Replacing the entire architecture of the Libyan state will lead only to further violence and chaos, argues George Grant.
Libyans celebrate in Benghazi after receiving the news of the ICC warrant Photo: AP
By George Grant
1:20PM BST 29 Jun 2011
31 Comments
For 42 years, the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi terrorised, oppressed and divided the Libyan people. When anti-regime protests flared up on February 17, the reaction was predictable enough: bloody slaughter.
Gaddafi said he wanted to “cleanse Libya house by house”. Using regime security forces, he started doing just that. Whatever the lunatic fringe from Stop the War Coalition would have you believe, it was the international intervention, led by Britain and France, which put a stop to this. Since then, Prime Minister David Cameron and other world leaders have been categorical in their assertions that Colonel Gaddafi must go.
So what to make of yesterday’s comments by our International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, about the importance of incorporating as much of the existing regime architecture as possible into any post-Gaddafi settlement?
“One of the first things that should happen once Tripoli falls is that someone should get on the phone to the former Tripoli chief of police and tell him he’s got a job and he needs to ensure the safety and security of the people of Tripoli,” he said at a news conference on June 28.
Controversial stuff. But the fact is that Mr Mitchell is absolutely spot on, and his comments are to be warmly welcomed. For the success both of the current campaign to protect civilians and remove Gaddafi, and for the security and prosperity of any post-Gaddafi Libya, encouraging regime figures that they can have an important part to play will be absolutely essential.
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As Edmund Burke observed in the wake of the French Revolution, replacing a despotic leadership, even by force, is sometimes right and necessary. Replacing the entire architecture of the state, on the other hand, will lead only to further violence and chaos. We learned this lesson the hard way in Iraq in 2003, when almost every vestige of the Ba’ath administration was replaced wholesale, with the resultant dearth of knowledge and expertise proving catastrophic for the country’s subsequent development.
A repeat of this mistake in Libya could have equally deadly results. The opposition Transitional National Council (TNC), though long on ambition, is woefully short on expertise. Yes it has some notable former regime figures amongst its ranks, including its Chairman, the former justice minister Mustafa Jalil, but it is also populated by men with no prior experience of running a country whatsoever. Former university professors, lawyers and a clutch of PhD students hold some of the most important posts in the TNC, and with the best will in the world, they’re going to need some help.
This problem is still further compounded by the fact that Jalil, admirably in many ways, has stated that TNC office-holders should not take advantage of their current status and stand in the first post-Gaddafi elections. Others within the council, including its spokesman Abdul-Hafiz Ghoga, take a different view, but either way the problem remains.
As for the opposition police and security forces, their lack of expertise is well documented. Indeed, many Libyans privately maintain that the most competent fighting force on the opposition front line is the Islamist 17th February Brigade.
Moreover, if regime figures are to be persuaded to abandon Gaddafi now, they need to know that to do so won’t just be an exercise in out of the frying pan, into the fire. In spite of much-trumpeted rebel advances in recent days, by far the most desirable outcome to this conflict remains an internal coup d’état inside Gaddafi’s regime.
Monday’s announcement by the International Criminal Court (ICC) that it had issued warrants for the arrest of Colonel Gaddafi, his son Saif, and the country’s spy-chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, on charges of crimes against humanity, will doubtless have given those still loyal to Gaddafi pause for thought. Indeed, it is imperative that those charged with the most serious crimes are brought to justice. But it is equally important that others in the regime can be confident that they will not be tarred with the same brush, and that there can be an important place for them in a post-Gaddafi Libya.
The key now will be to hear similar remarks to Mr Mitchell’s from the TNC itself. Understandably perhaps, many amongst Libya’s opposition hold deep reservations about such a strategy. Within Benghazi itself, there have been serious divisions in recent weeks over the question of whether or not to employ former regime security forces, and there have also been sporadic assassinations of former regime figures; a telling microcosm of what might be in store down the road.
But for the sake of all Libyans, in east and west, it is imperative that such divisions are put to one side. This troubled country simply cannot afford revenge and retribution. Mr Jalil and others within the TNC need to have the courage to extend the olive branch, both publicly and through private channels. Failure to do so will be costly indeed.
George Grant is the Director for Global Security at The Henry Jackson Society, and the author of “Towards a Post-Gaddafi Libya”, a report on the conflict released in April 2011.
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Showing 25 of 31 comments
lordbarnett
Today 12:34 PM Recommended by 1 person
We have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis,countless thousands of Afgans,anybodys guess in Libya,I wonder where we will be starting next,not Mugabe,he is too black, Chavez? no, its still looking like Iran,suggestions please to Cameron,warmonger,loads of billions to spend,Downing St, London.
randomobserver
Today 12:13 AM Recommended by 1 person
For the record, I have no view on whether the Henry Jackson society is neocon or not. Given their conservative Democrat namesake, there are pros and cons to that definition.
The intervention in Libya can be fairly well characterized as neocon, although it is also just flat out human-rights/R2P/internationalist liberal. Equally nauseating.
But the policy outlined here is antithetical to the neocon approach as it has emerged in the past decade and some. Keeping regime elements in place to ensure stability? Just the opposite of what they had been doing before.
If everything is neocon, then the term has no meaning at all.
randomobserver
Today 12:11 AM
SO no constituency at all then for just maintaining a naval watch and letting them kill one another?
Or, I suppose, since we have now alienated the Qadhafis and must eliminate them as a future threat to us, what about just killing the rest of them and a few hundred close allies to even the sides, and then letting the sides go at it as they clearly wish?
Given the relative remoteness of the oil, this might not even completely interrupt supply for long.
bear_of_very_little_brain
Yesterday 11:51 PM Recommended by 1 person
ah, the famous 'we'- who he?
'we' the most un_Conscious word 'ever'.
rpmcestmoi
Yesterday 10:25 PM Recommended by 1 person
Oh, really? No quick reboot button for countries? How primitive.
Life is hard work.
bear_of_very_little_brain
Yesterday 11:52 PMgood sense, rare bunny.
giuseppesapone
Yesterday 09:53 PM Recommended by 4 people
It was The Telegraph itself that broke the news that the Libyan 'rebels' are led by Al Qaeda leaders and that its core troops are Jihadists who have returned from killing NATO troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
George Grant obviously missed it. If he had read it he would realise why Colonel Gaddafi has so much support amongst the Libyan people.
stonewood
Yesterday 09:30 PM Recommended by 7 people
"Why we cannot simply dismantle Gaddafi’s regime."
We? It's got bugger all to do with us. Cameron should shut his intellectually challenged gob and NATO should get the hell out of it.
pfbulmer
Yesterday 09:04 PM Recommended by 6 people
This article under pins what many have been saying for months what is surprising it takes the UK media so long to catch up, it is like dealing with the Boys Own magazine !
However the news today that France through the French news paper le Figaro dropped over 40 tons of arms grenade launchers during this month and missiles is a flagrant breach of the UN resolution at the same time UK government has been aware of this but only confirms this to us now and we have to get the news of what is going on not from our own government but from the french paper le Figaro clearly the UK government has not been transparent on what is going on in Libya to British people , what other information will we read perhaps from the Yemen press about the UK and UN members are involved who will, no doubt know much more about what is going on than the British people
Not only is the UN taking sides ,escalating deaths from 500 before the resolution to 20,000 after and now climbing thanks to a further 4o tons of weapons , they have been going for regime change targeting members of the regime
Now to cap it all the UK are now breaking and sanctioning the breaking of their own UN arms embargo and sanctions on the country by allowing the dropping weapons to the rebels by France not to mention Qatar .
The whole twisting and bending of the resolution make the UN look like a the master of ceremonies for a group of contortionists in a circus, controlling and training banned wild animals !
This is a complete disgrace bearing in mind a cease-fire should have been implemented months ago .
This is the final crossing of the Rubicon in so many crossings of the Rubicon and there must be full investigation, this makes a complete mockery of the whole democratic system in the UK , why was the house of commons was not informed of this development , why was this information suppressed
Even the US senate has censured their own government over Libya, it seems that Libya is not like any other country in that any things goes as far as the UN is concerned .
It is time in the name of democracy and accountability that we do the same to our own government
This is the closest thing anyone has seen to a turkey shoot and it is all being done in the name of the UN !!
themoneysystemisascam
Yesterday 06:57 PM Recommended by 3 people
A complete load of neo-con warmongering bull. They should go back to being Trotskyites.
mammal
Yesterday 06:47 PM Recommended by 9 people
You got to love Neocons if we invade enough countries surely we'll get it right in the end. Practise makes perfect. So it stands to reason that eventually we will conduct the perfect war.
George Grant and other neoconservative moral perverts love nothing better than switching the ethical polarity and hoping nobody notices. Greed is Good, War is Good, temperance is weak, pacifism is deranged....oh right, well OK then silly me for being hopelessly old fashioned.
i'd like to beat him up to prove the elementary point that you can still oppose a war and not be a pacifist. But perhaps he would have trouble even then in retaining this simple lesson because he suffers from amnesia or something, because he forgot to mention the Wahhabi-Saudi dictatorship and others but particularly the Saudi Dictatorship - yes, that rather conspicuous country not a million miles to the East of Libya, where women are virtually forbidden an existence except to service men and they hack the heads of Indonesian Maids when they tire of being raped and resort to desperate measures. Where the security services are offered out to Bahrain to quell democracy far more efficiently than Gaddafi. Anybody notice that? If you want to quell democracy speak to the Saudis they are the Regional champions.
randomobserver
Today 12:07 AM
And again, the neocon worldview spends far too much time on democracy and freedom and other such crap and far too little time on useful things like securing resources for the West at other people's expense.
Please stop conflating the latter, sensible policy with the former people's idiotic, moralizing, essentially liberal human rights obsessions.
randomobserver
Today 12:05 AM Recommended by 2 people
In Iraq at least, if the greed for oil had been the motive of US policy the only sensible course would have been to make a deal with the Saddam regime, in 1990. he was not an idiot.
Zeal to uphold the sovereignty of Kuwait could be characterized as endorsing the new world order notion of expansive international law, as a realist approach to world affairs stressing the inviolability of borders, or as an also realist approach to propping up a client state in the Gulf. And it kept US access to Kuwaiti oil on at best semmi-decent terms. But it was nowhere near as good for oil-greed as a deal with Saddam would have been. It cannot be understood as an oil focussed strategy.
In the more recent war, cutting a deal with Saddam would still have been the better policy for oil. The actual US policy has not benefited them AT ALL with regard to oil, nor could it have been expected to nor was it. At best, French companies benefited from the oil auctions.
So once again, US policy cannot be sanely understood as a quest for oil. If that is all they wanted, their policy would perhaps have been more violent at the margins, but much more sensible than what they did.
I wish that WAS what they had been doing all these years. I also want cheap oil, lifeblood of our civilization for the time being. Beyond that, I don't give a damn who governs Iraq or how many people he slaughters.
All of which also goes for Libya. The Qadhafi regime would have been better for oil than anything that will replace it.
j_striker
Yesterday 11:02 PM
one by one we'll get there in the end. saudi is propped up by oil don't forget. we nned that oil so we need stability in saudi.
if loons like you had their way we'd have an oil spike to make 1973 look like the era of cheap gas. we'd then have rampant inflation, disastrous unemployment and the possible threat to liberal democracy via extremism that brings with it.
in other words you are incapable of seeing more than 1 move ahead on a chess board.
loucipher
Yesterday 04:18 PMRecommended by 20 people
Never mind Gaddafi’s Libya. I'd like to see a dismantling of the despotic EU regime
randal
Yesterday 03:53 PM Recommended by 16 people
"Gaddafi said he wanted to “cleanse Libya house by house”. Using regime security forces, he started doing just that. Whatever the lunatic fringe from Stop the War Coalition would have you believe, it was the international intervention, led by Britain and France, which put a stop to this."
LOL! I see two fringes of lunatics in the field of international affairs. One is the pacifist fringe on the left, including some of the Stop the War Coalition, and the other is the neocon fringe who have infiltrated the political right, exemplified by the Henry Jackson Society which seems to have a permanent pulpit at the Telegraph.
Of the two, the neocons are by far the worst.
Of course, the reality is that there is no convincing evidence that the Libyan government intended anything more than the suppression of armed revolt, with the usual state violence that accompanies such activity by any government. The claim that the western interference in the Libyan civil war "averted a massacre" is pure self-serving propaganda, becoming ever more ludicrous as the costs to the Libyan nation of the ongoing civil war mount.
How much taxpayers' money are the Henry Jackson Society and its deep-pocketed sponsors going to reimburse, by the way, when we've finished paying for war, and then for cleaning up the aftermath of war?
randomobserver
Yesterday 11:58 PM
Keeping regime elements and clients in place is the antithesis of the neocon model, for good or ill. Presuming that the term neocon was meant here to have any genuine semantic content rather than be a mere term of generic abuse.
pfbulmer
Yesterday 09:29 PM Recommended by 2 people
Hi Randal sorry I misunderstood what you were saying which i agree with but the use of the word war is interesting bearing in mind this is meant to be peace keeping operation, it shows how far gone the government and the UN is !
pfbulmer
Yesterday 09:22 PM
This is not meant to be a war this is meant to be about implementing a UN resolution and cease fire pointone of the resolution where are you getting these words of war from , we are not at war with libya . There is no offiical declaration of war by the UK , do try to keep some sort objectivity and balence
jbtutor
Yesterday 10:25 PM
The UN resolution has wording like the Korean War, except citing civilians rather than an East Libya or some such. That's why the French think they're perfectly justified dropping arms to Libyan civilians (whether rebels or not, they are "civilians" after all, and not uniformed soldiers).
As long as it's not ground troops, I suppose. But I pointed out to people at the time that nuclear weapons wouldn't be ground troops.. and this resolution wording is so open-ended, legally, nukes could be used and UN approval could be cited.
Hence, "not meant to be a war".... no. It was meant to be deniable, but it was absolutely meant to be a war, and a war the West would win. And it hasn't won. Not yet anyway.
Peter Hirsch
Yesterday 08:59 PM Recommended by 5 people
Thank you, Randal. Good to see the truth being told.
We seem to be repeating all the mistakes made in the second Gulf War. I was in Libya around 1960, before Gadaffi took power. The place was impoverished. From what I have seen in newspaper reports, a lot of progress has been made and people have achieved a far, far higher living standard with Gadaffi in power. So his rule cannot have been all that oppressive. That is reflected in the support he clearly still has in Tripolitania.
I have seen the allegations of massacres. I have seen no evidence. Ss you say, "here is no convincing evidence that the Libyan government intended anything more than the suppression of armed revolt, with the usual state violence that accompanies such activity by any government.." I suspect this is another war based on a lie but cannot tell if the lie is from ignorance or is deliberate.
The next mistake is that there seems to be no preparation to rebuild the infrastructure the bombing has demolished. That cost dear in Iraq.
Grant did learn the importance of continuity from the sacking of the Iraqi Police and Army. Have the decision makers?
besarion
Yesterday 03:44 PM
Cleanse the stables.
But why is Benghazi low on medical aid as run by the improving BBC? Surely Cameron's record aid bonanza would supply drugs and equipment to the side we are fighting alongside? Libya is the Soul of the conscience of the World.Let's help it free itself and see a glorious future.
Mohamed Ahmed
Yesterday 03:05 PM Recommended by 3 people
Just to clarify one point, I urge you to ask your leaders why they do not mention that the Libyan TNC intends to reimburse the costs.
simon_coulter
Yesterday 03:02 PM
I have suggested several times it would have been a lot cheaper to dismantle Gaddafi - period.
The machinery that secured his power for 40+ years involves a pyramid of clients all now scared as to their fate when those they oppressed have a free hand to deal them rough justice. It is in their interest to preserve the status quo - which is why it must go.
Mohamed Ahmed
Yesterday 03:01 PM Recommended by 5 people
The ballot box is always better than the ammunition box. But I would trust elections in Libya in the presence of Gaddafi only if they were planned, set up, conducted and supervised by God Almighty. And I do not only mean trust the results, but trust that my privacy and safety will be safeguarded in any elections held while Gaddafi is still in power. This might be difficult for an outsider to understand, but ask any Libyan opposed to Gaddafi and they will give you the same response. He will be opposed to any setup he cannot manipulate in order to win, and agreeing to whatever conditions he imposes would be tantamount to rubber-stamping his presence as 'leader'. Free elections in the presence of Gaddafi in any shape or form is an oxymoron.
As for the cost of the war, I can understand any Western citizen's concern for where their tax money is spent. But I wish to inform or remind leosharpe that the Libyan Transitional National Council and many other opposition officials and figures have repeatedly stressed that Libyans want to reimburse all costs. I agree with that position. Not only would it be fair, it would also avoid an independent Libya remaining in political hock for financial reasons they have no difficulty dealing with in view of about 150 billion dollars of frozen assets. At present, however, the TNC is having great difficulty getting access
to even small amounts for buying basic needs for the population.
Unfortunately, I have not heard a single Western leader or official point that out, and reflecting on their motives makes me uneasy. I believe that it is an important question and people in the nations involved should press their leaders about it. I urge you to do so.
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