A reply from Prashad
Prompted by Vijay Prashad’s article in Frontline, and other “anti-interventionist” arguments, I posted the following question on his Facebook page.
Prof. Prashad, I’m genuinely torn over this issue. My work on issues of genocide prevention makes me skeptical about nation-state sovereignty, but as a student of imperialism, I understand sovereignty’s use, both historically and now, as a tool against the murderous humanitarianism of “great Powers.”
That said, I have two particular questions: First, does the rebel leadership, whom you describe as CIA backed neoliberals, invalidate the rebellion itself, including those people who began fighting before this leadership took power? That is, had not NATO forces intervened, Qaddafi’s forces would have destroyed the rebellion, but that does not seem to matter in your analysis. I’m not invoking a immanent genocide model here because this strategy debilitates our awareness of genuine emergencies. Still, are the rebels on “the wrong side of history” or wrong to take up arms?
Secondly, I share your fear that victorious rebel forces would be politically indebted to Western powers and risk becoming a puppet regime. However, given the massive uprisings before Qaddafi’s “unsheathed” counterattack, can we not hope that a rebel victory might open spaces for popular protest again, even against the rebel leadership that would surely try to consolidate power? I’ll hazard a two-stage development model here and say that a rebel victory is (now) a necessary winter before Libya’s Spring.
Sincerely, S
I was glad that he took a moment to reply. The rich historical detail at his command stifles easy rebuttals.
1) no. the rebel leadership usurped the movement. It was not organic too it. No-one seems to care about Fateh Tarbel, who was the lawyer of those 1000 killed in abu salim jail in Tripoli in 1996, and the youth who gathered after his arrest on Feb. 15 of this year…..that was the start of the Spring….the cartoon controversy in 2006 (11 dead when Q cracked down in 2006) and so on are part of the long back story of the rebellion. tribes had begun to move away from Q, and the army units in the east defected. At that point, Q moved on Benghazi….as the AU formed a team to travel to Tripoli to set up a real ceasefire….that’s the point at which a fork in the road appeared. i can think of a million other ways to have gone….it is at this point that the US-France moved to send in their people and to wrest the dynamic…..by then, the spring is over. can it be a two stage show? i hope so, but am not optimistic. on the other hand, dialectically, every move forward is an advance, as new social identities might emerge out of this fight, as they did after 2006 (the 17 feb movement and so on).
