Libya

[Prospero]

Interestingly though the issue of oil may be relevant in Libya, the case of Syria is much more complex - with the collapse of the minority sect tyrant there (should it happen) likely to cause a far greater regional insecurity. Syria is bolstered by iran. They won't allow a pro-Saudi government there. Syria could be a powder keg for a wider conflagration. It has a strategic importance that Libya lacks.

And, of course NATO could find the collapse of Gaddafi will open the door to a regime of greater risk - a Jihadist dominated Libya with its oil wealth could find common cause with other similar groups in North Africa and the wider region. A confortable outcome after Gaddafi is by no means guaranteed. And if a fundamentalist government emerged there, what chance for Tunisia or Egypt to stave off something similar. The Muslim brotherhood is already allowing its real colours to show in Egypt.

[Stavros]

I understand your anxiety Prospero. The key reason why people fear the potential for radical Muslims to assume power in both the Maghreb and Mashrek, is that historically they have been better organised, and prepared to take on the state, as was the case in Egypt and Syria in the 1980s, and Libya in the 1990s. The potential for Islamic parties to win a large share of the vote in a free election is strong, again, because of its superior organisation, with the Mosque a read-made recruiting ground/polling station. In addition, while there are strong secular voices in Syria, and Muslims in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya who would prefer a separation of religion from the state, they are likely to be poltically divided in ways the 'Muslim Brotherhood' are not, this would give them the advantage in elections, and I don't see how 'we' can continue to protest if elections don't go 'our' way.

Nevertheless, I subscribe to the theory that 9/11 marked the end of the radical Islam that is associated most of all with the events of 1979, the siege of Mecca and the Iranian Revolution (Olivier Roy has the most eloquent version of this, the link is below although I posted it before). The generation that has done so much to break the back of one-party states does not have the same agenda as the Militant Muslims, but again, I dont know how these shebab are going to translate the energy of protest and rebellion into practical politics, raising the fear of the 'same old same old Middle East' being (re)-constructed on the ruins of the other. But first they have to root out Qadhafi and his loyalists.

Roy's article is here:
http://www.europeaninstitute.org/Feb...cal-islam.html

[hippifried]

I don't think what's happening in the Arab world can be seen in the same way we've been looking at it all these years. This is an upheaval against autocracy, & especially monarchy. It's internal & caught everybody by surprize. It's not that hard to see. Just look at the catylists that set it off. In Tunesia, Egypt, Syria, & Libya, the dictators were in the process of putting their sons in line to take over the dictatorship. How's that different from a kingdom? Syria's already in the second generation & going for 3. In Jordan, they're trying to lose a standing monarchy. The house of Saud is real scared right about now.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is staying quiet. This isn't their gig. They had nothing to do with it, & still don't know where they stand. They're not really a factor. Same goes for Hezbollah. They're not taking sides at all. If they did, this'd be over. They're a lot more badass than the Syrian army. Except for Hezbollah, Iran doesn't have much influence. They can't really back the Assad regime (kingdom) without calling their own revolution into question.

None of this is about philosophies or religion. People are just tired of kings. With all the modern communications, they see what things can be like when the kings are gotten rid of. Philosophers & theologians just argue over who should be king. The standard explanations don't work here.

[Ben]

Leaked cable: Sen. McCain promised to help Gaddafi obtain U.S. military hardware

By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011...

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) promised to help former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi obtain U.S. military hardware as one of the United States' partners in the war on terror, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released Wednesday by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
The meeting, which took place just over a year ago on Aug. 14, 2009, included other influential Americans, such as Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Susan Collins (R-SC) and Senate Armed Services Committee staffer Richard Fontaine, the document explains.
McCain opened the meeting by characterizing Libya's relationship with the U.S. as "excellent," to which Liebermann added: "We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi."
"Lieberman called Libya an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends," the cable continues. "The Senators recognized Libya's cooperation on counterterrorism and conveyed that it was in the interest of both countries to make the relationship stronger."
Part and parcel to that relationship: military hardware, including helicopters and non-lethal weaponry, meant to ensure the security of Tripoli. In exchange for this and assisting the nation in rehabilitating its image with other lawmakers, Gaddafi pledged to send Libya's highly enriched uranium supplies to Russia for proper disposal.
The cable does not mention anything about the senators pressing Gaddafi for democratic reforms.
In a twist of fate, Gaddafi temporarily abandoned that agreement in dramatic form last November, leaving a large quantity of uranium in a poorly sealed container strewn on the side of an airport runway for weeks. The incident nearly caused massive quantities of nuclear radiation to leak into the atmosphere -- a nuclear disaster, by all accounts.

And it all stemmed from a spat Gaddafi had with U.S. billionaire Donald Trump.

Trump even bragged about the incident in a recent appearance on Fox News, telling the conservative television station he "screwed" the Libyan dictator out of a land deal. Gaddafi had paid Trump to pitch a tent on his property in New York ahead of a United Nations summit. Once the media began zeroing in on the bizarre structure erected on Trump's property, the billionaire revoked his permission and sent Gaddafi packing.
Gaddafi is quoted in other U.S. diplomatic cables as saying he felt "humiliated" by his treatment, inspiring him to back out of the deal.
A rapid response was made by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, who had aides describe in detail what exactly a nuclear disaster in Libya would look like. After nearly a week of talks, Libyan officials finally allowed the uranium to be carted off to Russia, with the U.S. paying $800,000 to transport it.
Sen. McCain, who provided the impetus for the whole strange affair, later wrote on microblogging site Twitter that he'd shared an "interesting meeting with an interesting man" (Gaddafi) -- a comment that has haunted the Arizona Senator since the former dictator began slaughtering his own people.
Since that time, McCain has also come out in favor of arming Libya's rebels, saying: "I think we could do the same thing that we did in the Afghan struggle against the Russians. There are ways to get weapons in without direct U.S. supplying."

[Faldur]

[Stavros]

Ben -your post merely underlines the sad truth that some politicians think Libya has little to offer the western world than oil and that access to it was a 'payoff' for Qadhafi's renunciation of 'weapons of mass destruction'. It happened before, in one sense, when 'we' backed someone called Saddam Hussein when he was attacking an even greater enemy, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

This is an upheaval against autocracy, & especially monarchy

A neat idea, Hippified, especially as Mubarak used to be sarcastically referred to as Pharoah by some critics; but I see this as a deeper problem that relates to the formation ane subsequent performance of the state as it emerged in the Middle East from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

In fact, you could see it in the context of the processes of modernisation that have been taking place globally since c1400 but which accelerated with the onset of the industrial revolution. This created the separate development which gave Europe, Japan and North America an industrial base at a time, in the 19thc when the Ottoman Empire, reeling from the shock of Napolean's invasion of Egypt, tried and failed to reform itself at least three times before 1914. To a limited extent, the reforms of the military and bureacracy did bring modern administration and weapons into the Empire; land and tax reform did raise revenue from an agricultural sector that had more potential than had been realised; but industry was small-scale and craft based and capital poor, and no match for its competitors -the modernisation of the Ottoman Empire can look impressive at times when compared to what went before, but compared to what was happening in the USA, in Britain or Germany, it was poor. By the 1930s, many Arabs were wearing cheap cotton made in Japan, and even cheaper sandals, also made in Japan. The Qajar 'Empire' in Persia was even poorer, and led to the D'Arcy Concession of 1901 and the discovery of oil in 1908, but you cant say that Persia (Iran from 1935) struck it rich; there was no substantial development outside the south-west and the coast at Abadan, until real modernisation began in the 1960s.

Bear in mind that when Lawrence claimed to be the first person to drive a car in Arabia -in Seven Pillars of Wisdom (I think at Aqaba but not sure)- he was right -the only known wheeled vehicles I can think of south of Damascus at that time were the two-wheeled carts imported by the Circassians who were re-located to Amman from the Caucasus in the 1870s. Once south of Amman, I don't know if they had the wheel -it sounds absurd, but as a ubiquitous object I think its true outside major cities.

I make these points because part of modernisation is a mind-set, one that is educated to some extent, and receptive to new ideas particularly in science and the (usually) happy marriage of science with commerce.

The Arabs (and certainly the Israelis) are actually good at both science and making money, but my argument is that the emergence of the State from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire gave the Arabs an inheritance of Grand Politics based on a feeble economic base; it would have been better had the Arabs been in possession of great natrual resources and then built a state around it -the only successes close to this are the UAE and Oman.

The British were instrumental in shaping this transformation, yet people don't know or forget that when Churchill assembled 40 People in Cairo to determine the future of the region, Britains' primary concern was India. The security of the land and sea links to India shaped Middle Eastern policy -the Indian Army had jurisdiction in Iran and Iraq after 1920, and in Iraq the currency was the Rupee, until Iraq's so-called Independence in 1932.

Hourani referred to the late Ottoman and early independence periods as the 'liberal age', his primary concern was to see how the modern world impacted on Islamic scholars and Arab political thinkers. In a way my argument is that the state template which the Arabs were given by the British offered a pluralist polity in a social framewoek so riven with differences shaped by religion, income and geography, it is hardly surprising that the two key states of Syria and Iraq were poltically volatile until both, in the 1960s, opted for the Ba'athist One-Party state as a means of putting an end to endless bickering and the paralysis of decision-making that followed. The architect of Ba'athism, a Christian called Michel Aflaq tried to combine Arab nationalism with Arab socialism, with stunningly obvious pitfalls. Both Syria and Iraq, potentially the richest and most powerful states in the Arab world, sacrificed economic development for political grandstanding and, given Syria's chronic inability to even get back the Hadbatu-i-Jawlan, and Iraq's hopeless attempts at Military Supremacy, they have both been failures at this.

The modern state has thus been a failure because it has attempted to march its citizens to one tune, as played on the band in the Presidential Palace. When the population was much smaller, the Centre could send cheques to the tribal leaders, give their sons jobs in the Ministry of Love and Hate, and marry their daughters to the right people in the Military or, well, the Ministry of Love and Hate. At some point the money ran out, the cushy jobs ran out, and though I doubt there is a daughter-deficit, there are many more people with ambitions that are unfulfilled.

But these states have been doing everything, the people have no experience of doing things for themselves; there was no civil society. Which is why the transition from a one-party state, neo-monarchy or whatever you call it could be so difficult, and also disappointing. So much more is yet to come.

[hippifried]

Nice double post. (Don't you wish the servers would get their connection problems out of the way when you're not clicking the send button?)

But these states have been doing everything, the people have no experience of doing things for themselves; there was no civil society. Which is why the transition from a one-party state, neo-monarchy or whatever you call it could be so difficult, and also disappointing. So much more is yet to come.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the exact same line that gets recited every time people demand self-determination? Eurocentric hubris. Ottomans were just one in a long line of invading powers who were saving the savages from themselves. What a crock of shit. This attitude goes away when people are seen as people, instead of some lame inferior stereotype from any "explorer's" point of view or 3 Stooges movie. No states "emerged" from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Europeans drew a bunch of lines on the map to carve the region up between themselves. There's never been anything but an utter disrespect for the people of the levant. The cradle of civilization.

Bear in mind that when Lawrence claimed to be the first person to drive a car in Arabia -in Seven Pillars of Wisdom (I think at Aqaba but not sure)- he was right -the only known wheeled vehicles I can think of south of Damascus at that time were the two-wheeled carts imported by the Circassians who were re-located to Amman from the Caucasus in the 1870s. Once south of Amman, I don't know if they had the wheel -it sounds absurd, but as a ubiquitous object I think its true outside major cities.

There's the perfect example. Do you really think southern Arabia was oblivious to the wheel until white people introduced it in the 19th & 20th centuries? I consider it insulting that you would think I could possibly buy into such a line of bullshit. You do understand that the modern wheel (independant on the axle, with radial spokes & metal tire) originated in what is now southern Pakistan, & worked its way all the way to Egypt while most Europeans were still living in caves & eating raw meat, right?

On & on it goes. The lies & stereotypes have become accepted memes. These people aren't cut off from the world. Go on facebook or twitter & ask them how remote they are. Don't worry. They can probably speak your language. Even the Saudi king (the most repressive regime in the region) was forced to lift the ban on satellite dishes years ago. Sorry, but "They don't know how..." doesn't work anymore.

[Stavros]

You seem to have misunderstood some of my points.

Eurocentric hubris. Ottomans were just one in a long line of invading powers who were saving the savages from themselves. What a crock of shit...No states "emerged" from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Europeans drew a bunch of lines on the map to carve the region up between themselves. There's never been anything but an utter disrespect for the people of the levant. The cradle of civilization.

1) I did not even suggest that the Ottomans were invading powers in the way you mean. I was trying to draw attention to the gulf that opened up between the Ottoman empire and the European Empires, Japan and the USA. The point is that within the Ottoman Empire, the reforms that were made to the state bureaucracy, to the military and particularly to land and tax reform were of great importance and more successful than used to be thought -but the scale and breadth of growth in the industrialising economies was far beyond what the Ottomans could achieve by 1914. I probably made an assumption that you are aware that the golden age of arts, science and letters in the Islamic world had long since declined and the Ottoman Empire by 1914 had not been able to match the achievements of the Abbasid, to take one example. The overall picture is patchy. There was some growth of the agricultural sector in Palestine, and Nablus was emerging as an industrial town; the textile industry was of importance in the Damascus-Beirut corridor with increasing ties to the silk merchants of Lyon who were instrumental in propelling France to make claims on the Levant in 1914; the proposed railway mooted before 1914, to be financed by the Germans, from Constantinople to Baghdad was one project intended to open up a new trading route. In other words, the Empires were looking at opportunities in the Ottoman Empire that were provided by both existing raw materials and local skills, but the range of skills -and, critically the capital investment- cannot be compared to what was happening elsewhere, and you have to accept that the level of education across the Arab world was poor at this time, because it was poor.

2) The emergence of the modern state may not have been the inevitable consequence of the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war in November 1914, but it was following the defeat in 1918. In two cases, there are states which were not created by Anglo-French collusion. Turkey emerged as an independent state, and continued to grow of its own accord or, if you prefer, Anglo-French indifference, vide its illegal and enforced annexation of the old Sanjak of Alexandretta in 1938.
The Kingdom of the Hejaz, which had been under Ottoman control was ruled by the Hashemite Hussein ibn Ali, supported by the British until he was thrown out of Mecca by Ibn Saud who merged the Hejaz with the Nejd in the 1930s having failed to add TransJordan to his domain -he really wanted Jerusalem as well.
Of the others, the point is that the Arabs did not get the States -or single, unified state- they wanted. The Syrians told the American King-Crane Commission that they wanted to choose their own government, but the US did not participate in the League of Nations, and Syria ended up with a French administration, imposed at the point of a gun. When General Gouraud entered the city in 1920, he made a point of going to the grave of Salah ad-din Al-Ayubi and shouted We're back! The French then proceeded to dismember what had been Ottoman provinces, creating Lebanon as a majority-Christian statelet. They were supposed to have taken over Mosul, but the French foreign minister Berthelot was so drunk the night before the negotiations with the British in 1919, he signed it away in the morning, so he could go back to bed.
There was an Arab nationalist movement, it was small, it was young and inexperienced, and many felt they were sold out by the landed elites and Sheikhs who did deals with the British and the French in return for gold and guns--the same sell-out which saw tracts of land in Palestine sold to Zionst settlers. It sounds sleazy because it is; but crucially, it meant that for decades the Arabs felt they were not in control of their own destiny, and this has been a powerful theme in their own history, its not a patronising, Eurocentric concept.
And when there were revolutions against British-imposed monarchs -Egypt in 1952, Iraq in 1958 -what did it bring? The fractious nature of politics and political instability isn't some patronising Eurocentric fantasy -it was real, and as paralytic as the French Fourth Republic -sometimes politics is like that, wherever it happens.

These people aren't cut off from the world. Go on facebook or twitter & ask them how remote they are. Don't worry. They can probably speak your language. Even the Saudi king (the most repressive regime in the region) was forced to lift the ban on satellite dishes years ago. Sorry, but "They don't know how..." doesn't work anymore.

3) And it is the reason why so many Arabs feel they have been denied real Freedom, the kind of freedom they have experienced in the west, in America, in Germany.
The quality of life under the dictators cannot be measured in dinars or dollars, but in the freedom people have had, or not had even to speak. When my father and I were in Tunisia in the 70s, we tried to talk to a student on a bus in a town somewhere, but all he would say was I believe Habib Bourgiba is the best man for Tunisia and that he is leading the country to progress, and so on. What else was he going to say knowing other people on the bus could hear him? You turn on the tv and 90% of the news is about Habib Bourgiba receiving delegations, from the army, from Olive farmers, from teachers and so on and so on. How long to you think the Arabs could put up with this drivel, year after year -what is patronising about telling the truth when the Arabs themselves so long to do it? A key point about the Arab Spring is that young people can see what the rest of the world is like, many have visited our countries to study or stay with relatives -their issue is why can't they have some of that? But the key point about civil society, is that people like Saddam Hussein and Qadhafi stripped it all away and replaced it with a surveilance state that is a dismal mix of 1984 and Stalin's Russia -Stalin succeeded in a vast place like the USSR how difficult was it in Libya or Iraq? Its not patronising to tell the truth about how little freedom people have had, and how much of it they want to create for themselves.

4) The wheel. Yes, I exagerrated that a little, but the first car south of Damascus probably was Lawrence's -for years there was only one car in Oman and that belonged to the eccentric Said bin Taimur until his son (with the help of the British of course) overthrew him in a coup in 1970. You understimate just how poor much of Arabia was before oil wealth began to affect life there in the 1960s; the wheel argument was not meant to be patronising, but an illustration of the reality -but I was not referring to places like Palestine, Syria, Jordan or even Iraq.

[NaughtyJane]

New person here... no matter what I think, know, or think I know.... Some of you all are kind of bright and intelligent... whether I agree with you or not. I am pleasantly surprised, not at all what I expected to find on this site... cool.

[robertlouis]

It sounds like you are going to be a welcome and interesting addition to this colourful pageant yourself Jane. Nice to meet you here.