Libya is a disaster we helped create. The west must take responsibility [View all]

[Catherina]

Libya is a disaster we helped create. The west must take responsibility
Who could object to the removal of Colonel Gaddafi? But what has happened since shames western interventionists

Owen Jones
The Guardian, Monday 24 March 2014

t's called the pottery store rule: "you break it, you own it". But it doesn't just apply to pots and mugs, but to nations. In the build-up to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, it was invoked by Colin Powell, then US secretary of state. "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," he reportedly told George W Bush. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems." But while many of these military interventions have left nations shattered, western governments have resembled the customer who walks away whistling, hoping no one has noticed the mess left behind. Our media have been all too complicit in allowing them to leave the scene.

...

Today's Libya is overrun by militias and faces a deteriorating human rights situation, mounting chaos that is infecting other countries, growing internal splits, and even the threat of civil war. Only occasionally does this growing crisis creep into the headlines: like when an oil tanker is seized by rebellious militia; or when a British oil worker is shot dead while having a picnic; or when the country's prime minister is kidnapped.

....

Some human rights abuses began in the tumultuous days that followed Gaddafi's removal, and were ignored by the west. Ever since the fall of his dictatorship, there have been stories of black Libyans being treated en masse as Gaddafi loyalists and attacked. In a savage act of collective punishment, 35,000 people were driven out of Tawergha in retaliation for the brutal siege of the anti-Gaddafi stronghold of Misrata. The town was trashed and its inhabitants have been left in what human rights organisations are calling "deplorable conditions" in a Tripoli refugee camp. Such forced removals continue elsewhere. Thousands have been arbitrarily detained without any pretence of due process; and judges, prosecutors, lawyers and witnesses have been attacked or even killed. Libya's first post-Gaddafi prosecutor general, Abdulaziz Al-Hassadi, was assassinated in the town of Derna last month.

But it is the militias that filled the post-Gaddafi vacuum who represent the greatest threat to Libyans' human rights and security. "Libya has been sitting on the international community's back burner as the country has slipped into near chaos," warns Human Rights Watch. In an attempt to integrate militias into the state machinery, the weak central government pays 160,000 members of these often violent gangs $1,000 a month and charges them with upholding authority.

...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/24/libya-disaster-shames-western-interventionists

Instead of taking any responsibility, the same war hawks just move on to the next country, squawking about democracy and human rights, without even an apology.

How many more countries? How much more death?