Libya

A clash of two bigotries

The violence of some of protests outside US and other embassies against the 'Innocence of Muslims' film will have horrified all democrats and socialists. So dismayed were secular-minded Libyans with the killing of American diplomats in Benghazi they organised counter-demonstrations. The protests were relatively small in most cities in the Arab world, Africa, and south-east Asia, but larger in some places (like Kabul, Monday 17 September). The Kabul protest will have been fuelled by resentment against the NATO forces, the corruption of the Afghan government, and much else. But the religious...

Setbacks for Islamists in Libya's elections

The results of Libya’s first parliamentary elections since the fall of the regime indicate a victory for the National Forces Alliance (NFA) led by former interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril. The NFA is a loose conglomeration of parties (58 of them) centred around a liberal programme of economic transformation and political moderation, and is largely a product of the old National Transitional Council (NTC). The heartland of the NTC was the original liberated zones of Benghazi and Cyrenaica, which makes it all the more surprising that hostility to the elections was most apparent in those areas...

Libya: the struggle for a constitution

Those comrades who live near the poshest millionaire villas at Winnington Close, Hampstead may have noticed the removal vans over the last few days shipping out the Picassos and the Chagalls from number 7. This pad, worth about £10 million, was the British residence of the erstwhile Saadi Qadaffi, now hiding out in exile in Niger. It is in the process of confiscation as part of criminal assets by the National Transitional Council in Libya. Saadi Qadaffi is disputing their claim — although he may be stretching it a bit if he thinks Hampstead will again one day be the backdrop to his playboy...

Libya: peace postponed?

Protestors threw hand grenades at the entrance to the National Transitional Council (NTC) headquarters in Benghazi on Saturday 21 January and torched the Head of the NTC’s car. Under pressure from the same protests the deputy head of the NTC, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, has resigned. Widespread hostility to the NTC leadership erupted into violence and an occupation of NTC buildings, with security forces unable to resist protestors entering the buildings. There is serious disaffection at the new regime’s inability to free itself entirely from its pro-Qaddafi past. Abdel Hafiz Ghoga was implicated as...

An Iranian road?

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chair of the National Transitional Council in Libya, has declared that post-Qaddafi Libya will be governed by Islamic sharia law, and so polygamy will be legalised and usury banned. In Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly elections at the end of October, the Islamist party Nahda won over 41% both of the votes and of the seats, a better result than had been predicted. An October opinion poll in Egypt (Al Masry Al Youm, 11 October) found fully 67% undecided, 10% refusing to answer, 13% opting for liberal or secular parties, and 9% for Islamist parties. (Though on Egypt’s peace...

Libyans' new struggle

Two weeks after the death of Qaddafi and the wholesale rout of the last remnants of pro-regime fighters in Sirte there are major debates in Libya about the post-war resolution and how Libyan civil society can implement a new policy and practice on human rights. The apparent mass murder of Qaddafi loyalists in one of the main hotels in Sirte points to violations which are not just about mopping up the remnants of fighting forces. The dead were prisoners or injured. A mass grave just outside of Qaddafi’ s compound in Tripoli indicates a mass execution of regime soldiers, many of whom had their...

It is good that Qaddafi's gone!

By Martin Thomas On Sunday 6 November we got a small down-payment towards the debate on Libya between AWL and the Socialist Party which we have been demanding, and the SP has been evading, since SP leader Peter Taaffe put his pen to work on the first of two long (and inaccurate!) polemics against us on the subject, back in April. Click here for the written exchanges . At a session on Libya at the SP's annual weekend event, on 5-6 November, Mark Osborn and I intervened from the floor, for AWL. Bear in mind that the SP's annual weekend event is not like AWL's. Sessions are almost never set up as...

From Benghazi

Lucinda Lavelle of the British-Libyan Solidarity Campaign spoke from Benghazi to Solidarity . What is the general response among Libyans to the capture and death of Qaddafi? Forty-eight hours after Qaddafi’s death, the friends I was staying with in Benghazi decided to go out to watch Jalil making the official announcement of Libya’s liberation. I felt mixed emotions. The manner in which Qaddafi was killed had robbed me of the elation I should have felt after six years campaigning against the regime. At the same time it was a historic moment and I wanted to be part of the celebrations. It was...

Another disgraceful article by Milne on Libya

Unprepared to acknowledge his catastrophic mis-assessment of the situation in Libya, unreconstructed Stalinist Seamus Milne prefers to serve up more wholesale historical revisionism. Milne has throughout this year denied that Gaddafi's forces were about to commit a massacre in Benghazi in February...

Seamus Milne and Jonathan Steele on Libya and Tunisia

By Clive Bradley I feel moved to comment on Seamas Milne's piece about Libya in the Guardian today (26 October). What he nowhere acknowledges is that the Libyan revolution has now succeeded and Gaddafi has been overthrown. It beggars belief that anyone could attempt any kind of balance sheet without including this fact. But underlying the whole argument - and this is something I've seen a lot of - is a confusion of separate points. If you want to support/defend/not oppose NATO intervention purely in humanitarian terms - saving lives - there is some force to the point that 50,000 lives seem to...

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