Are we facilitating the al-Qaeda takeover of Libya?

While the world has been focused on the surgical strikes to remove Colonel Gaddafi from power (distracted momentarily by a nuclear meltdown in Japan), one can only wonder at the scant attention paid to Libya’s ‘rebels’. It appears not to matter who they are as long as they want what we want, at least in the short-term: our enemy’s enemy is our friend, and all that. The Supreme Allied Commander of NATO (Europe) has said there are reports of ‘flickers’ of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah among them.

O, goody. And we are apparently now considering giving them bombs and guns and bullets to facilitate their jihad against Gaddafi, without any question at all of what they may choose to do with those bombs and guns and bullets when the devil has gone. You can’t really give a bomb on short-term loan, or demand the return of unused bullets. Perhaps we’ll see them again soon at an underground station near you.

It is curious indeed that while we categorise Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation and are fighting al-Qaeda at home, we are content to arm them abroad. This is the broadest of coalitions in the righteous pursuit of UN Resolution 1973, but it seems to be more than a little short-sighted. Several members of Libya’s ‘opposition’ (officially termed the National Transitional Council) were in London yesterday to discuss the post-Gaddafi world order, which stretched Resolution 1973 to the Iraq objective: it is, after all, about regime change.

But this is all far more complicated than the media make out: Libya, rather like Iraq and Yugoslavia, is an artificially-constructed state, forged out of distinct and separate tribal identities: east Libya has historically been in conflict with what is now the west. Benghazi in the east was part of a Greek region known a Cyrenaica, and Tripoli in the west was a Punic settlement, both separated by Mediterranean trade agreements, language, culture, ethnic temperament and 600 miles of desert. This is how it remained as empires came and went – Greek, Roman, Ottoman and British. It was not until an invasion by Italy in 1911 that the two entities were forcibly united by Mussolini, with a central governance in Tripoli. Ever since, the Cyrenaicians have considered themselves a people oppressed and a land under occupation: they were Gaddafi’s Basque region; his IRA and his PLO all rolled into one. In Benghazi, they were freedom fighters.

The weakening of the strongman in Tripoli is the fulfilment of a century (to the year) of longing for independence. The present conflict will lead undoubtedly to demands for secession, and Libya will revert to its constituent regions. And the civil war will be bloody: we will probably arm the ‘rebels’ in their quest for freedom, and then just let them all get on with slaughtering each other.

But isn’t it strange that Iran has been silent? What do they know that we do not? Are they in touch with the freedom fighters of Benghazi? Is some new pan-Arabia alliance being forged between Iran and the ascendant Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Syria, and al-Qaeda in Lybia? Egypt is about to elect a party to power whose slogan is ‘Islam is the solution’, which chimes somewhat conveniently with the blueprint for regional and world domination and the beliefs of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah and Osama bin Laden.

The ‘rebels’ are not liberal democrats: they are no more concerned with the British or US interest than Gaddafi was, or indeed than those who brought down the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001 or those who bombed the London underground on 7th July 2005. And neither will they be concerned with religious liberty. Christian minorities throughout the region face increasing risks under Islamic rule. While we may naively hope for the region’s dictators, tyrants and medieval monarchies to be replaced with an enlightenment democracy which respects the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, it has to be observed that the hope may be a long time coming, if ever it comes at all.