Libya
There is consensus in Egypt against Libya’s embattled leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Widely viewed by the public as a dangerous madman, Gaddafi’s four-decade reign, it is felt, must come to terms with its demise. It had initially seemed as if Gaddafi would follow in the footsteps of Mubarak and Ben Ali, but the picture changed when, following mas protests in Libya’s second city Benghazi, to the east, Gaddafi’s forces began to strike back. The situation quickly turned into a civil war between forces loyal to Gaddafi based in the capital Tripoli, to the west, and those who came to be known as the rebels or revolutionaries in the east.
Representing them is the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council (TNC), which declared itself the only legitimate body representing Libyans less than a month into the uprising. Complicating matters further, the UN soon adopted a resolution giving the US, Britain and France the mandate to impose a no-fly zone against Gaddafi, in an effort to prevent his planes from crushing the rebellion. The no fly-zone was later expanded so that NATO fighter jets could assist the rebels by targeting Gaddafi’s troops.
In a region that in some ways remains hostage to ideals of Arab nationalism and anti-imperialist rhetoric, the NATO intervention became a subject of contention among political forces in Egypt, the birthplace of Nasserist pan-Arabism. “There will be a price to pay and this price will be political as well as economic,” one independent Nasserist activist, Nada El-Kassas, declared: now that Gaddafi has fallen, Libya will have obligations to NATO. But the vice president of the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the Freedom and Justice Party, Essam El-Erian, played down such fears. El-Erian acknowledges reservations about foreign intervention, which he says the Brotherhood is against in principle, but he was more concerned about partitioning Libya into east and west. Since this has not happened, there is little cause for concern. But even El-Kassas, in her way, underplayed the threat: “I trust that the people who gave their lives defending Libya against Gaddafi will do the same against foreign intervention.”
