Libya is burning, and it just keeps getting worse.
Word now from Libyan expats, confirmed by al-Jazeera, is that Libyan Air Force jets are bombing groups of protesters. This after Libyan military forces unleash literally every other weapon they have, including assault rifles, mortars, artillery, and in a particularly sick if ineffective attempt to strike back, anti-tank and anti-air missiles. The entire country, including Tripoli, is in chaos. The entire Libyan UN delegation (among pretty much every Libyan diplomat outside the country) has essentially defected and is calling on the UN to make Libya a no-fly zone to “stop the genocide”. Gaddafi has pretty definitely left the capitol, and may have left the country (Venezuela is denying that they offered asylum).
It’s becoming pretty clear that if Gaddafi’s government is going to survive the week, it will do so only through the expedient of assembling piles of skulls in every town square. Sadly, this is clearly not beyond their will. It may be beyond their ability at this point, though.
The bombings might explain the 2 Libyan Mirage jets that landed in Malta this afternoon, which arrived with 2 helicopters. Unless they were specifically flying cover for whoever was on the helicopters, it might be they didn’t want to bomb their fellow countrymen.
Edit: “Karl Stagno-Novarra, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Malta, reports the pilots of the jet fighters that landed there are “senior colonels”, who were ordered to bomb protesters. They refused and have defected to Malta, he said.”
Jesus, I was wondering why we didn’t have a thread on this yet, but I hadn’t heard about the bombing. That’s insane. NPR was just talking about Libya and had the casualties at 200, I think they’re behind the times.
I have maintained that popular protests against a regime willing to endlessly escalate in terms of vioent responses cannot be successful. Now that’s being put to the test I can say i have never more hoped to be wrangle. Because seriously, fuck those guys.
I’m guessing that they didn’t send their entire air force to bomb protesters*. So two pilots out of however many they sent out. Still, that anyone at all would carry out an order to bomb their own countrymen is pretty disheartening.
*(Although maybe that’s not a safe assumption, given the craziness of the Libyan government’s response thus far).
Libyan society is very tribal. Ghadaffi plays the tribes off one another as a means to maintain power, and he maintains those tribal separations in the military.
You could very well see a civil war as the military fractures amongst tribal lines. Those tribes that feel that they could lose everything could very well fight. Others might side with protestors, especially if they hale from the same tribes.
And the other element in this are mercenaries. Since the military is splintered, Ghadaffi also heavily relies on mercenaries. Those guys might not have compunctions about gunning down Libyans, or they may feel that if they don’t have a way out, they’re going to line up against the wall anyway. And I imagine we’re talking about African mercenaries and not Western mercs; guys that participated in shit like the Congo and have no qualms about gunning down women and children.
A lot of the really hard-core nasty stuff is being done by “foreign mercenaries”, reportedly Africans who don’t speak Arabic. And yeah, if they came from the Congo or Sierra Leone (both places Gaddafi has fucked with to their great detriment) these are the kinds of people who lop limbs off civilians for fun.
The thing is, as this guy writes - dictatorships simply can’t survive once they truly lose the consent of the governed. As Gaddafi is discovering, you only have so many bullets, and every one you fire pisses off everyone who sees you firing it. Yes, sometimes (as in Tienanmen) the initial shock can scare people into cowed submission, but when you go full nutbar crazy as the Libyan military has? The people left standing are people with nothing to lose. They’re going to overthrow Gaddafi now, the only question is how many thousands of people have to die to get there.
Apples/Oranges. Mubarak didn’t have the support of the military from the start so this was never an option.
On this whole situation:
In December, I felt proud that Tunisians stood tall in demanding their freedom when a couple dozen were killed. In January I felt in awe as Egyptians stood a bit taller in the face of hundreds being killed. Today, I know that Libyans stand the tallest of all as they show the world that even military power can’t silence them.
Yeah he’s gone. It’s only a question of how badly he fucks the place up on his way out. Two of the largest tribal groups (Al-Zuwayya and Al-Warfalli) have renounced him. The military is already fracturing. Hopefully the government that remains capitulates quickly and stops paying the mercs. No pay = no play.
