Gadaffi killed – revolution continues

Libyans in Manchester celebrate Gadaffi's death

“The reported killing of Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte today will mark a new round of celebration by western governments over their intervention in Libya” wrote Lindsey German from the Counterfire website after Gadaffi’s death.

That may well be true, but more importantly many thousands of Libyan people – those still in the country, and those abroad – stayed up all Thursday night singing, chanting and celebrating the fall of one of the world’s most brutal dictators.

And what a fall it was. From being a multi-billion dollar despot, leader of one of the most oil rich countries in the world, the Colonel died a mess of dirt and blood and the hands of his own people.

One Libyan told the Kuwait Times, “Throw him in a hole, in the sea, in garbage. No matter. He is lower than a donkey or a dog and only foreigners say they care about how we killed him. And they are lying.”

NATO takeover?

The nature of the Libyan revolution has been difficult for some parts of the international left to stomach. Not only was it a revolution of the most extreme violence and bloodshed, but it was complicated by the involvement of NATO forces who tried to co-opt the revolution for their own greedy oil-grabbing ends.

This has led some left-wing commentators to compare it unfavourably to the Egyptian revolution, which did not erupt in civil war (at least not yet), and did not involve NATO fighter jets. Socialist Worker nodded approvingly, “Egypt shows the real way to win freedom and democracy across the region.”

Whilst the battle for Libya was continuing, Richard Seymour from the Socialist Workers Party and Lenin’s Tomb wrote, “I would strongly caution against getting carried away with the prospect of permanent revolution here.”

But the Libyan revolution had to take a different path to that of Egypt. In doing so, and destroying the police and the army the revolution in some ways has gone a stage further than in Egypt or Tunisia.

Obstacles

Whilst the state armies in Egypt and Tunisia refused to follow orders to massacre those taking part in the huge demonstrations, the Libyan revolution had to deal with a fine-tuned and sophisticated system of [counter] revolutionary committees, designed specifically to be a counter-weight to any potentially military rebellion, fiercely loyal only to Gaddafi himself.

Whilst the masses of workers in Tunisia and Egypt shut down the country, and took to the streets in general strikes, supporting the revolutions, Libyan industry was primarily serviced by migrant workers and contractors who fled the country when the crackdown began.

And finally, the uniquely despotic nature of the Gaddafi regime, prepared even to bombard its own people from the air meant the Libyan revolution was pushed into civil war from the moment it began.

NATO sensed an opportunity to exploit the situation and did so. But their options were limited. They would have loved to send in ground troops to “police” the cities and towns, to “restore stability”, to “protect” Libya’s oil infrastructure and to “aid redevelopment”.

However expenditure cuts at home, commitments in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and most importantly the dynamic of millions rebelling against western-backed dictators across the region made this impossible, as did the likely hostility of many Libyan resistance fighters. It was in fact the revolutionary dynamic of the situation in Libya and in now so many other countries that prevented much deeper NATO involvement. A full scale invasion would have set the region on fire against imperialism.

Instead, France, Britain and the US used their access to high-tech weaponry to strengthen the self-appointed ‘Libyan Transitional Council’ as a leadership with real military clout in a military struggle. But this was in the absence of organic political legitimacy and support in the country including among the rebel fighters.

NATO hoped to develop allies in a new Libya out of the TNC, who would be reliant on western support for their political influence, and so willing to further imperialist involvement, allowing the seizure of the country’s natural resources.

The danger that this could happen is very live and very real if the pro-NATO Transitional Council are able to win substantial support from the Libyan masses. But that hasn’t happened yet, and at this point it is the revolutionary struggle in Libya that will determine its direction, not NATO High Command.

The death of Gadaffi, and the thousands of ordinary Libyans still organised in militias that are refusing to disband, represent a milestone in an ongoing revolution, not a strategic victory for western imperialism. It is what happens now that could be decisive.