Naveed Dar
The United States of America intervenes and intervenes at will, though it is not free of cost. They always seek a price; ask the Afghans and Iraqis, who lay as sitting ducks under its fighter planes and military boots. The human content of their ‘humanistic’ intervention is limited to the extent of objectives and interests which the Americans can extract overtly and their installed stooges covertly.
That is the reason why United States of America did not support the Arab revolutions, except for press releases from State department, in Egypt and other Arab countries, because their interests were best secured by means of a status quo; through dictators, protected and supported by this ‘promoter’ and ‘enforcer’ of ‘democracy’.
US has not fully endorsed the revolution in Syria, though itching for a regime change for its own agenda, and never will: not at least in near future because it has not yet fully found puppets to run the show for them as the Syrians are running the theatre of operations by themselves. Americans are still deprived of the control and command they seek before its ‘altruistic’ intervention, never mind that the unarmed humans are the biggest casualty of such intervention forced down the throat of nations.
Yemen is yet another example of selective ‘humanistic’ intervention of America.
It is in the same context of overt and covert pursuance of agendas that Pakistan and Turkey, both allies of America. But Pakistan is unstable and its nuclear arsenal is not ‘safe’ while as Turkey is stable. The reason being simple enough: Pakistan, the only Muslim nuclear nation which never completely obliged to American interests in the region, must be unstable or else equation can turn pretty nasty for America in Afghanistan. And Turkey? It’s where secularism has been so enshrined into its nationhood that even the government lead by Islamists cannot shrug it off, and its proximity with European Union is the best bet in a region of fickle friends.
Libya however stands apart from all the above nations, as a case study of America’s ‘humanistic’ intervention.
‘The Libyan scene’
America came, intervened and never left, in fact it never does, not from a single inch it puts its jackboot on. American interests are too long-term that a country won’t be left on its own in decades, let alone years. If it were not for American trillion-dollar political and economic interests (They pursue them with such coherence that you can hardly distinguish) they would not have run even one-million dollar sortie of such intervention: No, not even in its backyard, let alone thousands of miles away, particularly given the mess its economy is in.
Libya had a dictator that was not American-installed and never came under the servitude of their hegemony. He had a long history of pursuing counter-American agendas and thus against the West also, well implied. As soon as America got a sniff, as did all its ‘obliging’ stooges, it intervened on behalf of the ‘new found’ humans of Libya, and of course rest of the world watched and applauded.More civilians were killed by air-strikes of American backed by NATO than in the fighting between warring factions of the Libyan civil war.
This was the overt part, and how on earth would it not be followed by covert theatre of operations. After all CIA also has got a PR department of its own. Rest assured those in power in Libya would be America ‘frientamely’- friendly and tamed; they will pursue its interests unhindered, in a secure base, and remember not for years but decades.
‘Mission unaccomplished’
However, the ground scenario in Libya changed differently than what America had imagined as in its post-intervention ‘peaceful’ era. There were certain variables in the Libyan equation which America could not control and could not be at ‘peace’ with. Not all in the Libyan civil war were driven by pursuits of regime change only, hence not aligned to American interests; they were the Islamists of Libya, labeled with one common brush as militias.
Their convergence for the Pan-Islamic cause runs all across the Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular.
Besides, Libya is inhabited by different tribes with allegiances running all across. Even now we find pro-Gaddafi tribes in Libya, particularly around Gaddafi’s hometown, Sirte. This was not what America had thought of, particularly with the Islamists, believing that they would be eliminated and persecuted by the ‘chosen ones’; in the same manner as the dictators of Arab countries had done for it, for decades.
But Islamists in Libya prevailed, in strength and influence too. Many groups in Libya resisted growing American influence in their country, at the same time sticking to their own interpretation of the Islam. The example of this was the destruction of some shrines, housing hundreds of graves, in Libya by the Islamists which had a tacit approval from Interior Ministry. But America could not make further advancements as it knew as long as such elements remained in Libya it could never pursue its objectives unhindered and the scene for the next ‘humanistic’ intervention could not be created as of yet.
‘No to overt, always yes to covert’
So the scenario after the appearance of a blasphemous movie, ‘Innocence of Muslims’, and the killing of the American ambassador (who somehow was not to be found in capital Tripoli, but in Benghazi, that too with inadequate security) effectively ensured that public opinion turned against these Islamists. It was a state-managed platform for liberals, who stood for nothing before that, but were now up against the Islamists, dubbed militias, for their ‘killed American friend’.
Now we see parallel rallies being held in Libya. While the rest of the whole Muslim world is protesting against the blasphemous movie, in Libya there are protests against the militias, demanding they be disbanded and disarmed. This is to effectively ensure that Islamists are purged out of the Libyan scene and ‘friends of America’ remain the only opinion makers – a soft Muslim world, the eternal dream of America and the West.
This is why long before an apology from America could be heard by Muslims their special forces had landed in Libya. And America has somehow and somewhat achieved what it sought, with police and their ‘friends’ running over many bases of militia and disarming them. And it won’t stop till all ‘dangers’ are eliminated.
(The views are author’s own)
