Eric Ruder reports on the protests in Libya as the future hangs in the balance.
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A man carries the partial remains of a fellow protester from a hospital in Benghazi |
THE REGIME of Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is trying to drown an anti-government uprising in blood.
Forces loyal to Qaddafi were carrying out a deadly assault on
anti-government protesters in the capital of Tripoli and other cities.
According to press reports, helicopter gunships and tanks were used to
fire on protesters, and several hundred people are dead and wounded. "It
was an obscene amount of gunfire," according to one eyewitness. "They
were strafing these people. People were running in every direction."
But the horrific scale of the assault may fracture the regime. Libyan
diplomats in China, India, Britain, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Poland and
at the Arab League announced their resignations. And some troops and air
force pilots refused to fire, joining the side of the pro-democracy
demonstrators. In Washington, Ali Aujali, Libya's ambassador to the
U.S., called on Qaddafi to step down.
The uprising intensified on Monday, after Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi,
the colonel's son, appeared on state television late Sunday night to
deliver a rambling and belligerent speech that basically described the
previous week of protests as the work of foreign agents. "Muammar
el-Qaddafi, our leader, is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are
with him," he said. "The armed forces are with him. Tens of thousands
are heading here to be with him. We will fight until the last man, the
last woman, the last bullet."
But the speech spurred an angry response from protesters, who flooded
into the streets of Tripoli and fought pitched battles with heavily
armed riot police to take Green Square, the capital city's central
plaza. By dawn, government buildings and police stations were smoldering
across the city, the legislature was in flames, and protesters had torn
down or torched the many posters of Col. Qaddafi throughout the city.
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WITH QADDAFI'S grasp on power beginning to slip, he seems to have
ordered his forces to use the utmost violence. Heavily armed militia
descended on Green Square and opened fire on protesters, forcing them to
flee and clearing the way for pro-Qaddafi crowds to retake the square.
Qaddafi has formidable repressive powers at his disposal in this
country of 6 million sandwiched between Egypt and Tunisia, where two
hated dictators have already fallen since the start of the year. According to the BBC:
The regime...has powerful forces, totaling 119,000, at its disposal and,
in the past, it has never hesitated to use them if it felt
threatened...Quite apart from the 45,000-strong army and the police,
where loyalties have, on occasion, been uncertain, there is the
mukhabarat (the security service) and the Revolutionary Committee
movement, which has brutally disciplined Libyan society ever since the
1980s.
Its activists are committed to the regime by tribal affiliation as
well as ideological preference, for they are drawn from the regime's
tribal bulwark in the Qadhadhfa, the Maghraha and the Warfalla and, as
revolutionaries, they are entirely unaccountable to anyone except the
colonel himself.
The troops that remain loyal to the regime are showing no mercy in
their suppression of the uprising. "The shooting is not designed to
disperse the protesters," one Tripoli resident told the New York Times. "It is meant to kill them."
But the pro-democracy demonstrators have taken control of large
areas, reportedly with the aid of units of the military that have taken
their side against the regime. Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city
that historically has been a stronghold of anti-Qaddafi opposition and
was the spark for the revolt, had already come under the control of
pro-democracy demonstrators after six days of protests and brutal
government violence.
A young woman in Benghazi, who is a student and a blogger, tearfully described the ferocity of the several days of revolt to the Guardian:
I've seen violent movies and video games that are nothing compared to
this...I can hear gunshots, helicopters circling overhead, then I hear
the voices screaming. I can hear the screeching of four-by-fours in the
street. No one has that type of car except his [Qaddafi's] people...My
brother went to get bread, he's not back; we don't know if he'll get
back. The family is up all night every night, keeping watch, no one can
sleep.
Now people are dying; we've got nothing else to live for. What needs
to happen is for the killing to stop. But that won't happen until he is
out. We just want to be able to live like human beings...It's like a
pressure cooker. People are boiling up inside. I'm not even afraid any
more. Once, I wouldn't have spoken at all by phone. Now I don't care.
Now enough is enough.
When protesters took control of Benghazi's main security
headquarters, they declared it liberated--and broadcast their success by
taking over the state television station.
In retaliation, the Qaddafi regime appeared ready to order a
merciless assault on Benghazi, but defections of air force pilots saved
the city from a night of violence. According to British blogger Richard Seymour:
Benghazi, where the regime had been totally defeated and sent packing,
was set to be the target of vengeful air strikes tonight--except that
two of the planes ordered to attack reportedly landed in the city, the
pilots refusing to drop their payload. The city has been declared safe
for now.
Elsewhere, police and soldiers joined the side of protesters, and a
number of pilots reportedly flew their planes to Malta and then
requested political asylum from the government there.
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LIBYA IS North Africa's richest country, owing to its significant oil
deposits, most of which is exported to Western countries. But only a
tiny elite benefits from the country's abundance of black gold. In
recent years, Qaddafi's regime has done little to address the desperate
poverty, especially among the country's largely young population--the
same demographic that has driven forward revolts against dictators in
country after country in the region. According to Andrew Solomon:
The state provides little by way of civil society and does not take care
of even the most basic government obligations. There are police to
control people who stray from supporting the Leader, but there is little
else. As a housing crisis has escalated in the past few years, the
regime has made no effort to provide adequate public accommodation.
Wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very few. It would have
been easy for Qaddafi to raise the standard of living for the population
as a whole either by creating a sustainable non-oil economy or simply
by distributing some portion of oil revenues, but he chose to do
neither.
But none of this has kept U.S. officials from cultivating warm
relations with Qaddafi since 2004 when the administration of George W.
Bush ended the U.S. trade embargo on Libya, clearing the way for Libya's
oil to flow to Western countries.
Following the same script as in Tunisia and Egypt, U.S. officials
suddenly discovered their "shock" and "horror" at the regime's murderous
repression--after backing it for years. The pathetic response of the
Obama administration angered activists like Libyan-American scientist
Naeem Gheriany:
The Obama administration made a comment suggesting that there are still
opportunities for reform. It is in denial. It says it's "concerned"
about the situation--there's no real condemnation in spite of the dire
situation. People are being massacred in the hundreds, Qaddafi is
reportedly using anti-aircraft guns to shoot people. In a few days, more
people in Libya have apparently been killed than in weeks in Iran,
Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen and even Egypt (which has a much larger
population). Gaddafi is hiring foreign mercenaries who have
shoot-to-kill orders, it's not tear gas, it's just killing.
The possible toppling of the Libyan regime is furthering the worry in
Washington as decades of diplomacy to construct an alliance of
pro-Western Arab dictators in the Middle East continues to crumble. And
the possible disruption of Libya's oil exports, at a time when prices
are already spiking, is causing heartburn among speculators, according to the New York Times:
Market stability in the United States and abroad depends on the price of
oil leveling off, which seems unlikely given all the turmoil. Western
countries fear being cut off from the oil supply in Libya, which exports
about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, making it one of Africa's
largest holders of crude oil reserves. There was ample reason for
concern, as oil companies--including Eni of Italy, the largest energy
producer in Libya--began to evacuate employees.
Early Tuesday morning, Qaddafi appeared on state television to show
his defiance of the protests and dispel rumors that he had fled to
Venezuela. But it remains unclear how much authority Qaddafi
retains--and how much bloodshed he is capable of commanding in his drive
to terrorize the opposition into surrender. According to Solomon:
The response to protests has been swift and brutal, since Qaddafi had
seen how ineffective more moderate responses were in Egypt and Tunisia.
It is not clear, however, that brutality will work; it appears to be
making more and more Libyans incensed. A Libyan diplomat said today,
"The more Qaddafi kills people, the more people go into the streets."
Qaddafi's power has for a long time relied on the docility of ordinary
Libyans. As he ignored the youth of his country, though, he seems to
have ignored the possibility that he is ruling a less passive
population. The new generation is ready to push out the old.
Activists around the world should be ready to organize protests to
expose the complicity and hypocrisy of Western powers as the Qaddafi
regime attempts to use lethal force against the challenge to its rule.
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