As Libya Decides: Roles other African countries can play-Jibril Salisu Na`inna

By: Jibril Salisu Na`inna

As Libya goes to the polls December 24th 2021, African countries under the aegis of African union, AU are expected to play a major and important brotherly role to ensure a smooth, free and fair first democratic elections to hold in the history of Libya.

It is very disappointing that while Europe, America, western invaders and other capitalist lobbyist are plotting to rig the upcoming presidential elections in Libya in favor of their puppet candidate, African union is nowhere to be found.

Africa has been frozen out of the peace and restoration process of Libya which is pathetic, caused by mentally induced fear of the west, of sanction and our own mis-prioritization, let us not forget that its late leader Gaddafi was well respected in AU who was once its chairman, which he financed heavily.

He campaigned for pan-African unity, but Africa has failed after his assassination by the US-led NATO backed-rebels  to keep his country even under its military peace mission wing at peace and send away foreign meddlers and mercenaries such as those of Turkey, France, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia and others instead it is the opposite, although only at the beginning of the Arab uprising, the African Union, having designated the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as legitimate expressions of democratic will, determined the Libyan crisis to be a civil war demanding a mediated outcome.

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The AU established an ad hoc committee of heads of state to seek a negotiated settlement which did little to nothing. The committee members were made up of the presidents of Mauritania, Republic of Congo, Mali, South Africa and Uganda, on the rationale that only African heads of state could speak credibly with Gaddafi and that the arrangement underlined the AU’s seriousness.

At odds with the AU political initiative, the UN passed resolution 1973, authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population of the country as they claim it, unproven to warrant it. This was a rapid and rare invocation of the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P).

United Nations Security Council UNSC resolution 1973 referred to the AU’s peace initiative in its preambular section but its legal force was the authorization of “all necessary measures” by UN member states. Despite this limited mandate, the way the military operations were carried out made it immediately evident that the real goal of the intervention was much wider, namely to provoke the collapse of Gaddafi’s leadership. Coalition forces extensively bombed targets outside of the scope of the mandate with a clear intent to kill Gaddafi, a fact demonstrated by the bombing of a compound of villas near Tripoli where Gaddafi was supposedly hiding that killed his youngest son, Saif al-Arab.

However, the coalition failed to set out a plan for the restoration of public order in Libya. It was a series of air campaign by US-led NATO members with the stated bogus intent of protecting civilians but the clear objective was of leadership change.

Tarek Megersi, a Libyan analyst with the UK-based European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, ever says that some African leaders have not yet come to terms with Gaddafi’s fall.

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“During the 2011 revolution, the AU was seen as a Gaddafi supporter and there was a negative view of it among Libyans. People felt it was bought off by Gaddafi. So, Africas` potential role as a neutral mediator,” he said.

Yet there was a need for greater African involvement to end the conflict because the continent has suffered economically since the fall of Gaddafi, and the unrest in Libya has had serious knock-on effects further south.

“One day, you had hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into Africa as investments by the Gaddafi leadership. Then it dried up,” Mr Megersi pointed out.

“You also had remittances from migrants who came to work in Libya from countries such as Nigeria because salaries and the exchange rate were good. That also stopped.”

Mr Megersi said that worryingly, some African states had now become a recruiting ground for the belligerents in Libya.

The Libyan Socialist Jamahiriya was so prosperous and generous in terms of security, infrastructure (notably the great man-made river), in health, education, social welfare and a lot of other back bone of an economy which ever made the country be ranked the happiest.

Philip Gordon, the most senior U.S. official on the Middle East in 2013-’15, wrote: “In Iraq, the U.S. intervened and occupied, and the result was a costly disaster. In Libya, the U.S. intervened and did not occupy, and the result was a costly disaster. This shows how guilt the US was.

Libya is very important in the peace-making process of Africa as if it is stable, Africa will indeed achieve stability, a clear cut-off of free proliferation and flow light and small weapons, put an end to illegal migration crisis to unviable Europe, as it Libya is the sixteenth largest country in the world, the second in the Arab world/league and the fourth in Africa with a total of 1,759,541 square kilometers of land with a large proven oil reserves of any country in the world, making it the 10th in the world.

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The West should be made to face a difficult choice in Libya by African Union that will pressure them to leave before elections on 24th December. The disorder that enveloped the country following the 2011 US-led NATO intervention makes any consideration of productive engagement in the country now a child of necessity, of a must concept.

However, it is possible to conceive a well-plan targeted effort that could stabilize the country. In the absence of African leadership, interventionists and foreign regional actors with their own interests have demonstrated their willingness to step into the fray and manipulate developments on the ground. If African Union and especially Nigeria continues to let foreign interventionists and its few African allies fill the void, Libya’s conflict will only continue to escalate.

A clear plan to help stabilize Libya would require targeted assistance from the African Union to bolster the legitimately to be elected government control over Tripoli and convince the various actors to engage in an inclusive, cohesive process in running the country.

Given the critical national security implications of Libya’s chaos for the Whole Africa and especially the Sahel region, the choice not at now or to step back may encourage further escalation that would ultimately drag more of the West into Libya and to remain. A well-planned stabilization effort now, rather than an unwelcome and compulsory intervention later, would in the long run be in the best interest of the Libyan people, all Africans and of those states with an interest in the stability of the region.

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Na’inna with a peace, progress and pan African vision, writes from, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Student, and can be reached on jibrilsalisunainna@gmail.com/07068969306