The Libyan Question And Its Ramifications
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—Charles Dickens.
Dickens was writing about the far-reaching social and political upheavals and the profound bloody struggles in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Nonetheless, this memorable passage, from his Tale of Two Cities, indubitably captures the general state of the mind, the spirit, and the anxiety that governs a radical social and political upheaval.
The Arab Spring was thought to have brought about the end of another history and the birth of the LAST WOMAN; a history where the long-lived authoritarianism, corrupted rules, and despotism, in the Arab world, would be confined to the long-forgotten pages of past. The LAST WOMAN, the new dawn, it was thought, would be the age of wisdom, the rebirth of an Arab world whereby Islam, as a State religion, would give way to (or compromise and accommodate with) democracy, respect of Human Rights, rule of law, accountability, transparency, and other equally attractive concepts.
Not surprisingly, when the boiling Spring blew over Libya, the leaders of the Western World—under NATO, led by Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama—were quick to pursue their political vendettas against their declared arch-enemy. How that intervention ended, and the ultimate consequences are too well-known to warrant any further discussion here. In fact, exploring them is not my aim nor, for that matter, the driving objectives of this post. Above all, however, I do not believe in opting for a simplified complexity to explain the tearing forces on that land any more than I could believe that the depressingly ruinous state of monumental proportion into which Libya has since fallen is insignificant to the regional and global security and stability.
This is what deeply concerns me: the human sufferings in the Libyan Detention Centers; the hopelessness, the despair, and the helplessness of the civilian population; the egregious slavery market, whereby refugees as well as migrants are irrespectively sold at auctions; the glaring impotence of the African leaderships to meet the hopes and aspirations of its youths so as to enable them to realize their dreams of betterments without risking their lives in variously perilous endeavors; the corrupted African leaders who would prefer to destroy their countries and impoverish their people rather than face destruction themselves; the impotency of the continental bloc (the AU) only good for legitimizing the illegitimate African despots; etc.
The winter ahead will be a winter of profound despair!
P.S. Accuse me of cynicism and pessimism, if you wish. Neither of these two words are included in my dictionary of life. I do not subscribe to wistful thinking any more than I sympathize with willful blindness. My only crime, however, is to describe things as they are to whomever wishes to know…