Despite Airport Incident, Henry
Kissinger Is Wrong About Libya
06 June 2012
By Juan Cole
I spent May 27 through June 3 in Libya, and flew out
of Tripoli airport to Cairo a day before a small
Tarhouna militia came there to demonstrate against the
disappearance of its leader. Despite that close call,
I came back optimistic about Libya over-all. The
Tarhouna demonstration was dealt with efficiently by
the new Libyan army, which took control of the airport
weeks ago, and there is every reason to believe that
it will reopen shortly. When I flew in and out of the
Tripoli airport, there were no militiamen there, just
regular army and police (who have distinctive
red-marked vehicles). There are also now regular
flights from Cairo, e.g., to provincial cities like
Misrata.
There is a kind of black legend about Libya, that it
has become a failed state and is a mess, that there
are armed militiamen everywhere, that everybody is a
secessionist, that the transitional government is not
doing anything, that people of subsaharan African
heritage are bothered in the streets, etc., etc. The
black legend is promoted in part by remnants of the
Qaddafi regime and his admirers in the West, in part
by overly anxious middle class Libyans navigating an
admittedly difficult transition, in part by media
editors looking for a dramatic story.
Henry Kissinger, in his recent op-ed against
intervention in Syria, listed the erasure of the
Libyan state as an argument against such
interventions. I read the allegation with disbelief.
Libya is not like Somalia! It isn't even like Yemen.
(The Libyans I talked to about Yemen sympathized with
the country's problems but were astonished to hear
that some Western observers looked a their situations
as similar!)
So imagine my surprise on visits to Benghazi, Misrata
and Tripoli, to find that there were no militiamen to
be seen, that most things were functioning normally,
that there were police at traffic intersections, that
there were children's carnivals open till late,
families out, that jewelry shops were open till 8 pm,
that Arabs and Africans were working side by side, and
that people were proud in Benghazi of having
demonstrated against calls for decentralizing the
country.
As someone who has lived in conflict situations, I
take as a very serious gauge of security whether shops
are open and how late they stay open. Jewelry shops in
particular are easily looted, and the loot is light
and easy to fence. But in Tripoli there was loads of
gold in rows of jewelry shops, along with clothing
stores newly stocked with Italian fashions.
Shopkeepers I interviewed were fully stocked,
confident and glad to finally be rid of Qaddafi's
erratic governance, under which they were never sure
if they would make a profit because policies changed
frequently.
I caught a little celebration by recently graduated
Libyan police at Martyr's Square in Tripoli last week:
Life is pretty normal. I talked to a Libyan of African
heritage who had worked in Germany 14 years and
recently had returned. He said he is *much* happier in
Libya, even though he is working two jobs (one of them
teaching Arabic). A friend of mine is organizing a
music festival in the capital. People are gearing up
for the election of the National Congress, which will
draft a new constitution and gradually create a new
government.
Cities unhappy with the foot-dragging of the
transitional national government have simply staged
their own municipal elections. Benghazi just held its
successfully, and Misrata did this months ago. I met
the husband of a newly-minted female city council
member in Benghazi; she was the number one vote-getter
among the candidates that ran, and may chair the
council. The municipal governments have the legitimacy
of the ballot box and are beginning to address local
problems.
So if you aren't in danger of being mugged at night in
Tripoli or Benghazi, are there other problems? Sure,
loads of them. While I was there the dock workers went
on strike at Tripoli to complain about the poor
management of the port. Then, in an oil state, money
flows to municipalities rather than cities raising
money through taxes, and the transitional government
still isn't very good about remitting the money. There
is a human rights situation that needs to be addressed
in the small town of Tawergha, the militias of which
committed war crimes on behalf of Gaddafi; Tawergha
has been cleared of its inhabitants, and they need to
be allowed to return to their homes. And while
security on the whole is fine for individuals in the
big northern cities, it probably is still not entirely
satisfactory for new investors bringing in expensive
equipment to places like Benghazi (though BP has
decided to get back into Libya). You have occasional
moments of militia protest like the one yesterday at
the airport in Tripoli.
But I was struck at the air of normality everywhere I
went, and by the obvious comfort people had in
circulating, selling and going about their lives.
There are no bombings, there is no civil war, there is
no serious secessionism. One man told me that the
biggest change is that people are no longer afraid.
They had been captive of the revolutionary committees
and the secret police. And that end of political fear,
the Libyans I talked to insisted, made the
uncertainties of this transitional period all
worthwhile.
I went to Libya expecting to find people nervous about
going out, expecting to find a lot of shops shuttered,
and expecting to be stopped at militia checkpoints
(which was common in Beirut in the late 1970s when I
lived there in the first years of the Civil War).
Maybe such things exist in smaller provincial cities
that I didn't visit, like Gadames in the South. I
don't know. In the urban north, I found a society
actively reconstructing itself where people clearly
were going about their ordinary lives, where stores
were open and people were sitting in sidewalk cafes,
where there were no militiamen on the streets, no
checkpoints, and where there were actually traffic
cops directing traffic.
So while I wouldn't want to minimize what difficulties
remain, and while I am aware that a week on the ground
won't reveal all the society's problems, I can say
with certainty that the image found in the Western
press of the place is far more negative than what I
saw with my own eyes and what I heard from locals in
Arabic-language conversations.
And I can say categorically that Henry Kissinger is
wrong about Libya.
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