formed Interim Government,
direct representatives of imperialist interests have been promoted to
leading positions.
What started as a genuine revolution
against Gaddafi, has been taken over by reactionary bourgeois elements.
In the Interim Council, and now the newly formed Interim Government,
direct representatives of imperialist interests have been promoted to
leading positions.
USS
Bataan sailors and marines prepare for action in Libya. US Navy photo
by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Erin Lea BoyceThe
conditions that led to the beginning of the Libyan revolution in
February were created by the policies that the Gaddafi regime has been
following in recent years, involving opening up the economy to foreign
investment and privatisations, that led to growing social problems, such
as very high unemployment. Some calculate that it could be as high as
35%. This is the result of the dismantling of a part of the old state
owned system.
Other important factors that fomented revolution are the rampant
corruption within the regime and the stifling lack of democracy and
basic rights. After decades of strict state censorship and control
people feel they want to be able to speak their minds and put forward
their grievances without running the risk of being imprisoned, tortured
or simply “disappearing”.
The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were the sparks that in these
conditions led to the revolutionary uprising in cities like Al Bayda,
Benghazi and Misurata. Initially the movement swept across Libya from
city to city, and in such a massive upsurge the state de facto
collapsed in many areas of the country. Power simply fell into the hands
of the revolutionary people. As the revolt seemed to be winning in one
town after another, the rebels in Libya thought Gaddafi’s regime would
soon go, as did the imperialists. It seemed that Gaddafi’s days were
numbered and that soon the uprising would engulf Tripoli. But it didn’t!
We have explained why in Why has the revolution stalled in Libya?
Before it became evident that Gaddafi still had important reserves of
support and also a well-trained and well-equipped military force, a
section of the Gaddafi regime also drew the conclusion that the regime
was about to fall. This explains the defections of a number of leading
figures from within the regime, including ministers in Gaddafi’s
government.
We have to ask ourselves why these individuals jumped ship so
quickly. It is clear that they felt the revolution was going to go the
same way as in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt and that Gaddafi would end
up like Ben Ali and Mubarak. Just like the Egyptian military chiefs,
these defectors must have thought that it was better to “side with the
revolution” than to be swept away by it. No doubt they wanted to play
the same role as the Egyptian generals or of figures like Gannouchi in
Tunisia, i.e. put themselves at the head of the revolution in order to
derail it and maintain it within safe limits.
The nature of the Interim Council and Government
This brings us to the role played by the Interim Council that was
established in Benghazi. This Council was thrown up by a situation in
which the masses had brought down state power, but did not know what to
replace it with. There was a de facto power vacuum created. In this situation accidental elements came to the fore, who are now clearly playing a counter-revolutionary role.
the revolutionary youth were to the fore. From the very early days of
the uprising we saw tension between this youth and the people appointed
to the Interim Council. The youth were against outside interference.
They wanted to carry out a revolutionary overthrow of Gaddafi. But that
was not what the Council leaders wanted. They blocked attempts at a
revolutionary overthrow and marginalised the revolutionary youth.
They successfully transformed what had started out as a genuine
revolution into a war to remove Gaddafi, but without in anyway changing
Libya’s relationship with imperialism, without in any way challenging
the economic policies of Gaddafi. In fact on the economy both Gaddafi
and the Council have similar positions: opening up to the west,
privatisation, and so on.
How does one explain this dramatic turnaround in the situation? For
this it is useful to look at the composition of the Council itself. The
Interim Council has a significant number of individuals who had been
part of the Gaddafi regime until very recently. These are people who
have taken advantage of the sweep of the Arab revolution to push forward
their own agenda inside Libya.
The President of the Interim Council is Gaddafi ex-Minister of
Justice, Mustafa Abdel Jalil. We also have Gaddafi’s ex-Minister of the
Interior, general Abdul Fattah Younes, who went over to the rebels at
the end of February. Here we have two figures who until only a few weeks
ago were in charge of Gaddafi’s police and judicial system. Among the
“rebels” we also have the ambassadors to Britain, France, Spain,
Germany, Greece, Malta and Italy, Abdel Monehim Al Honi, Libya’s
ex-ambassador to the Arab League and Abdullarhin Shalgam, the ambassador
to the UN.
The local councils which emerged in the cities where the revolution
won, initially were made up of mainly human rights activists, lawyers,
professors, experts of all sorts, some of which were most probably
genuine democrats. Some of them were also appointed to the original
Interim Council, together with former top Gaddafi officials. But now
things have moved on further. As imperialist powers have become more and
more involved in the conflict, they also want to make sure that their
own people are leading the rebels, whom they do not trust completely. A
whole layer of characters have now surfaced and been catapulted to the
head of the rebels. Their common characteristic is that they are known
to the West, some of them having spent decades in exile in the US,
funded by the CIA and other agencies, others having been in charge of
the implementation of the privatisation program and the “opening up of
the economy” under Gaddafi.
One of these shady characters is Khalifa Hifter who only arrived in
Benghazi on March 14, directly from his exile in the USA, and has been
proclaimed as the military chief of the “Free Libya Army”. He is a
former colonel in Gaddafi’s army, who in the past set up the “Libyan
National Army” which was a Contra-type group operating from within Chad,
receiving training and funding from the CIA, as well as Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq, the Saudis, donating $7million to the
NSF. They also received support from French intelligence. Thus, the man
now in charge of military operations is a direct agent of US
imperialism.
A new “interim government” has been declared, and its make-up is an
indication of the counter-revolution which has been carried out in the
liberated areas of Libya. All of its members are also agents of
imperialism.
Ali Tarhouni, who returned to Libya at the end of February, was
appointed finance minister on 23 March. He fled Libya in 1973 in the
period in which Gaddafi was beginning to move against private enterprise
and was subsequently involved in the reactionary Libyan opposition
abroad. He is a Senior Lecturer in Business Economics at the University
of Washington and has always openly called for widespread privatisation
in Libya.
Ali Abd-al-Aziz al-Isawi has been designated Minister of Foreign
Affairs. He previously served as Secretary for Economy, Trade and
Investment in Gaddafi’s regime. Prior to that he had founded the Centre
for Export Development in 2006 and became its first Director General. He
was also the Director General of the Ownership Expansion Programme (a
privatization fund) in 2005.
Mahmood Jibril has been appointed Prime Minister of the Interim
Government. Educated in Cairo and the US, he has spent most of his life
training the Arab elite in capitalist managerial techniques. In 2007 he
was appointed head of the National Economic Development
Board in Libya, a semi-governmental body directly accountable to the
Prime Minister, and charged with restructuring the economy and the state
to make them compliant with international capitalism. A Wikileaks cable
says this about a meeting with him at the US embassy:
“Jibril welcomed American companies, universities and hospitals to
participate in this endeavour [of restructuring the economy]…
According to Jibril, there are 11,000 development projects in Libya…
The NEDB’s role in these projects is to ‘pave the way’ for private
sector development, and to create a strategic partnership between
private companies and the government.” (Full cable: 09TRIPOLI386)
Omar Mokhtar El-Hariri has been made Minister of Military Affairs. He
was involved in the initial 1969 coup against the monarchy that brought
Gaddafi to power. However, he was also involved in a plot to overthrow
Gaddafi in 1975, a clear attempt to stop Gaddaf’s programme of
nationalisations. After the coup failed, he was arrested, served 15
years in prison until 1990 when he was placed under house arrest. When
the revolt erupted he sided with the rebels in the east.
As we can see, the lawyers and community activists, youth and so on,
who were part of the initial Interim Council seem to have been pushed to
one side. Of the four ministers so far announced we have two from the
Gaddafi camp, two from the reactionary part of the opposition, but all
of them stooges of imperialism. Some of them hark back to the early days
of the Gaddafi regime, when it was an openly bourgeois military
dictatorship. None of these can even be classed as “genuine democrats”.
These are all people whom the US “know and trust”. All these people are
direct agents of imperialism and are against the revolution.
It is precisely this change within the opposition, with its direct
appeals to imperialist powers, that has strengthened Gaddafi. We have
seen reports of people saying that they are against Gaddafi the tyrant,
but if foreign powers bomb Libya they will stop fighting against him and
join him in the fight against the imperialist aggressor. A recent
report in The Independent explains that, “The conduct of those who
should be allies nearer home is also causing problems for the rebels. At
some towns and villages, residents turned against them and fought
alongside loyalist troops.”
Imperialism manoeuvres behind scenes to defend its own interests
It is clear that imperialism has been manoeuvring behind the scenes
to place trusted stooges in positions of command in the areas that have
been liberated from Gaddafi’s forces. In all this the initial revolution
has been snuffed out. We are no longer dealing here with a revolution
to overthrow Gaddafi. It has become a pure imperialist aggression to
remove one reactionary regime and replace it with a more pliant one.
the government in the east should successfully come to power in the
whole country it will not produce the regime that the masses wanted. It
is sufficient to look at the Karzai regime in Afghanistan or the Maliki
regime in Iraq to see what kind of regime we could expect to see in
Libya. Any regime that comes to power on the back of imperialist
bayonets cannot be a regime that solves the burning social and economic
problems of the working masses. It cannot even guarantee genuine
“bourgeois democracy”. It would be a regime in which the different
factions and groupings, including the various tribal leaders, would vie
for power and influence. It would be a corrupt regime, no better than
that of Gaddafi’s.
The idea has been raised by some that this is a “war for oil”. Oil is
a factor in the situation, but to limit one’s analysis to this would be
simplistic to say the least, as imperialism already had access to
Libyan oil, as the many lucrative contracts granted by the Gaddafi
regime to foreign multinational oil corporations testify.
The decision taken by imperialism to intervene in Libya has to be
viewed within the wider context of the ongoing Arab revolution. The
Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions set in motion a process that has
engulfed, to one degree or another, practically the whole of North
Africa and the Middle East. Key countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the
other oil-producing Gulf states, risk being toppled. Bahrain has seen a
powerful movement that risked infecting Saudi Arabia.
Initially the imperialists were taken completely by surprise. Faced
with the Egyptian revolution they did not know what to do. The Obama
administration eventually concluded that some loosening up from the top
was necessary in order to avoid losing control altogether.
Libya, however, has provided the opportunity for direct military
intervention, which would have been impossible in Tunisia or Egypt. In
Egypt they sent naval forces to the Suez Canal, but were unable to use
them. In fact, had they used them they would have provoked massive
opposition and would have destabilised the whole region even more.
In the case of Libya, however, they have taken advantage of the
situation to present their intervention as being for “humanitarian”
reasons. If this were the case, why are they not bombing the Bahraini
regime, or the regime in the Yemen? There, they are de facto acquiescing
to brutal repression of the revolution.
In Libya they have managed to place at the head of the rebels a
government which is nothing other but their stooge. This “government of
free Libya” called on the imperialists to impose a no-fly zone, thus
giving the imperialists the cover they required. They can disguise their
open imperialist aggression as being in “favour of the revolution”.
This allows them to regain some of the credibility they had lost in
the Arab world after the war in Iraq, especially as the Arab League as
well as the UN, who didn’t support the war in Iraq, called for the
action. It also establishes a precedent which can be used in the future
to justify intervening in other countries.
For example, should the Saudi regime collapse, which is a concrete
possibility in this situation, the US will not be able to simply stand
back. The oil reserves there are crucial to the interests of all the
imperialist powers, and they would have to intervene. Libya thus sets a
dangerous precedent.
From no-fly zone to active intervention
It is now the stated policy of all the imperialist powers that
Gaddafi must go, how and exactly when, they may not agree on. They still
maintain, however, that the no-fly zone has been imposed merely to
“defend civilians”. But where does one draw the line?
The intervention of NATO forces has already gone beyond the mere
imposition of a no-fly zone. They are not just stopping Gaddafi’s planes
from flying. They have bombed tanks, armoured cars, missile launchers
and also specific buildings. This is not just about “defending
civilians” as they claim. NATO has become the air force of the Interim
Government in the east, i.e. of their own stooge government.
However, by simply stopping Gaddafi’s planes from flying they are not
going to achieve his removal. He has far superior and better trained
forces and this can be seen in the fighting that is taking place. The
Interim Government’s forces are proving incapable of advancing
militarily in any serious manner. In the past few days they have been
pushed back from the positions that they had taken earlier, from Bin
Jawad all the way back to Ajdabya, in spite of having the backing of
NATO’s air power.
Thus, the only way they can really remove Gaddafi is to step up the
level of NATO operations. There has now been some speculation as to
whether NATO should arm the rebels. That would be the next logical step
of the imperialist intervention. The only problem with that is that they
are not sure where the arms would end up. That means the imperialists
don’t fully trust the rebels to do the job for them.
Thus at some stage ground forces would have to be deployed. There has
been admission to the fact that special forces, military advisers,
etc., are already operating on the ground. The intervention risks
becoming like Iraq, a war on the part of imperialism to impose a
government to its liking. It has nothing whatsoever to do with
supporting the revolution or guaranteeing the Libyan people their
democratic rights.
Just as in Iraq, we must oppose imperialist aggression, be that in
the form of aerial bombardment, “military advisers” or ground troops.
Should the imperialists succeed in their aims in Libya, it would be a
blow to the Arab revolution. Instead of a genuine expression of the will
of the Libyan people we would have yet another imperialist-imposed
stooge government that would proceed to serve the interests of
imperialism.
Such a government would be corrupt and in the pockets of imperialism.
It would proceed to accelerate the process of privatisation, which the
multinational corporations would be keen to get involved in.
Let us not forget that in Afghanistan Karzai does not govern with a
genuine mandate from the people. He wins elections through blatant fraud
and stays in power thanks to the presence of foreign troops. In Iraq
the “western-style democracy” has recently fired on peaceful protesters.
From the beginning we have made our opposition to Gaddafi and his
regime clear. This was a dictatorial and oppressive regime which
politically and economically was following imperialist dictated
policies. However, the Libyan people cannot win genuine freedom by
putting their fate in the hands of the imperialists. The Sarkozys and
Camerons of this world are not interested in the youth and working
people of Libya. Their interests are those of the capitalist class they
represent. In their own countries they are attacking workers’ basic
living conditions and are facing growing opposition as last Saturday
half a million strong trade union demonstration in London clearly
showed.
If Gaddafi is overthrown with the direct intervention of the military
power of the imperialists, the people of Libya will not be free, but
will have to prepare for a second revolution to remove the puppets of
imperialism.
