Though much could still go wrong, the case for Western intervention is being vindicated in Libya http://econ.st/P6W1wF
So far, so hopeful
Though much could still go wrong, the case for Western intervention is being vindicated
Jul 14th 2012 | from the print edition
IT IS bound to end in tears, said those opposed to Western engagement in Libya a year ago to get rid of Muammar Qaddafi. Arabs don’t do democracy. Islamists will take over and have one person, one vote, just once. Secular liberals will sink under the sand. Corruption is endemic in the Arab world, whatever the system. Tribal animosities and jihadist fanaticism will keep violence simmering. The meddling of naive Westerners only makes things worse. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, proof that bossy benevolence will fail.
Even now, with Qaddafi long dead, the doubters are asking questions, many of them reasonable ones. Isn’t Egypt going wrong? Isn’t Syria bound to be bloody and chaotic, whoever eventually prevails? And won’t Libya be remembered as yet another wretchedly brief experiment in democracy?
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The Arabs must be given the chance to disprove these prejudices. Their spring was always going to be messy and patchy. Periodic reversions to bleak midwinter will inevitably take place. In no Arab country can it be said that democracy is secure. But some, at least, are incomparably closer to the real thing today than they were when tyrants and autocrats ruled. Libya is an emphatic case in point.
On July 7th the country voted for the first time since Qaddafi’s fall. The poll took place against a grim backdrop. After 42 years of dictatorship, the institutions of the Libyan state have been hollowed out. The habit of tolerance and pluralism will not easily be inculcated. The regime’s collapse left a void that violent men, including sympathisers of al-Qaeda, are keen to fill. The country is awash with guns—about 20m of them, by some counts, in a country of 6m-plus people. Around 60 militias sprang up in the heat of the rebellion and its aftermath, many of them loth to submit to the rule of the new central authority. Some towns, such as Misrata, the country’s third-biggest, seem determined to run their own affairs, whatever the government may say. The fringes of the country, where the Berbers and various poor blacker-skinned minorities live, seem especially unhappy. Indeed, bits of Libya may be tugged towards a Sahelian no man’s land—a swathe of territories stretching as far as Mali in the west that may become a haven for bandits, zealots and Qaddafi exiles, all armed to the teeth.
And yet Libya’s general election has so far gone remarkably well (see article). It is early days: as The Economist went to press, it was not certain who had won or who would form a government that would most probably be a coalition. But it looked as if the party with the most votes was the one led by Mahmoud Jibril, a sensible modernising reformer who claims to be something between a secular liberal and a mild Islamist. He may seek to ally himself with the Islamist party closest to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was tipped to win the day but appears, according to early returns, to have come second.
More significant still, the voting and the count proceeded pretty smoothly and the losers generally seemed likely to accept the result with good grace. Almost as important, people in the eastern parts of the country around Benghazi, the cradle of the revolt against Qaddafi, where resentment against the supposedly undue influence wielded by the new rulers in Tripoli in the west has been strong, sounded equally keen to take part in the election—and have not, for the most part, cried foul. Moreover, an electoral surge of extreme Islamists, some with sympathy for al-Qaeda, especially in the east, entirely failed to occur. Mr Jibril’s lot seem to have won in Benghazi too.
