15 Years of Crisis: How the West Ruined Libya’s Revolution

(Photo by ليبي صح via Wikimedia Commons/CC0 1.0 DEED)

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Over the past three months, Libya, one of the world’s 20 most energy-rich countries, is facing a severe energy crisis. Over the summer, rolling blackouts roiled the country, forcing many small and large businesses to shut down. 

The blackouts and shutdowns led to food rotting in idle refrigerators and freezers, as well as weeks-long shortages of drinking water. The crisis sparked protests across the country. Libyans feel deep frustration that the country holding Africa’s largest oil reserves and fifth-largest gas reserves, as well as significant solar power potential, is facing an energy emergency. 

What is even more frustrating is that these problems are not recent. They have only gotten worse since Libya’s failed revolution half a decade ago. Prior to it, Libya was a prosperous nation by nearly all metrics. Libya was Africa’s wealthiest, most developed, healthiest, and most educated country. 

The Libya That Used to Be

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s former leader, achieved this feat via his 40-year rule, which started in 1969 with his overthrow of the Libyan Monarchy. Before Gaddafi’s coup, Libya was an extremely poor and unequal nation. Homelessness and illiteracy were rampant. 

Gaddafi managed to increase literacy rates from 10% to 90% and lift life expectancy to 77 years within 20 years. He accomplished these feats through seizing Libya’s oil revenue from American and British companies. He spent the newly nationalized oil revenue mainly on social welfare programs.  

Gaddafi also kicked out the British and Americans from the country entirely, angering both, especially the U.S., since it lost its strategically important Wheelus Air Force Base near Tripoli. These actions triggered imperial backlash. 

The U.S. and U.K. frequently demonized Gaddafi as an erratic “mad dog” leader, seeking to justify actions against him or his overthrow. Gaddafi also backed Palestinian resistance groups and the Irish Republican Army, two entities staunchly against British and U.S. imperialism. 

Gaddafi’s actions frustrated the imperial powers to the point that President Ronald Reagan attacked Libya four times while in power.  Western leaders had put a target on Gaddafi’s back and were waiting for any chance or justification to take him out. They found the perfect cause in 2011 when ordinary Libyan’s started protesting against him. 

Gaddafi’s Dark Side

Despite Gaddafi’s remarkable transformation of Libya, and his support for Palestinian emancipation, he was deeply flawed. When he took power, he orchestrated a massive retribution campaign against those he deemed insufficiently loyal. He ordered public executions and forced disappearances of oppositional figures. 

He also created a secret police that monitored Libyans’ everyday activities, ensuring they stayed true to his “vision.” Not only was Gaddafi repressive and violent domestically, but he was also on the world stage. Responding to American and European aggression, he ordered at least 3 terrorist attacks, 2 plane bombings and a nightclub bombing.  

Ordinary Libyans’ problems worsened as the economy slowed due to declining oil revenues and crushing international sanctions imposed in 1992. These realities eventually forced Gaddafi’s hand, and he adapted to survive. In the early 2000s, he changed his approach toward the West by softening his rhetoric and welcoming private investment in Libya’s oil sector. 

He, however, did not address corruption in Libya, as he benefited tremendously, allegedly storing away over $200 billion USD before the revolution. This corruption and economic mismanagement led to severe consequences such as a 20% unemployment rate in 2009. 

Libya also had no press freedom, with certain foreign journalists having described the experience as “being under house arrest.” All these frustrations came to a head in January 2011 when Libyans in the port city of Darnah started protests against delayed government housing. 

Frustration Boils Over

The protests started off peacefully, but as the situation stagnated, people broke into the vacant subsidized units and started vandalizing them, with an estimated 2000 units affected. Only a month later, large swaths of the country started rioting. 

The Libyan protestors felt like they had the wind in their sails thanks to their neighbours starting the Arab Spring. By mid-February, they had already evicted government forces from Benghazi, Libya’s 2nd city. 

Unrest quickly moved to the capital, Tripoli, and Gaddafi’s forces responded with overwhelming force, seeking to crush the demonstrators by any means necessary. Both the protestors and Gaddafi remained defiant. Protestors continued their mass mobilizations and the government used increasingly lethal and destructive munitions. 

Gaddafi went on to accuse the demonstrators of belonging to Al-Qaeda and being on drugs. Gaddafi seemingly started to earn his derogatory title of “mad dog”. He ordered the air force to bomb civilians and rebel fighters in Benghazi. These orders proved too much for some. 

Two pilots defected to Malta, while many Libyan diplomats and government officials resigned their posts and even joined the rebellion. As Gaddafi grew increasingly desperate, his violence multiplied, as did international calls for his resignation. Seeking to prompt his departure, the European Union (E.U.) and the U.S. sanctioned Libya and froze his assets. 

The United Nations (U.N.) even intervened, putting an international arms embargo and travel ban on Gaddafi and his associates. This resolution had little effect on him as he continued to kill his citizens. In March, the U.N. then passed Resolution 1973. 

It called for the protection of civilians in grave danger. The U.S., U.K., and France seized upon this opportunity to overthrow Gaddafi. Overall, 18 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members participated in the campaign to overthrow Gaddafi. 

False Altruism 

The U.S. sought his overthrow ever since his ascension to power and especially since he orchestrated the three aforementioned terrorist attacks. The U.K. wanted Gaddafi gone because he cut their access to cheap and reliable oil and reduced their regional importance when he booted them out in 1969. 

France had an entirely different reason for intervening. French President at the time, Nicholas Sarkozy, accepted €50 million in personal donations from Gaddafi during his 2007 Presidential campaign. In exchange for the money, Sarkozy would advocate for Gaddafi’s reintegration into the international community. 

As Libya’s situation worsened, Sarkozy feared Gaddafi would reveal he made a corrupt deal with the Libyan leader. France’s motivations were purely cynical and self-interested. It was, in fact, a French aircraft that struck Gaddafi’s convoy, leading to his eventual brutal death. 

Several Libyan officials even allege that it was French officials who executed Gaddafi. Sarkozy would have given the order to prevent the Libyan leader from ever divulging their dirty little secret. The other 15 NATO nations likely participated to remain in the U.S.’ good graces and potentially gain in the revolution’s aftermath. 

Revolution Co-opted. 

As NATO forces entered the fray and acted as the rebels’ air force, it was only a matter of time for Gaddafi. The rebels now had the world’s most advanced air forces combined with their seemingly unbreakable will to rid themselves of Gaddafi’s 40-year reign. 

On October 20, 2011, 8 months after the revolution began in earnest, the rebels and their Western air force captured and killed Muammar Gaddafi. The International community marked this date as the revolution’s end and the beginning of the new Libya. 

Some of the rebels reconstituted into the National Transitional Council (NTC) and gained recognition as Libya’s internationally recognized government. Some Western leaders preferred to celebrate Gaddafi’s death rather than to focus on helping Libya recover and rebuild. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “we came, we saw, he died”; a play on the Latin saying “veni vidi vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered).   

Clinton’s statement portrayed how the West was more focused on eliminating a geopolitical foe than helping a nation enjoy the freedoms the very same West claims to champion. A section of leaked emails also showed how controlling Libya’s oil and maintaining Western financial and resource hegemony was a primary motivator for the Western intervention.  

Day One Disaster

The NTC was not able to hold power and faced its own legitimacy crisis. Many rebels had operated independently from the NTC and were wary of another concentration of power. This apprehension laid the groundwork for the future civil war, as light-scale fighting continued throughout the country. 

In August 2012, the NTC handed power to the General National Congress (GNC) with the understanding that national elections were two years away. When these elections came in 2014, voter turnout was low due to violence throughout Libya. The newly elected government was dead on arrival as gunmen stormed the parliament and effectively left the central government headless. 

Due to this instability, rival factions started breaking off and creating their own governments. By 2015, there were several groups controlling different parts of Libya, with two rival central governments – the Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Libyan National Army (LNA) – claiming to be the sole representative and a handful of ethnic groups controlling their historic territory.  

Added into the mix were ISIS and other Islamic terrorists. Their presence proved to be another great excuse for the U.S. and its Western allies to restart the Libyan bombing campaign. The West’s disastrous intervention into the Libyan revolution had caused this catastrophic situation to take hold. 

Return to Barbarism

As Libya broke down into a failed state, the rival factions sought to control natural resources as a source of funding and legitimacy. This led to the total degradation of what was left of Libyan society. The GNA and LNA were now in a full-blown civil war. 

In the midst of this civil war, slavery reemerged in Libya. Before the revolution, Libya was a destination for migrants; many worked in Libyan agriculture or manufacturing. However, as the situation deteriorated, many sought to escape to Europe. Smugglers and human traffickers took advantage of the desperation and disarray. 

Some charged exorbitant fees to reach Europe, and others simply rendered migrants into slave labour. Sex trafficking is also increasingly common now in Libya. What is even more perverse is how the West and Europe are reacting to this migration crisis of its own making. 

As ISIS and other Islamist extremists were able to gain a foothold in post-Gaddafi Libya, their influence spread across the continent and destabilized neighboring countries such as Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Mali, and others. 

The instability led to increased migration to Europe, with people seeking to escape the newfound death and destruction in Africa. Smugglers shepherd these new migrants through Libya because it is essentially a lawless land.  

Europe chose to respond to this crisis by criminalizing migrants and migration rather than seeking to stabilize Africa and solve the root of the problem. Western leaders see black and brown people showing up at their shores as a bigger problem than the resurgence of slavery. 

A Familiar Fate

Libya, like many of its fellow Arab states, is in a much worse situation after Western intervention. Just like Iraq and Syria, it is a factionalized mess. Again, just like Iraq and Syria, the West is pillaging its oil resources. The West also caused massive migration crises with the interventions in Iraq and Syria, yet they replicated the exact same mistakes in Libya. It seems they will never learn, even if the insanity keeps staring them in the face. 

U.N. reports also showed how NATO deliberately concealed the bombing campaign’s devastation from the U.N. and disregarded civilian casualties. NATO went way beyond its internationally authorized mission and completely abandoned its rationale for intervention.  

NATO had the singular goal of ridding itself of Gaddafi. They simply did not care what fate they left for the Libyan people. Their current behaviour evidences that. They are more focused on securing resource contracts than helping to foster a healthy country and society. 

Libya is now in a state of disrepair. Basic services do not work, violence is abundant, and Western entities circle like vultures feeding on the rotting carcass. 15 years ago, Libyans dreamt of possibilities; now they simply seek to survive the nightmare. We will never know the future NATO robbed from the Libyan people.

Edited by Faroq Mohafez and Isaac Code