In 2004, Dave Roberts, a little-known British communist running for the equally obscure Socialist Labour Party, stood as a candidate in the Leicester South by-election. He won 263 votes — just 38 more than the Monster Raving Loony Party’s candidate RU Seerious.

On March 9 this year, Roberts took on a new mission as leader of British Civilians for Peace in Libya.

The Guardian reports:

In other circumstances they could have been a group of British package tourists, clad in identical T-shirts, clambering on and off buses with cameras hanging around their necks.

But Libya has no tourists now, let alone of the package variety. And the 13 Britons who toured the west of the country over eight days, had a self-declared mission: to “find facts” about the situation in Gaddafi-controlled Libya to counter what they described as the manipulation and distortion of the western media.

The group, calling itself British Civilians for Peace in Libya, had found each other through word-of-mouth and the internet. They were, they said, academics, lawyers, a doctor, humanitarian campaigners and “independent journalists”, collectively outraged about the attacks on Libyan government forces by “the biggest military force in the world” – Nato.

Roberts fell in love with Gaddafi’s Libya back in 1999 when he was sent their by his SLP boss, Arthur Scargill, to attend an international youth conference in Tripoli.

The Weekly Worker reported:

After visiting the National Soap Factory, Libya’s largest, comrade Roberts was apparently so inspired by what he had seen that he delivered the following speech on behalf of the SLP’s NEC, “which was received by rapturous applause”.

He said: “Brothers and sisters, it is a great privilege to be here with you today on the occasion of your celebration of the great Al Fatah revolution. Here in the Great Socialist Jamahiriya, a free land amongst a free people, I bring you socialist and internationalist greetings from the Socialist Labour Party in Britain.

“Many young people who have been involved in the international camps during the last eight years have seen at first hand and marvelled at the great social and economic, political developments you have achieved throughout your 30 years of revolutionary struggle …

“Those of us fighting for the liberation of our countries from imperialism, and our people from capitalism, pay tribute to the generosity of the Libyan people for the solidarity they have shown to anti-imperialist and progressive movements throughout the world. We hope one day to be able to return to a future celebration of the Al Fatah revolution, and announce that we too have defeated capitalism in our countries and are joining with you in the building of a socialist world. In the meantime we say: Long live the Great Socialist Libyan Peoples Jamahiriya. Long live Muammer Al Gadaffy. Al Fatah forever!”

Meanwhile, here are some passionate performances from Muammar’s local supporters — no translation required:

Jason Pack, a researcher on Libya at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, writes:

[I]t is nearly impossible to imagine that the revolutionaries can defeat Qaddafi by military force alone. Lacking an effective chain of command or training, they have not yet learned to employ guerrilla tactics, siege tactics, or any formal coordinated military maneuvers. Arming the rebels with more sophisticated munitions will not help them congeal into a coherent fighting force. Training them might help, but it would take too much time.

The best hope for the rebels is that the Qaddafi regime crumbles from within — a distinct possibility as key defections, daily hardships in Tripoli under international siege, and Qaddafi’s diplomatic blunders all progressively demoralize his supporters. So far, coalition air power has been crucial in keeping the rebels alive long enough that Qaddafi’s forces may self-destruct. But merely preventing slaughter and a rebel defeat is not enough. Now that the no-fly zone has fulfilled its key humanitarian and strategic mission, it is time for the coalition to shift gears. As Oliver Miles, former British ambassador to Libya, puts it, “Precisely because it is unlikely that the rebels will be able to militarily defeat Qaddafi even with increased coalition air support or more arms, Western and Arab countries can best help the rebels through politics, diplomacy, and propaganda — all of which, if employed with savoir-faire, may tip the scales away from Qaddafi.”

Helping the rebel political leaders effectively requires understanding who they are and how the Libyan uprising began. On Feb. 15, Qaddafi’s men seized Fathi Terbil, a lawyer and activist, for trying to organize a “Day of Rage” on Feb. 17 to commemorate the five-year anniversary of protests in Benghazi against the Danish cartoons, in which Qaddafi’s security forces killed at least 11 people. His arrest sparked spontaneous, nonviolent demonstrations that were crushed by force. Youth activists were quickly joined by lawyers, judges, local administrators, and technocrats who opposed Qaddafi’s repressive response to the protests. Many of these individuals were previously government officials or consultants who had become increasingly disillusioned by the failure of Libyan détente with the West to produce genuine political reform at home. On Feb. 27, the most prominent among them banded together in Benghazi to form the Transitional National Council (TNC). The TNC has gained legitimacy as grassroots committees have sprung up across eastern Libya to select local town notables, who have in turn endorsed the TNC. (Ironically, this practice is akin to Qaddafi’s ideology of “direct democracy” with its imperative for the creation of local Basic People’s Congresses.)

Thus, what began as a youth revolt has been taken over by reformist regime technocrats and defected diplomats, who are the only groups capable of representing the rebels to the outside world. The TNC top leadership has extensive experience interfacing with Western governments and the international business community. The rest of its members were deliberately chosen to represent the various major factions of the opposition. It includes relatives of the former Libyan king, human rights lawyers, former Qaddafi intimates upset with the slow pace of reforms, conservative Muslims who are against al Qaeda, pro-Western businessmen, technocrats with American Ph.D.s, and representatives for women and youth.

One potential shortcoming of the rebels’ current political structure is its heavily Cyrenaican, Arab, and elite makeup. If the rebels succeed in overthrowing Qaddafi, they will face enormous pressure to rapidly incorporate new players from western Libya, the Libyan diaspora, and the Berber, Tuareg, and Tabu ethnic groups. Simultaneously, they would have to focus on the social and economic issues that concern the youth and the unemployed, not merely those of reformist technocrats. Most crucially, after a hypothetical rebel victory the predominantly Cyrenaican fighters will no doubt clamor for their place in the sun as the saviors of Libya. It would be highly inappropriate for outside powers to attempt to micromanage or pre-empt the delicate evolution of the representative structure for the new Libya.

Amid reports that personality clashes may be enveloping the top TNC leadership, I remain reasonably hopeful that the TNC will be able to successfully incorporate most elements of Libyan society and that political infighting and factionalism can be kept to normal levels. Libya is an artificial colonial creation. But unlike other colonial entities, it lacks the social fissures and historical grievances that have led to sectarian or ethnic violence in places like Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The idea that a civil war might ensue between east and west after Qaddafi’s departure is overly pessimistic. Paradoxically, as Qaddafi repressed so many of Libya’s social groups other than the Qadhadhfa and Magarha tribes, it is foreseeable that all the former out-groups will be able to strike a rough consensus about building a post-Qaddafi Libya.

By Anjali Kamat and Ahmad Shokr, Economic and Political Weekly, March 19, 2011

A month into the Libyan revolution, it is easy to forget that what is now an armed rebellion led by a council seeking international recognition began – much like the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen – as a peaceful and leaderless popular uprising. Its primary demands were – and to a large extent remain – almost identical to those articulated by demonstrators in other parts of north Africa and west Asia: freedom of expression, democracy, and the ousting of a dictator and his repressive security apparatus. These are fundamentally liberal demands, but when made in a quasi-fascist police state like that ruled by colonel Muammar Gaddafi for nearly 42 years, they acquire a much more radical hue.

The transformation from street protests to armed revolt happened quickly, certainly faster than anyone in Libya could have imagined. After just four days of demonstrations and violent clashes, the long neglected cities of eastern Libya shook off four decades of Gaddafi’s iron-fisted rule. One by one, Benghazi, Al-Bayda, Derna, and Tubruk, all declared their liberation. Almost immediately, protestors established city councils made up of prominent residents and organised popular committees of young men to direct traffic and guard against looting. Even as state-controlled media continued to describe them as treacherous elements implementing a wide range of foreign agendas (western, Egyptian, Tunisian, and Al Qaida), groups of people in Benghazi set up independent newspapers and a handful of former state radio employees took over the local airwaves, broadcasting news about the overnight rebellion and urging everyone to join what came to be known as the “17 February revolution”.

Libya’s revolutionaries are largely middleclass professionals who were suddenly thrust into the leadership of a popular rebellion. They do not represent any single ideological position, but what they do share is a lack of experience with governance or popular mobilisation. This is not surprising given that one of the key achievements of Gaddafi’s four decades in power has been the systematic annihilation of civil society. Any effort towards community or labour organisation or building political associations was swiftly and brutally stamped out as an unacceptable form of dissent, punishable, in some cases, by death. Professional associations that existed were tightly controlled by the state. Notwithstanding his son Saif alIslam’s much-touted PhD dissertation at the London School of Economics on the role of civil society in democratisation, Gaddafi famously said in a televised address last year that civil society is a bourgeois invention of the west with no place in Libya. Labour unions, he added, are for the weak.

A rare exception in this otherwise bleak scenario was the Benghazi Bar Association whose members had been agitating in recent years for relatively minor legal reforms. Their main goal was to oust the former association head, a Gaddafi loyalist who stayed on well past his legally-mandated term. In early February, nervous about the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world, Gaddafi himself met with the Benghazi lawyers to discuss the standoff. He tried to placate them with promises of reform, and the head of the bar association was dismissed one week before the uprising. But coming on the heels of the dramatic events in Tunisia and Egypt, it was too little, too late.

A Variegated Group

Lawyers, more than any other group, were instrumental in paving the way for the Libyan uprising and several prominent members of the Benghazi Bar Association are now part of Libya’s rebel organisation, the National Transitional Council. Among them are outspoken human rights advocates like Fathy Terbil and Abdel Hafiz Ghogha, who is now the spokesperson of the National Transitional Council. Terbil represented the victims of one of the Gaddafi regime’s most notorious crimes, the mass killing of at least 1,200 inmates of the Abu Salim prison in 1996. When Libyan youth issued a call over Facebook for a “Day of Rage” against the regime on 17 February, the Abu Salim families were among the first to join.

Most of the other figures on the 31-member council have, in the past, publicly questioned Gaddafi’s policies and the terror of his revolutionary committees – and, in some cases, paid for their dissent with long prison terms. Ahmed Zubeir Sanusi, a descendant of Idriss Sanusi, the monarch Gaddafi deposed in 1969, spent 31 years in prison. He is now the council member in charge of political prisoners. Also on the council, in charge of military affairs, is Omar Hariri, who was a young officer who took part in Gaddafi’s coup against Idriss. But since his foiled attempt to overthrow Gaddafi in 1975, Hariri has either been in prison or under house arrest.

A handful of council members held posts in the Gaddafi regime before publicly quitting over the excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrators. The head of the council is the former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil. During his tenure as a judge and then justice minister since 2007, human rights observers noted that Jalil was unusual in his consistent criticism of the regime’s security forces. The two men on the council responsible for foreign affairs come from pro-business backgrounds. Ali Issawi, who was most recently Libya’s ambassador to India, was minister for economy, trade and investment before that, and holds a doctorate in privatisation. Mahmood Jibril, widely regarded as a reformist, was recently appointed to head the country’s National Planning Council and National Economic Development. He is described in a leaked US diplomatic cable as “a serious interlocutor who gets the US perspective”.

The newly formed council is still grappling with the reality that what began as a hopeful pro-democracy uprising has transformed into a war that they might very well lose. Few among the rebel leadership have military experience. While the rebel army has some defectors from Gaddafi’s forces, it is largely composed of untrained young volunteers who remain bitterly aware that they are in for a long and bloody fight against a far better equipped opponent. As the casualties rise in the besieged towns of the west as well as the frontline towns in the east, some estimates place the numbers of the dead in the thousands.

When asked about the kind of Libyan society they seek to build, members of the National Transitional Council espouse ideals of freedom, human rights, and democracy that some of them have spent years defending. But they have no illusions that translating these ideals into practice will be an easy task. In the current moment, the council does not seem poised – nor does it have a mandate – to formulate a long-term political vision for the country. Its priority, at present, is to gain official recognition from the international community as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people and to bring Gaddafi’s intransigent regime to an end.

No-Fly Zone

One of the council’s immediate, although more controversial, demands is for a no-fly zone over Libya. Council members know full well that a no-fly zone would not necessarily clinch the battle in their favour and could well backfire. Like the courageous protestors in other parts of the region, Libyans want their victory to be their own, achieved without outside help. Everywhere in the east, large banners oppose foreign military intervention. But as the death toll rises, the Libyan’s call for a no-fly zone is a desperate attempt to buy some time.

The anti-imperialist arguments against imposing a no-fly zone are many and convincing. Neutralising Gaddafi’s air power may not give the rebels a much-desired strategic advantage over his ground forces, which are better trained and equipped. Moreover, the decision by foreign powers to impose a no-fly zone is likely to be motivated by their own regional interests rather than a genuine concern for the well-being of Libya’s people.

However, at this crucial time, debates about a no-fly zone should not replace conversations about solidarity. The struggle of the Libyan people for freedom deserves the strongest support. The imperative for solidarity with the Libyan rebels is being lost in anti-imperialist polemics, some of which has casually dismissed those Libyans who call for a no-fly zone as naïve or, even worse, as imperial stooges. This is disrespectful to the many Libyans who have paid a heavy price for challenging Gaddafi’s regime on the streets. A more sensible antiimperialist position would focus less on what a no-fly zone means for western powers and more on listening to Libyan voices on the ground and finding ways to meaningfully support their struggle.

The authors were in eastern Libya when the rebels declared that the area had been liberated. Anjali Kamat (akam47@yahoo.com) reports for the US-based news channel Democracy Now!. Ahmad Shokr (shokr.ahmad@gmail.com) is a doctoral candidate in the History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Departments at New York University and an editor at the independent Egyptian online daily Al-Masry Al-Youm (http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en).

The Interim Transitional National Council has presented its “vision of a democratic Libya.”

Simon Tisdall offers a cynical review:

The two-page declaration, published to coincide with the international conference on Libya’s future hosted in London by David Cameron, aspires to all that is correct, admirable, and fashionable in the booming nation-building and nation-shaping business.

Key words such as “transparent”, “green”, “empowerment”, “tolerance” and “rights” litter its elegantly turned paragraphs. Wholesome sentiments about the social contract, civil society, political obligation, and the true awfulness of discrimination (in any shape or form) inform its ineffably do-gooding intent.

There will be those who see here further evidence that Libya’s rebels — or at least their self-appointed leaders — are politically suspect.

Libya, we have often been told, is different. It is not Tunisia or Egypt. It’s poster boys haven’t been Google executives, but youth brandishing AK-47s. If we know the name Shabaab — which just means youth — it’s most likely been in reference to Somalia.

If Egypt came to symbolize the good revolution, the Libya for those most disturbed by Western involvement has in many ways become the bad revolution — or no revolution at all, but a civil conflict whose roots are tribal.

Like warnings issued to nineteenth century European missionaries about the perils of advancing into darkest Africa, the word “tribal” is used to signal no-go territory and a cause that will inevitably turn sour.

“Alaa al-Ameri,” a British-Libyan economist and writer, explains why this tribal analysis is an insult to the Libyan people.

In the last few weeks, the word “tribalism” has been used extensively in the context of the Libyan democratic uprising – a spectre looming over the country, embodying the devil we don’t know. This was first introduced into the public mind by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi during his address last month in which he threatened the bloodshed and destruction that his father’s regime has let loose on the Libyan people.

Disappointingly, this image of Libya as a backward tribal society with no real national identity has been picked up and amplified by many western pundits and politicians – often as part of their reasoning why military and material support for the Libyan revolution is a bad idea.

The regime has two main aims for this repeated yet baseless claim. First, people in western Libya are largely cut off from outside media and so the assertion that the Gaddafi regime has the allegiance of regional leaders is intended to crush the confidence of those wishing to rise up in their own cities. Second, it aims to confuse outsiders into believing that the Gaddafi regime is all that’s holding together a fractured and disunited people. Images of Iraq are the desired effect. Among some in the international press and anti-interventionist movements, Gaddafi’s aims seem to have been met without much resistance.

So what is the reality and importance of tribes in modern Libya? For much of Libyan history, tribal groupings were indeed a prevalent social phenomenon. However, when we refer to tribes in today’s Libya we are simply talking about a historical structuring of regional communities in a massive country. These are not the same as distinct sub-national groupings that supersede people’s national identity as Libyans – an identity defended at great cost against fascist Italy and postwar attempts by the British to divide the country.

Tribal leaders traditionally served more or less as local magistrates, arbitrating disputes over land and commerce and presiding over family law. Once Gaddafi came to power, he introduced the revolutionary councils, which he used as a means of incentivising splits between regions and even families. Whereas previously your tribal identity was unlikely to make you rich or powerful, it could now be used as a stepping stone to a position of national authority, wealth and power through election to a revolutionary council.

The big picture, therefore, is not one of long-established tribal conflict. Most recent instances of disputes based on tribal loyalty have been fomented and engineered by Gaddafi’s national policy of divide and conquer. As long as people squabbled among themselves, they were far less likely to unite against him. Well, now they have, and in a desperate attempt to survive, Gaddafi, his son and his close circle are repeatedly attempting to raise the ghost of a rejected system of patronage which they used to maintain power for decades.

Some of those opposed to the international military intervention seem to have unwittingly taken up this call as the defining characteristic of modern Libya. This handy bit of received wisdom, however, needs to be tested against actual events. If there is any genuine tribal separatism among the democratic movement, why are they still fighting to liberate the west of the country? They now have air cover, they control oil-producing areas and have an interim government with international recognition and support.

If tribalism were at the heart of this effort, why risk it all to liberate towns in the west? Why have towns such as Misrata, Zawiya and Zintan, all a short drive from Tripoli, chosen to join the National Transitional Council – a fledgling government on the other side of the country that has so far been powerless to support them or come to their aid?

Is this a tribal act or the brave statement of people taking a stand against a tyrant in solidarity with their fellow Libyans?

One must also remember who sparked this revolution – it was young people, mostly under 30 years of age, who’ve lived their entire lives in urban centres. How many Glaswegians under 30 know or care from which clan they originated? On what basis, other than cultural stereotyping, do commentators presume that the young people of Benghazi, Misrata and Tripoli are any different? Which tribal allegiance was Mohammad Nabbous – a citizen journalist who established the independent internet television station Libya Alhurra in the early days of the revolution – serving when he was shot dead by a sniper at the age of 28 while reporting on the bogus ceasefire cynically announced by the Gaddafi regime on 19 March?

I’d like to ask those who are regurgitating and magnifying the “tribal” propaganda of the Gaddafi regime through the international press – how many Libyans have you consulted about this? How many Libyans who are not members of the Gaddafi regime, not in the middle of a pro-Gaddafi rally in Green Square or some fortified suburb of Tripoli, not under the watchful eye of a pro-Gaddafi minder, have expressed the views you’re repeating in your articles and interviews? As we struggle to liberate ourselves from this horrific regime, you brand us with names hastily acquired from last-minute reading. Tripolitania and Cyrenaica – find me a Libyan who’s ever used those terms to describe their country.

By labelling us as “tribal” you effectively dismiss the notion that our uprising has anything to do with freedom, democracy or human dignity. Do you place narrow regional loyalties above these values? I’m sure you would reject any such characterisation, and naturally so. Please do us, as Libyans, the courtesy of allowing us the same human characteristics you attribute to yourselves.

“Libya: detainees, disappeared and missing,” a newly released report from Amnesty International, describes Colonel Gaddafi’s campaign to silence his critics which has targeted government critics, writers, journalists, pro-democracy activists — even children.

He is in their (the forces of Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi) hands and we have no idea where he is being held and what kind of treatment he is being subjected to. We are very worried that he is being tortured and if we speak about his case they may further punish him, and that the safety of his wife and children in Tripoli may be endangered.
— Relatives of a man arrested from his home in Tripoli, in the late afternoon of 22 February 2011, in front of his wife and children.

Many people have been subjected to enforced disappearance1 by forces loyal to Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi since the current unrest began in Libya in mid-February 2011, including dozens who were arrested and detained in eastern Libya and are believed to have been transferred to the Tripoli area that are controlled by al-Gaddafi forces. These detainees and disappeared persons are at grave risk of torture and other serious human rights abuses. The true number is impossible to calculate as the authorities in Tripoli generally do not divulge information about people they are detaining and because many areas of the country are not accessible for independent reporting; indeed, a number of Libyan and international journalists have been detained and ill-treated for seeking to report from areas in which al-Gaddafi forces have carried out arrests and attacks against civilians, and some are also still missing and unaccounted for having been detained by al-Gaddafi forces. Other journalists who have been released as a result of international pressure, including journalists from the BBC and The New York Times, have reported that they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated. Some were subjected to mock executions.

An Amnesty International fact-finding team has been in eastern Libya since 26 February 2011. The team has visited several towns and interviewed relatives and friends of disappeared and missing persons. Some have been unaccounted for since early January 2011, although most have been subjected to enforced disappearance since mid-February 2011, the beginning of peaceful protests against Colonel al-Gaddafi’s government.

Cases of recently disappeared or missing persons documented by Amnesty International fall into three broad categories:

• government critics, pro-democracy activists, writers and others detained in the lead-up to the peaceful demonstrations held on 17 February 2011 in various cities throughout Libya. They appear to have been arrested by the authorities as a pre-emptive strike in an effort to nip the protests in the bud following the public protests that had caused the downfall of longstanding repressive governments in Tunisia and Egypt, two of Libya’s neighbours. Amnesty International has documented cases of people arrested in Tripoli, Benghazi, al-Bayda and Misratah whose fate and whereabouts currently remain unknown. They include some detainees who were initially allowed access to their families or lawyers until such contacts were cut by the authorities once the public protests began. Relatives believe that these and other detainees held when the protests got underway were then transferred to Tripoli by security forces loyal to Colonel al-Gaddafi.
• anti-government protestors and youths who went missing on the evening of 20 February at a time when a special forces unit loyal to Colonel al-Gaddafi – the “Kateeba al-Fadheel” (hereafter, the Kateeba) – were forced to evacuate from a military compound in Benghazi after clashes with protestors opposed to Colonel al-Gaddafi, with some using petrol bombs and other improvised weapons. These violent clashes occurred after the Kateeba or other forces had opened fire on, killing and injuring peaceful protestors. Amnesty International has documented the cases of nine men and boys who have not been seen since they went to the Kateeba compound area on evening of 20 February 2011, including four teenagers under 18. They are believed to have been arrested or abducted by members of the Kateeba unit or other forces brought in from outside Benghazi as reinforcements to the Kateeba before they evacuated their military compound and withdrew from Benghazi.
• individuals reported to have been captured in or near the town of Ben Jawad where there had been intermittent fighting between Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces and those engaged in armed opposition to his government. Amnesty International has obtained information about a number of individuals who went missing in the area between Ajdebia and Ben Jawad, west of Benghazi. Some are believed to have been fighters, others to be civilians who went to the area in order to assist the wounded, and still others people who may have been onlookers. Currently, many are unaccounted for and it is not known where they are being held or in what conditions, prompting serious concern for their safety.

Reports from Tripoli, and other parts of the country that remain under the control of Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces or have been subject to attack by those forces indicate that the number of those now subject to enforced disappearance is much greater than the number of cases that Amnesty International – which does not have direct access to Tripoli or other areas controlled by Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces, and where the authorities maintain tight control over information – has so far been able to document.

All across Libya, families report that they live in daily fear of reprisals against their disappeared relatives and many are unwilling for their names to be disclosed publicly, believing that this will expose their detained relatives to even greater risk.

Juan Cole writes:

As I expected, now that Qaddafi’s advantage in armor and heavy weapons is being neutralized by the UN allies’ air campaign, the liberation movement is regaining lost territory. Liberators took back Ajdabiya and Brega (Marsa al-Burayqa), key oil towns, on Saturday into Sunday morning, and seemed set to head further West. This rapid advance is almost certainly made possible in part by the hatred of Qaddafi among the majority of the people of these cities. The Buraiqa Basin contains much of Libya’s oil wealth, and the Transitional Government in Benghazi will soon again control 80 percent of this resource, an advantage in their struggle with Qaddafi.

I am unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on, and glad that the UNSC-authorized intervention has saved them from being crushed. I can still remember when I was a teenager how disappointed I was that Soviet tanks were allowed to put down the Prague Spring and extirpate socialism with a human face. Our multilateral world has more spaces in it for successful change and defiance of totalitarianism than did the old bipolar world of the Cold War, where the US and the USSR often deferred to each other’s sphere of influence.

The United Nations-authorized intervention in Libya has pitched ethical issues of the highest importance, and has split progressives in unfortunate ways. I hope we can have a calm and civilized discussion of the rights and wrongs here.

On the surface, the situation in Libya a week and a half ago posed a contradiction between two key principles of Left politics: supporting the ordinary people and opposing foreign domination of them. Libya’s workers and townspeople had risen up to overthrow the dictator in city after city– Tobruk, Dirna, al-Bayda, Benghazi, Ajdabiya, Misrata, Zawiya, Zuara, Zintan. Even in the capital of Tripoli, working-class neighborhoods such as Suq al-Jumah and Tajoura had chased out the secret police. In the two weeks after February 17, there was little or no sign of the protesters being armed or engaging in violence.

The libel put out by the dictator, that the 570,000 people of Misrata or the 700,000 people of Benghazi were supporters of “al-Qaeda,” was without foundation. That a handful of young Libyan men from Dirna and the surrounding area had fought in Iraq is simply irrelevant. The Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq was for the most part not accurately called ‘al-Qaeda,’ which is a propaganda term in this case. All of the countries experiencing liberation movements had sympathizers with the Sunni Iraqi resistance; in fact opinion polling shows such sympathy almost universal throughout the Sunni Arab world. All of them had at least some fundamentalist movements. That was no reason to wish the Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians and others ill. The question is what kind of leadership was emerging in places like Benghazi. The answer is that it was simply the notables of the city. If there were an uprising against Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, it would likely unite businessmen and factory workers, Catholics and secularists. It would just be the people of Milan. A few old time members of the Red Brigades might even come out, and perhaps some organized crime figures. But to defame all Milan with them would be mere propaganda.

Then Muammar Qaddafi’s sons rallied his armored brigades and air force to bomb the civilian crowds and shoot tank shells into them. Members of the Transitional Government Council in Benghazi estimate that 8000 were killed as Qaddafi’s forces attacked and subdued Zawiya, Zuara, Ra’s Lanuf, Brega, Ajdabiya, and the working class districts of Tripoli itself, using live ammunition fired into defenseless rallies. If 8000 was an exaggeration, simply “thousands” was not, as attested by Left media such as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! As Qaddafi’s tank brigades reached the southern districts of Benghazi, the prospect loomed of a massacre of committed rebels on a large scale.

The United Nations Security Council authorization for UN member states to intervene to forestall this massacre thus pitched the question. If the Left opposed intervention, it de facto acquiesced in Qaddafi’s destruction of a movement embodying the aspirations of most of Libya’s workers and poor, along with large numbers of white collar middle class people. Qaddafi would have reestablished himself, with the liberation movement squashed like a bug and the country put back under secret police rule. The implications of a resurgent, angry and wounded Mad Dog, his coffers filled with oil billions, for the democracy movements on either side of Libya, in Egypt and Tunisia, could well have been pernicious.