After the death of Gaddafi: Revolution and counterrevolution in Libya

Although Gaddafi
was captured alive he was summarily shot. But it is not difficult to see
why he was not arrested and put on trial. Had he faced a trial he would
have exposed all his past dealings with the likes of Blair, Sarkozy and
Berlusconi. That explains why they have revelled so much in his death.
Their hypocrisy stinks to high heaven, as they had made many lucrative
deals with Gaddafi in the past, even handing over people to his regime
who were subsequently tortured.

The death of Gaddafi and
the final collapse of his regime closes one chapter. However, this
merely marks one turning point in the situation. Now that the old regime
is finally gone, a struggle will open up over the future of Libya. In
this struggle we will see the forces of both revolution and
counter-revolution trying to get the upper hand. Here we publish an
analysis of the situation by Alan Woods.

—

Confusion of the Left

Libyan rebels celebratingThe
Left has displayed enormous confusion over the events in Libya. On the
one hand, some people have capitulated to imperialism to the extent of
supporting the military intervention of NATO. This was both naive and
reactionary. To allow one’s judgement to be clouded by the hypocritical
chorus of the hired media and to swallow the lies about a so-called
“humanitarian” intervention to “protect civilians” was stupid in the
extreme.

The intervention of NATO was not at all intended for
humanitarian purposes or to protect civilians. It was dictated by cold
and cynical calculations. The same people who had established a cosy
relationship with Gaddafi, who supplied him with arms and sent political
prisoners to Libya to be tortured by his secret police can hardly lay
claim to “humanitarian” principles. They have not shown the same tender
concern for the suffering people of Bahrain.

The emancipation of
the Libyan people is the concern of the Libyan people alone. It cannot
be entrusted to the imperialists, who have supported every blood soaked
dictatorial regime in North Africa and the Middle East for decades. Our
first demand is for an end to all foreign interference in Libya. Let the
Libyan people settle their own problems in their own way!

However,
the other tendency on the Left was no better. They went to the other
extreme and backed Gaddafi, who they painted in rosy colours as a
“progressive”, “anti-imperialist” and even a “socialist”. None of this
was true. It is true that the Libyan regime (and also the Syrian regime)
had a different character to the regimes of Tunisia and Egypt. But that
did not fundamentally change its oppressive nature, or qualify it as
genuinely anti-imperialist.

In order to shed light on the real
processes at work it is not sufficient to place a plus or minus sign
against these two equally incorrect positions. We must see the whole
picture and not just present a one-sided view.

We must not paint
the situation in rose-tinted colours. But by far the most serious
mistake from a Marxist point of view is to deny or minimise the
revolutionary or potentially revolutionary elements in the equation.
What is necessary is an all-sided and balanced approach that takes all
the elements into consideration and shows how the contradictions may be
resolved. The main problem – as in Egypt – is the lack of revolutionary
leadership.

History is full of examples of revolutions which were
defeated, aborted or hijacked by alien class forces. Libya is no
exception to this rule. The fact that a popular revolution has taken
place by no means signifies that its ultimate success is guaranteed. But
this general observation is just as true for Tunisia and Egypt as it is
for Libya.

For example, although the conditions are very
different, in the sense that in Spain in the 1930s there were powerful
workers’ organisations, the objective conditions for the victory of the
socialist revolution were all present there in 1931-37. Trotsky
explained that the Spanish working class was capable of making not one
but ten revolutions. Yet the Spanish Revolution was first taken over by
bourgeois elements and then defeated, and the people of Spain had to
suffer four decades of fascism as a result. Let us remember that without
the presence of Lenin and Trotsky, and the Bolshevik Party, the Russian
Revolution would have also ended in defeat.

Peculiarities of the Gaddafi regime

Gadafi caricature in Al BaydaThe
Gaddafi regime had a very peculiar character. Initially, Gaddafi had a
mass base as a result of his anti-imperialist rhetoric. The regime,
which posed as “socialist”, nationalised the majority of the economy,
and with vast reserves of oil and a small population, he was able to
provide a relatively high standard of living, health and education for
the majority of the people. This gave his regime considerable stability
for a long time. It also explains why, after the initial uprising
against him, Gaddafi, in spite of everything, was still able to muster
enough support to resist for several months and was not immediately
overthrown.

However, it was a system that concentrated all power
in the hands of one individual, effectively preventing the development
of anything resembling political or even state institutions. There was
no ruling party (political parties were banned), a very small
bureaucracy and a weak, divided army. Gaddafi maintained himself in
power through a complicated system of patronage, alliances with tribal
leaders and a network of informal contacts.

Over the last 20 years
– and in particular the last decade – the Gaddafi regime had begun to
loosen the state’s control over the economy and was attempting to reach a
deal with imperialism, opening up its markets and adopting “free
market” economics and neo-liberal policies. It introduced some
market-oriented reforms, including applying for membership of the World
Trade Organisation, reducing subsidies and announcing plans for
privatisation. Since 2003 more than 100 state owned companies have been
privatised in industries including oil refining, tourism and real
estate, of which 29 are 100% foreign owned.

This move towards
market economics led to a fall in living standards for many Libyans and
the enrichment of a minority, mainly the Gaddafi family. This was one of
the main reasons for the popular discontent that led to the uprising.
In the last period of Gaddafi’s rule the life of the ordinary people
grew increasingly difficult. Poverty levels were growing as a result of
the adoption of neoliberal policies. After 1999 they turned sharply
towards market economics and neoliberal policies. But this only
benefited a narrow elite composed mainly of the Gaddafi family, certain
tribes and the members of the security apparatus.

This partly
explains the splits in the ruling stratum, with a whole series of
ex-generals, ministers and prominent businessmen turning against the
Brother Leader and jumping the sinking ship, seeking at the same time to
hijack the genuine revolutionary movement that had erupted from below.

Was there a revolution in Libya?

The
movement in Libya was part of the general revolutionary ferment that
swept through the Arab world after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
It began with a popular uprising in Benghazi. This was a spontaneous
rising with no leadership and no clearly defined aims other than the
overthrow of the hated regime. This movement had an undeniably
progressive and potentially revolutionary character.

The main
motor force of the uprising was the revolutionary people: the mass of
urban poor, workers and the lower ranks of the petty bourgeoisie. A
large number of middle class people (doctors, lawyers etc.) also rose
against Gaddafi. The main weakness is that the working class is not
organised – far less than in Egypt and Tunisia. It is concentrated in
the oil sector, which itself is heavily reliant on foreign labour. The
proletariat was therefore unable to set its stamp on the movement.

As
in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the revolutionary movement of the
masses had no coherent leadership. Moreover, the situation in Libya was
complicated by all kinds of national, regional and tribal elements and
because of the lesser role played by the working class, these came more
to the fore.

Historically the area of Libya was composed of three
provinces (or states), Tripolitania in the northwest, Barka (or
Cyrenaica) in the east, and Fezzan in the southwest. These territories
were united under the jackboot of Italian imperialism, which in 1934
divided Libya into four provinces and one territory: Tripoli, Misrata,
Benghazi, Bayda and the Libyan Sahara. In order to consolidate his rule,
Gaddafi tried to pit Arab against Berber, east against west, tribe
against tribe. Local rivalries and tribal alliances have made the
situation more complicated and contributed to the rapid descent into
civil war.

Nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of a leadership,
the bourgeois elements came to the fore. They organised the so-called
National Transitional Council. These elements were self appointed,
unelected and responsible to nobody. They forced their way to the fore,
elbowing to one side the revolutionary masses, mainly the youth, who did
all the fighting.

The Benghazi uprising

Pictures of victims of Abu Salim massacreAs in Egypt, the first protests in Benghazi were organised on Facebook. February 17^th was set as the starting date for the demonstrations. In an attempt to prevent the February 17^th protests, the Gaddafi regime arrested the dissident attorney Fathi Terbil on February 15^th.
Terbil was the coordinator of the families of the victims of the Abu
Saleem prison where 1200 innocent prisoners were massacred in 1996 on
Gaddafi’s orders.

The arrest of Terbil had the opposite effect,
since the families of those murdered in that prison came out onto the
streets to protest against his arrest on February 15^th, shouting “Wake up Benghazi, the day that you have been waiting for has come!”
The people came out onto the streets to protest. A large part of
eastern Libya joined in the protests; Al-Marj, Al-Bida, Derna, Shahat,
Tobruk as well as Ajdabiya.

Gaddafi responded by sending troops
against the people, including mercenaries, as well as militias commanded
by his sons. Heavy weapons were used against unarmed people. Many were
killed and this continued until they took command of his military
barrack in Benghazi. This immediately pushed the situation in the
direction of a civil war.

The heroic uprising of the masses in
Benghazi can be compared to the 1936 uprising of the workers of
Barcelona who attacked the fascist military almost with their bare
hands. The unarmed protesters were forced to defend themselves with
sticks, stones, and bottles filled with petrol which they threw at the
military barracks. One of the protesters loaded his car with kitchen gas
cylinders and drove it into the barracks, destroying two walls.

It
took days for the insurgents to take the Benghazi barracks. Under the
pressure of the revolutionary people, the army began to crack. The
Benghazi battalion under the General Abdul Fatah Younis joined the
uprising, which led to the fall of the barracks. When the people of
Benghazi entered the building, they found the bodies of many soldiers
who had been shot for refusing to follow the orders to shoot their own
people.

Eventually, what had started as an exclusively eastern
revolution spread to the western cities. Demonstrations erupted in
Al-Zawia, Misrata, as well as some areas in the capital. Gaddafi’s
reaction was immediate and brutal in the extreme. He used mercenaries to
crush any movements and sent jet fighters and battleship s in order to
attack the East. Several pilots defected and sought political asylum in
Malta and Egypt.

Heavy repression was used to suffocate a movement
in Tripoli, where protests occurred at the beginning of the uprising.
Many people were murdered, kidnapped and tortured. Any gatherings of
people were prohibited and the streets of the capital were patrolled by
mercenaries. Phone calls were monitored. The oppressive regime succeeded
in silencing the movement in Tripoli for a time, until it burst out
again in August.

The regime was preparing a counteroffensive to
crush all resistance in the East. A river of blood separated the regime
from the people. Gaddafi indicated that he would stop at nothing to
crush the revolution and drown Benghazi in blood. The bitterness
generated by the conduct of the regime rapidly transformed a popular
uprising into a bloody civil war.

The role of NATO

The NTC
in Benghazi called upon NATO to intervene. Throughout all the
revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa the
imperialists were unable to intervene. But now they understood that they
had a chance to play a role in the situation. The Americans, French and
British entered into contact with the NTC, which is an alliance of
bourgeois elements and some former ministers in the Gaddafi regime. This
action shows the completely reactionary nature of this body.

But
it would be incorrect to exaggerate the role of the NTC, or to believe
that it was in complete control. On the contrary, the NTC had no firm
grip on the insurgents, who initially regarded them with suspicion and
hostility. This was shown by the incident back in March when British
secret forces were captured by rebel troops while trying to enter
Benghazi to contact the NTC leaders. This was extremely embarrassing to
the London government, which was unable to explain the presence of these
forces inside Libya.

What changed the rebels’ attitude was the
imminent threat of an all-out offensive of Gaddafi on Benghazi. Saif
al-Islam Gaddafi said at the start of the conflict: "Libya is not
Tunisia, it’s not Egypt…It will become civil war. There will be
bloodshed on the streets." Gaddafi himself threatened to track the
rebels down like rats: “house by house, alley by alley”.

Fear of a
massacre, fed by Gaddafi’s speeches, created a climate where the
demands of the NTC for armed foreign intervention could get an echo even
among the masses and those who had originally opposed it in the first
place. The loud chorus in favour of a “humanitarian” intervention
presented the imperialists with a good excuse for intervention. The
politicians in Paris and London were particularly eager to intervene.
This was partly determined by short-term considerations: the falling
popularity of both Sarkozy and the Lib-Con Coalition in Britain.

Once
again the so-called United Nations has revealed itself as a front for
the imperialists, giving cynical backing to an alleged “humanitarian”
intervention. But the main reasons were of an economic and strategic
nature. Needless to say, the desire to save the lives of Libyans played
no role whatsoever.

France in particular has its own agenda and
interests. Sarkozy was particularly keen to re-establish his credentials
in the Arab world, after having backed the fallen dictator Ben Ali in
Tunisia. It has always regarded Africa (especially North Africa) and the
Middle East as being within its sphere of influence. It is no accident
that French troops were behind the coup d’état in the Ivory Coast (Cote
d’Ivoire) that replaced Gbagbo by a western (French) stooge, Ouattara.

Previously
Tony Blair established a cosy relationship with Gaddafi. Now Cameron
ordered the RAF to bomb him. However, there was no real change in the
policy of British imperialism. The British all along have had their eyes
on the oil wealth of Libya, with or without Gaddafi. War, as Clausewitz
explained, is only the continuation of politics by other means.

NATO and the civil war

The
Americans, in contrast to the French and British, were cautious. Having
burnt their fingers badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were in no
hurry to get embroiled in an air war in Libya that could easily end in
another war on the ground. They only agreed to participate under
pressure from London and Paris and on condition that the mission was led
by NATO, not America.

A number of American generals expressed
grave doubts about this mission. They knew that it is impossible to win a
war by air power alone. In Afghanistan they relied on the forces of the
Northern Alliance, and in Kosovo on the KLA to do the fighting on the
ground. In Libya, although the NATO air attacks clearly played a role in
destroying Gaddafi’s military capability, the war had to be fought and
won on the ground. This turned out not to be as easy as the imperialists
supposed.

In a civil war, politics play an even more decisive
role than in a normal war. The lack of a real revolutionary policy
rendered it difficult to win over people on the other side. Another
factor was the divisions among the rebel leaders, and the role of some
ex-Gaddafi officers who were suspected (probably correctly) of wanting
to do a deal with the Brother Leader. If the war was to be fought on
“normal” military lines, Gaddafi’s forces had the advantage of a
professional army with superior weaponry and trained soldiers.

For
all these reasons, the civil war assumed a protracted and bloody
character. The rebel forces were untrained and badly armed civilians.
NATO generals expressed open contempt for the rebel army. The Economist
quoted one of them as saying: “They are not really on a war footing and
don’t seem to really want to fight. It’s just posturing.”

Although
air power can play a key role in destroying weapons on the ground, it
is a well-known military axiom that wars are not won by air power alone.
The recent experience of Libya once again proves this. NATO air strikes
were used to halt Gaddafi’s advance on Benghazi and this allowed the
rebels to begin a counter-offensive. But in and of themselves they were
not sufficient to guarantee a decisive military victory. In fact, after
months of intensive aerial bombardment the war on the ground appeared to
be reaching stalemate.

Worried voices were raised in London and
Paris expressing concern that the conflict in Libya might last, not for
months but years. The Libyan campaign was costing a lot of money: by
early October the British government had spent at least £1.75 billion,
while the USA had spent at least $1.1bn. This was hard to justify at a
time of austerity, budget deficits and falling living standards. The
British foreign minister William Hague made pessimistic statements to
prepare public opinion for a long-drawn out war in Libya.

The
French were even more worried. French fighter planes were responsible
for about one third of all NATO air strikes. Le Monde complained in a
front page headline: “France no longer has the military means to match
its political ambitions.” On 11 May the French Chief of Defence, Admiral
Edouard Guillard made an astonishing admission: “The [French] armed
forces today are fragile and weakened. One should not deny or disguise
it. We are in a difficult situation.”

Turkey, a member of NATO,
was also put in a very difficult position. Having developed close links
with the Gaddafi regime and having gotten lucrative contracts for
Turkish companies in exchange, Turkey attempted to resist Britain’s and
France’s eagerness to intervene. Once it realised that the tide was
turning against Gaddafi, Erdogan was also quick to change his position
attempting to carve out a role for Turkey in Libya after the inevitable
fall of the regime.

However, even the limited bombing campaign
soon revealed severe strains in the military capabilities of NATO.
Splits were opening up in its ranks. The Germans would have nothing to
do with the Libyan affair, while others, like Italy, made a negligible
contribution to the fighting. The British and French complained bitterly
that their NATO “allies” were not doing enough, pointing an accusing
finger at Germany and Italy for example.

The fall of Tripoli

Finally,
the matter was settled by the fall of Tripoli in August. Was the fall
of Tripoli achieved by NATO bombing? The fact that the fall of Tripoli
took NATO completely by surprise is an indication of the fact that this
was not the case. Up to that moment the leaders were striving to prepare
public opinion for a lengthy military campaign. All the talk was of
stalemate. When Tripoli finally fell it caused general surprise. The
imperialists and the NTC were completely unprepared for it. Even the
rebel commanders were surprised, as Patrick Cockburn, in Counterpunch
reports:

“Local militia commanders were also surprised by this.
Even in an area like Abu Salim, supposedly full of Gaddafi supporters,
there was little fighting. Khalid, an accountant in a local bank
carrying an assault rifle, said: “We thought they were strong, but the
fighting only went on for a couple of hours. A lot of people switched
sides at the last moment.” (Counterpunch, September 5, 2011)

The
same report continues: “Almost everybody in Tripoli now claims to have
been working openly or secretly on the rebel side. Such unlikely claims
have probably been made in every captured city down the ages. But all
the evidence is that by the time the rebels broke through at Zawiyah in
August and, to their surprise, found the road to the capital open and
undefended, the morale of the pro-Gaddafi forces had collapsed.

“One
former soldier described how he had abandoned his tank at Zawiyah when
ordered to retreat in the face of a rebel assault from the Nafusa
mountains, an uprising in Zawiyah itself, and NATO planes relentlessly
smashing pro-Gaddafi defensive positions. He simply decided that the
game was up and there was no point in waiting to be incinerated inside
his tank. He took off his uniform and ran.

“Inside Tripoli, regime
supporters similarly concluded that there was no reason to die for a
doomed cause. Issam, an Islamist truck owner in charge of a district in
Souq al-Jumaa, said his men had few weapons at first, but obtained them
by “going house to house asking pro-Gaddafi people to hand over their
arms and stay at home.” Nobody refused. Khalid in Abu Salim said he
thought the turning point in the war had come when Gaddafi failed to
capture Misrata in early summer and Nato intensified the bombing. After
that, Gaddafi’s men were on the retreat and it was easy to pick the
ultimate winner.”

In the end the regime collapsed like a house of
cards. The defence of Tripoli collapsed because Gaddafi’s soldiers saw
no reason to fight and die in a lost cause.

What forces were involved?

Militia fightin Ghadaffi loyalists in Tripli – Photo:Ammar Abd RabboThe
armed uprising in Tripoli played a fundamental role in the collapse of
the resistance of the pro-Gaddafi forces in the city. This is confirmed
from a number of sources, including an article by Nicholas Pelham
entitled: Libya: How They Did It.

In it we have an interesting description of the situation in Tripoli after the entry of the rebels:

“Only
when I reached Suq al-Juma, Tripoli’s sprawling eastern suburb of
400,000, three days after the rebels entered the city on August 21st, did I
feel I was somewhere free of Muammar Qaddafi’s yoke. In contrast to the
deserted, shuttered streets elsewhere in the capital, the alleyways
behind its manned barricades were a hive of activity. Children played
outside until after midnight. Women drove cars. The mosques broadcast takbir, the celebratory chants reserved for Eid, the end of Ramadan, that God is Great, greater even than the colonel. (…)

“Suq
al-Juma was the first neighbourhood in Tripoli’s to rally to Qaddafi’s
revolution in 1969, and the first to turn against it thirty-nine years
ago. (…)

“Several suburbs responded to the alarm the mosques
sounded as the faithful broke their fast after sundown on August 20th, but
the organisation and scale of Suq al-Juma’s uprising was unmatched.
Within minutes, the entire district had cobbled together barricades out
of old fridges, burned-out cars, and other war detritus, and stationed
armed men at its gates. Trucks drove through the streets distributing
homemade Molotov cocktails and grenades called gelatine, and, later that
night, guns they had bought over the previous six months at 3,000
dinars apiece. Based on a precompiled blacklist, vigilantes broke into
the homes of a thousand regime henchmen, or farment, Tripoli’s bastardised vernacular for ‘informant,’ and disarmed them and hauled them away.”

The same report says:

“Showered
with legitimacy abroad, the National Transitional Council (NTC) seemed
in its first days to be having a harder time asserting itself in its
proclaimed capital. Still, in contrast to Iraq’s forced regime change,
Libya’s has much going for it. Its new rulers are Libyans, not
foreigners, and though NATO supported the rebels from the skies, on the ground they liberated themselves.” (My emphasis, AW)

On September 20th, 2011 the US Socialist Worker
published an interesting letter describing the fall of Tripoli and the
different forces involved in the rebel camp. The title of the letter was
significant: A thoroughgoing popular revolution. This letter, written by somebody on the ground in Tripoli, was a reply to an editorial in SocialistWorker.org editorial ("Who really won in Libya"), which suggested that it was NATO that won the revolution in Libya, not the Libyan people. The author replies as follows:

“From
here in Tripoli, it seems that that judgment is rushed. There are a
number of points that should be understood about the situation on the
ground:

“1. This has been a thoroughgoing popular revolution.
Tripoli was not liberated by outside rebels. Rather, a popular uprising
started from within, on August 20th, in a number of neighbourhoods across
the city. By midday on the 21st, the state security apparatus had been
defeated completely in a number of neighbourhoods, and was crumbling in
others. By the evening of the 21st, the first brigades of rebels reached
the city, and fought through the remaining strongholds.

“The
driving force of the revolution in every crucial juncture has been mass
participation, whether in the initial uprisings in Benghazi and the
western city of Zintan, or in and around Tripoli.

“Today, the
streets of Tripoli are ruled by ordinary people. Every neighbourhood has
a popular committee, consisting of armed locals. They control the entry
and exit points to their neighbourhood, check vehicles, and, in the
absence of police forces (who have only just begun to return) act as the
de facto authority on the street level.

“As one Libyan friend
told me, ‘Everything is upside down now.’ Locals have laid bare most of
the old centres of ruling class power, from security offices to
Qaddafi’s palaces. You can spend afternoons strolling through Qaddafi’s
villas and sifting through papers in intelligence headquarters. Locals
have taken over some of Qaddafi’s houses and prisons and turned them
into museums of sorts. The massive swimming pool in the house of Aisha
Qaddafi, built with money that rightfully belongs to ordinary Libyans,
has been turned into a public pool. In some neighbourhoods, residents
have taken over hotels and restaurants, kicking out the pro-Qaddafi
owners and running it themselves.

“The same sense of empowerment, of imagining the impossible, that pervaded Egypt after its revolution exists here.”

This
description, written by an eyewitness in Tripoli, is interesting. It
underlines one element in the equation: the fact that the main motor
force for the uprising against Gaddafi was the movement of the masses.
From a Marxist point of view this is a most important consideration.
But, of course, it by no means exhausts the question of the precise
class nature of the uprising, or the way in which events will proceed
from now.

The writer lists the elements among the insurgents in Tripoli as follows:

“1)
Revolutionary leaders in Tripoli who have been directing the movement
there since day one, in February, often with little direct contact with
NATO; 2) Revolutionaries from Tripoli who have been based outside, in
Benghazi, Tunisia or further abroad, and who are returning; 3) Islamist
currents, led by prominent clerics; 4) The Benghazi-based, U.S.-backed
National Transitional Council (NTC), and particularly the cabinet-like
Executive Committee; 5) The Tripoli military forces, themselves split
into two factions, one under the command of ex-Islamist Abdel Hakim
Belhaj and the other under the control of ex-Qaddafi figures. Belhaj,
who was imprisoned and tortured due to the collusion of the U.S. and
Qaddafi, has some popular support in eastern Libya, and is believed to
be backed by Qatar 6) About 40 rebel kataibas, or brigades, from around the country.”

From
this fairly detailed report we can see the enormous complexity of the
situation, which contains many contradictory elements. It is very clear
(also from other reports) that the NTC does not control the situation.
There are many local committees and militias who are armed and control
the situation on the ground.

The vultures are circling

US and EU vultures – Photo: Carlos LatuffAs
we write these lines, the last remaining bastions of Gaddafi’s regime
have been crumbling. Colonel Gaddafi himself has been captured and
killed. Gaddafi’s threats of fighting “a long war” were empty, although
some of his supporters could resort to terrorism and guerrilla tactics
with the aim of destabilising the new regime.

Even before his
death the imperialists were moving in. The United States formally
reopened its embassy in Libya recently and the returning ambassador is
already trying to help American companies exploit business opportunities
in the country. Clinton has already visited the country, no doubt
looking for lucrative contracts for US companies.

The new rulers
of Libya are even more eager to throw themselves into the embraces of
the imperialists. In a news conference last week, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil,
chairman of Libya’s Transitional National Council — the self-proclaimed
civilian leadership of the former rebels — said the new government would
even give its Western backers some “priority” in access to Libyan
business.

There had been no promises to its Western supporters, he
said, “But as a faithful Muslim people we will appreciate these efforts
and they will have priority within a framework of transparency.”

While
the provisional government had respected “all legitimate contracts”
from the Qaddafi period, it was undertaking a systematic review “for
whatever financial corruption may have tainted them.”

“The stench
of corruption affected everything that the Qaddafi regime did with
respect to commercial entities,” he said. “The bureaucracy was rife with
it because that was the way it was done, and the family was at the top.
Every deal involved a payoff to the Qaddafi family or a crony.”

In
saying all this he conveniently glosses over the fact that many of the
NTC leaders come from the Gaddafi regime and were involved in all this
themselves. Jalil was in fact a member of Libya’s General People’s
Committee, but was quick to see which way the wind was blowing and
jumped ship early in the revolution, positioning himself thus to emerge
as one of its “leaders”.

He continued further in his statement,
affirming that Libya’s new leaders appeared “willing to accede to
international standards of transparency and accountability, and I think
that is a good thing.”

Sarkozy, who had a very friendly relation
with Gaddafi, recently spoke at a mass rally in Benghazi, expressing
France’s solidarity with the new Libyan regime. At his side stood the
British Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, who said the same
kind of things.

“Britain’s help in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi
will never be forgotten and British companies can expect to play an
instrumental role in rebuilding Libya”, a senior diplomat told British
executives on Tuesday. “I can assure you that British businesses have a
role to play and hope you will work with us to build the future Libya,”
Nacua, charge d’affaires at the country’s embassy in London told the
meeting, attended by about 100 executives. The meeting was closed to
media other than Reuters. Naturally, these gentlemen do not wish the
world to see how trade follows the “democratic” flag.

Western
leaders have expressed their concern at the potential for militant or at
least anti-Western Islamists to take control. But the Islamists are
falling over themselves to emphasise “moderation, democracy and
pluralism”. They are all prepared to sell Libya to the highest bidder.
Ambassador Gene A. Cretz participated in a State Department conference
call with about 150 American companies hoping to do business with Libya:

“We
know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources,
but even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of
building infrastructure and other things” after the country had begun
opening up to the West six years ago, he said. “If we can get American
companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything
we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in
the United States with respect to our own jobs.”

Mr. Cretz
insisted that oil was never the “predominant reason” for the American
intervention. But but his comments revealed the American eagerness for a
cut of any potential profits. His remarks are a striking admission of
the economic stakes of the United States and other Western countries in
Libya. They are interested not only in Libya’s oil resources but also in
the goods and services those resources enable it to purchase from them.
In the middle of a crisis, with scarce markets, it is too good an
opportunity to miss.

The interference of the imperialists will
provoke new contradictions. The rebel leaders have been fighting like
cats in a sack. Abdel Fattah Younis, Gadhafi’s former military chief who
went over to the rebels was murdered in suspicious circumstances last
July. Many pointed the finger at the Islamists, but the affair has never
been clarified. After the fall of Gadhafi’s Baba az’ Azia stronghold at
the end of August, the Islamist Abdul Hakim Belhaj (also known by his
nom de guerre, Abu Abdullah Assadaq) attempted a coup, seizing control
as the military commander of Tripoli.

This caused a clash with
several rival commanders like Abdullah Naker, who told CNN: "Who is
Abdulhakim Belhaj and who appointed him? We don’t know him. We are the
leaders, we are the revolutionists, we know everything." Who appointed
Belhaj is a very good question. But the same question could be asked of
Abdullah Naker or of the entire NTC. National Transitional Council (NTC)
chairman Abdul Jalil tried to reconcile the growing differences. After a
contentious group meeting with all the commanders, the atmosphere
became so heated that he was forced to meet the next day with individual
factions separately.

Belhaj has been accused of being a stooge of
the Qataris who have sent him money to buy weapons. Qatar has been
intervening in Libya as part of the NATO alliance, and like the British,
French, Americans and Italians, is actively pursuing its own interests
with the aid of local agents and stooges. This foreign interference will
aggravate the splits in the rebel camp and could even threaten the
unity of Libya.

But despite the demonstrations of “friendship” in
Benghazi, the mass of Libyans hate and distrust the imperialists. They
know that the Libyan revolution gathered Western support because the
land is so rich in oil, and that the British, French and Americans only
wish to plunder the country’s natural resources. The situation is very
similar to that which prevailed in Baghdad in 2003, but with one very
important difference: in Libya there are no US troops on the ground.

Libyans
know that for decades the gentlemen in London and Paris had a cosy
relationship with Gaddafi. They know that Nicolas Sarkozy embraced
Gaddafi in 2007 and bombed him less than four years later without
batting an eyelid. They know that Tony Blair went to Tripoli to grovel
before Gaddafi in order to obtain lucrative oil contracts.

They
also know that the so-called democrats sent Libyan political prisoners
to Tripoli to be interrogated in the torture chambers of his secret
police. The people of Tripoli will soon get their hands on the files of
Gaddafi’s oil and foreign ministries and find out the secrets of the
business deals of Blair, Sarkozy and Berlusconi with Gaddafi – unless
British and French Intelligence get their hands on them first.

Who will prevail?

In
analysing any phenomenon we must distinguish carefully between the
different tendencies, separating what is progressive from what is
reactionary. In the case of Libya, this is not always easy. The movement
in Libya clearly contains many different elements, both reactionary and
potentially revolutionary. There are a number of forces vying for
leadership of the revolution. This struggle is not yet decided and it
can go in a number of different directions, as I pointed out in my
article in August.

It is a confused and contradictory situation,
the outcome of which is as yet unclear. On the one hand, the mass
movement, including the working class, is pushing for its own demands.
On the other hand, the bourgeois elements are manoeuvring with the
imperialists to take control of the situation. The main motor force of
the Revolution is the young rebel fighters who are honest and courageous
but also confused and disoriented and can be manipulated by the
fundamentalists and other demagogues. Lastly, the working class is
beginning to move and express its independent class demands, but is
numerically weak and lacks adequate leadership.

It is not yet
clear which of these forces will win out. The U.S.-backed NTC is quite
weak and has limited popular support. Demonstrations against it have
already erupted in a number of cities, including Benghazi. As of
mid-September, the NTC was still competing with a wide array of rebel
groups and political factions for control of the country. There is no
guarantee that the NTC can set up a workable regime. The weakness of the
NTC is shown by the fact that even after the fall of Tripoli, they
remained in Benghazi, obviously afraid to enter the capital that has
been taken over by armed militias.

Nicolas Pelham writes in The
New York Review of Books: “All made a show of unity when the first
senior NTC representative, Finance Minister Ali Tarhouni, arrived in
Tripoli from the rebel base in Benghazi. But no sooner had they joined
him on stage for a press conference than fresh fractures emerged.
Beneath the chandeliers of a hotel ballroom, Tarhouni forgot to include
the Tripolitans in his long list of gratitude for those at home and
abroad who had chased Qaddafi from the city. ‘He didn’t appreciate the
role played by the intifada,’ said an irate member of the new Tripoli
council, who retired to the back of the ballroom where Tarhouni was
speaking.

“Giving vent to suspicions that eastern Libya might yet seek to upstage the west, the council member added, ‘If he thinks he can tell the people who liberated their city to lay down their arms, he’ll be sent packing’.”

Patrick
Cockburn writes:“The Transitional National Council members have been
slow to get to Tripoli and slower still to take charge when they do
arrive. Abdel-Rahman el-Keib, a member of the TNC, told me that he
thought the rebel politicians, for all their previous vocal confidence
in victory, were “disorganised because they did not think that Gaddafi’s
collapse would be so quick. His forces were not so strong as we
thought.”

Divisions have appeared over who will have control of
Libya’s unfrozen billions of dollars. Local Godfathers have appeared.
The problem is that many Libyans are loyal to family, tribe, village and
town before nation.

Patrick Cockburn continues: “Politically, the
TNC [NTC] looks fragile, disunited and unready to take over government.
By way of contrast, the local committees that secure the streets of
Tripoli appear highly capable. Though there are shortages of water,
food, fuel and almost everything else in the shops, the committees say
they have built up enough stocks over the past six months to fend off a
humanitarian crisis. But the political leadership looks weak, and it is
unlikely that militias will tamely dissolve themselves. The new Libyan
state may not be able to withstand a lot of pressure, but, on the other
hand, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, it may not have to.”

In the
absence of a real revolutionary leadership, it is possible that they
will succeed. But the bourgeois are faced with serious problems. In the
first place, they are faced with an aroused people with arms in their
hands. The first task will therefore be to disarm the people. But this
is easier said than done. US ambassador Cretz cited several factors for
concern, including the disarming the newly armed populace and many
autonomous militias.

Ismail Sallabi, head of the Benghazi military
council, called on the NTC to resign, castigating its members as
"remnants of the Gaddafi era" and "as a bunch of liberals with no
following in Libyan society".

Many fighters, such as Sallabi, are
insisting that they played the key role in toppling Gaddafi. Some go
further, saying that their swift capture of Tripoli had taken the NTC by
surprise and that they had defeated what they claim was Nato’s real
plan for the country: its partition into east and west. Nato’s strategy,
they maintain, was to freeze the conflict in the west, effectively
turning Brega into the dividing line between the liberated east and
Gaddafi’s west.

Soumaya Ghannoushi has written some interesting
comments on this, although we do have to take into account the fact that
she is the daughter of Gannoushi, the leader of the En Najda islamists
in Tunisia. What she writes is very interesting in that it reveals the
splits between the ranks of the rebels and the TNC. She writes:

“This
conflict is played out in various ways throughout the region. In each
case the internal dynamics of the various revolutions are threatened by
foreign powers’ logic of containment and control. What is at stake is
whether the Arab spring leads to a calculated, limited, and monitored
change, where new players replace old ones while the rules of the game
remain intact, and where proxy wars are manned via allied local elites
in order to recycle the old regime into the new order. This is what
various foreign powers would like to see.

“Gaddafi has gone, but
Libya is now set to be a scene of multiple battles: not only conflicts
between Nato’s men and the fighters on the ground, but also between the
foreign forces that have invested in the war – the French, who are
determined to have the upper hand politically and economically; the
Italians, who regard Libya as their backyard; the British, who want to
safeguard their contracts; the Turks, who are keen to revive their
influence in the old Ottoman hemisphere; and of course the losing
players in the emerging order, the Chinese and the Russians.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/06/libya-national-transitional-council)

Role of the working class

The
Libyan Revolution is an unfinished drama in which the fall of Gaddafi
was just the first act. The future will be determined by the struggle of
living forces and the final outcome is not yet decided. Different
outcomes are possible – both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary.
Future developments will be determined by events both inside Libya and
on an international scale. It is necessary to pose the question
concretely: Was the overthrow of Gaddafi a victory for the Revolution or
the Counterrevolution?

By removing a colossal obstacle in the
path of the working class, the Revolution presents new possibilities. It
also poses new dangers. The lack of a strong working class was what
turned the struggle into a bloody civil war. The rebellious youth joined
revolutionary groups. These were often based on tribal or local
loyalties. They were armed and financed by businessmen who provided guns
and vehicles. And due to fact that no independent workers’ organisation
exists, let alone that of a genuinely revolutionary Marxist party, the
political perspectives of the rebels are limited to looking for an
alternative within the confines of capitalism, i.e. within the limits of
some form of bourgeois democracy. All these factors place a big
question mark on the future evolution of the movement.

Will the
imperialists succeed in imposing their rule and subordinating the Libyan
Revolution to their interests? This question cannot be decided with
absolute certainty in advance. There are powerful forces pulling in that
direction. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The
fact that some people are waving French and British (and Egyptian,
Algerian and Qatari) flags does not necessarily mean that people of
Libya will be prepared to see their country and its oil wealth sold off
to the highest bidder.

It is one thing to express gratitude to
these countries for dropping bombs on Gaddafi’s tanks. It is another
thing to accept the return of colonial rule in Libya. It was significant
that, despite its servile attitude to the West, the NTC leadership was
recently forced to come out against a UN security force on the ground,
reflecting the popular pressures that exist. This indicates that the
revolutionary masses are suspicious of the NTC and opposed to the
imperialist forces being allowed into Libya.

The eyewitness in
Tripoli who we cited earlier writes: “The U.S. and its allies continue
to try to subordinate the revolution to their interests. They have
backed a section of the rebels that seems to lack a national base, in an
effort the control the course of the Arab revolutions. They aren’t
interested in a genuine democracy, but in a limited, managed democracy
that is subservient to their needs.”

And he concludes: “Despite
the popular nature of the revolution, the weakness of political
structures in Libya means the prospects of a left wing emerging from it
are exceedingly dim. However, they were even dimmer under Qaddafi, and
the revolution gives Libyan society the space for such things to
develop. It may not come soon–it would require a restructuring of the
economy, a growth of the working class and so on–but for the first time
in its history, Libya has a chance. For that reason alone, the
revolution should be supported. Moreover, the victory has breathed new
life into the uprisings throughout the Arab world, particularly in Syria
and Yemen.

“It’s far too early to say who will be the ultimate
winner of Libya’s revolution, but we do know who will attempt to
determine the outcome.”

This is a fairly balanced conclusion. It
is true that the Libyan working class is far weaker than, say, the
Egyptian proletariat. It has so far been unable to set its stamp on the
Revolution. The Left is very weak in general, and the pressure of the
bourgeois elements and imperialism can pull Libya in a different
direction. Despite this, the overthrow of Gaddafi creates more
favourable conditions for the development of the class struggle inside
Libya.

The experience of how the Libyan revolution developed, with
a bourgeois leadership hijacking the movement, with leaders who were
part of the old regime dressing themselves up as democrats, is also a
precious lesson for the ongoing movements in Syria and Yemen. That
lesson is the following. If a regime is overthrown with the help of
imperialist powers, then the masses will have to pay the price. Instead
of genuine change they will end up with much of the old regime recycled
as new and none of the real burning social issues will be addressed.
Thus the masses will have to prepare for a second, thoroughgoing
revolution to complete the task they had originally posed themselves.

The
material conditions in Libya are decisive in the long run. The
condition of the masses is desperate. Supplies of electricity and water
have been disrupted. There is also desperate shortage of petrol. The
workers cannot live forever on a diet of speeches and “democratic”
rhetoric. They have immediate needs that must be attended to. Now that
Gaddafi is dead, the end of the fighting will lead to a polarisation
within the rebel camp along class lines.

The workers are already
critical of the NTC and protesting against the retention of the old
managers in the oil industry. More than a hundred employees of Libya’s
National Oil Company (NOC) protested on Tuesday 27th September outside its
offices in Tripoli against the failure by managers to make a clean
break with the past:

 “This is a new era, a new revolution. We
paid a lot of blood. We are looking for a huge change,” said Haifa
Mohammed, who said she worked in the company’s sustainable development
department. “We expected this change to happen. But what we are seeing
is the old people are still there, the bad people, the managers.”

This
is not an isolated case. The Economist on 9th April reported a protest
of the oil workers in Benghazi outside the offices of the Arabian Gulf
Oil Corporation (AGOCO) the biggest oil company in Libya to demand
changes in management. The company was forced to retain the head of the
committee who had been elected by the workers. The workers achieved this
victory in the teeth of opposition from the NTC. The report quoted the
words of a trade unionist: “Local godfathers are trying to carve up the
country as fast as foreign players.”

Here we have the authentic
voice of the Libyan Revolution: the voice of the working class that has
shaken off one dictatorship and does not want it to be replaced by a new
kind of dictatorship: the dictatorship of Capital and imperialist rule.
This indicates that the working class is beginning to move. We must do
everything in our power to support and encourage every step in the
direction of an independent movement of the working class in Libya.

The
situation is very complicated and there are tendencies pulling in
different directions. It should go without saying that the Marxists must
always base themselves on the working class and the most revolutionary
elements of the youth, even when these are in a small minority. We base
ourselves on what is progressive and fight against what is reactionary.

Above
all, the fall of Gaddafi is one more link in a chain reaction that is
spreading through the Arab world. Ben Ali and Mubarak have gone, and
Saleh is hanging by a thread. Now Gaddafi has been overthrown. This
places Assad in Syria in greater danger. Abdullah of Jordan is still
facing opposition. The people of Bahrain languish resentfully under the
heel of the minority Sunni monarchy, propped up by Saudi bayonets. But
how long can these regimes last? The Saudi masses, sitting atop so much
wealth, will not tolerate forever the rule of a corrupt, decadent and
effete monarchy. The Libyan events are part of a great Arab Revolution,
which is far from over.