Ten years ago today (October 20), the invasion of yet another sovereign Arab country by NATO resulted in the overthrow, murder and brutal mutilation of its revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. He left a conflicted legacy, but in my humble opinion it was wrong to unseat him by a foreign invasion, as well as the fact that Libya now is in a worse mess than when Gaddafi was in power.
In order to deflect the infectious enthusiasm across the Arab world, which began in Tunisia at the end of 2010, and spread from mighty Egypt and tiny Yemen to the veritable petrol stations of the Gulf, Washington and its allies hastily orchestrated a NATO bombing campaign against Gaddafi’s Libya. Then, 40,000 bombs, 80,000 dead Libyans and eight months later, Gaddafi’s Libya was brutally destroyed; the sickening spectacle of his grotesque public execution at the hands of NATO-funded rebels later on, providing the nadir in a discourse shamelessly devoid of ‘human rights’, and strongly reeking of oil.
The current state of Libya, effectively divided into two (or three) countries controlled by rival militias and riven by foreign intervention from both Middle Eastern and European powers, no doubt buoyed by the country’s promising oil prospects, is a far cry from what Libya once was, and could have become, had the Libyan Revolution not been derailed and snuffed out rather prematurely, with or without Gaddafi.
Written by Raza Naeem | Lahore
