A triple victory in Tripoli

By Peter Jukes

As I suggested in my piece on Labourlist six months ago, we all have a tendency to fight the previous war. Just as the ‘quagmire’ of Vietnam led to reluctance to intervene in Bosnia (at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives), so too the successes of Kosovo led to the peremptory and ill planned interventionism of Iraq.

But Libya is not Iraq. As jubilant crowds fill Green Square, the fall of Tripoli to the rebels is a victory on many counts

A Victory for the Libyan People

The revolutions in the Mashriq and Maghreb were not inspired by salafist sleeper cells or CIA plotting. They were the spontaneous cry from the street, a cry which has rung out across the Arab World from Yemen to Tunisia “The people want the fall of the regime”. As the crowds fill the streets of Tripoli, taking back their city, let us both celebrate their joy, and remember the many brave men and women who have lost their lives.

Last night I couldn’t help thinking of one of the figures who inspired me to believe in the Libyan people’s struggle, and to support the Nato led intervention, was a young brilliant man and citizen journalist, Mohammed Nabbous, killed by a sniper in Benghazi in March. A leading figure in the February 17th movement, Mo left a widow, Perditta, and an unborn child, Maya. (There’s a video Perditta has created of their child, dedicated to Mo here).

As others have said before, this is a very unique revolution. Unlike Egypt, it was not approved of or enabled by any of Libya’s existing institutions. Though supported by Nato airpower and UN resolutions, the people who started this, who risked their lives, and who completed the liberation of their own capital, were Libyan citizens.

A Victory for Responsibility to Protect and International Law

Encouraged by the Arab League, and against the wishes of many dictators in the area, the UK, France and the US (mainly led by Samantha Power and Hilary Clinton) pushed for multilateral intervention in March on the carefully crafted and proportionate Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, ratified by the UN in 2009:

1. Principle One stresses that States have the primary responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity (mass atrocities).
2. Principle Two addresses the commitment of the international community to provide assistance to States in building capacity to protect their populations from mass atrocities and to assisting those, which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out. 3. Principle Three focuses on the responsibility of international community to take timely and decisive action to prevent and halt mass atrocities when a State is manifestly failing to protect its populations

Though the apparent success of the Libyan intervention helps to remove the stain of the Iraq fiasco from our recent history, it does set down a precedent. You cannot murder the citizens of your own country en masse with impunity. Security Council Resolution 1973 was the first time this principle underpinned a military intervention. With Saif Gaddafi arrested and to be handed over to the ICC this is a particular victory for internationa law. We can only hope his father undergoes the same process, to meet the same fate as Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic in the Hague.

A Victory for Post Intervention Planning and Diplomacy

Over the long six month campaign, many things have been going on in the background, beyond the air campaign. Firstly, there have been the strong representations of nations like Germany that abstained in the final security council vote, and yet helped to shape the NATO campaign. There has been the extensive lobbying and background negotiations from Turkey.

This is about as far from Bush style unilateralism as you can get.

Above all there has been extensive planning for the post war phase, especially after the catastrophe of ‘Mission Accomplished’ in 2003. Some of this careful planning is explained here based on leaked documents:

Iraq haunts plans for post-Gaddafi Libya. But expect more to come out in the days ahead. The Rebels transitional council has has also drawn up an impeccably liberal constitution: freedom of the press, of religion, protection of minorities and civil rights. Rarely has a revolutionary movement come to power with such a thought through approach to the future.

It’s still early days. But given the ground support for this regime change, the careful remit of the intervention, and all the post war planning, we can hope that these tremendous scenes of celebration in Tripoli ending up very differently to scenes in Baghdad eight years ago.