Maswood Alam Khan from Maryland, USA
Last Friday (04 March), vociferous protests by anti-Gaddafi demonstrators were followed by fierce fighting between loyalist forces of Gaddafi and the rebels around several key locations in Libya. Rebels had to suffer heavy casualties as Gaddafi’s forces used weapons that are conventionally used by the army in a battlefield while the rebels, mostly untrained, used what they could scavenge.
According to a Reuter report from Zawiya, about 30 miles west of Tripoli, the most senior rebel commander in the city was among those killed. Scores of people were found lying in the city hospitals, dead and injured.
Pro-Gaddafi militias have been roaming in civilian cars. A wave of detentions, killings and disappearances has been reported in the Libyan cities and towns in recent days, and bodies of missing people have reportedly been left in the streets.
Libya’s second city, Benghazi, remains in rebel hands. The leader of the opposition National Libyan Council reportedly told cheering crowds in the city that they would not give up. “We are people who fight, we don’t surrender. Victory or death, we will not stop until we liberate all parts of this country.” former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who went over to the opposition last month, was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
Tens of thousands of people, most of them migrant workers, have been streaming to the border, sparking a humanitarian crisis. Drawn by an oil boom that brought billions of dollars in investments, millions of migrant workers, mainly from Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Nigeria, the Philippines and South Korea, came to Libya to earn wages mostly as menial labourers.
Among the foreign workers who are now stranded inside Libya or in camps in border areas and struggling to leave the country for home. People who are passing the most horrible and pitiable conditions are perhaps the Bangladeshis.
Nobody can say exactly how many Bangladeshis are stranded inside Libya. Some guess, the number of Bangladeshis who were working in Libya before the rebellion started could be more than 200 thousand.
Nobody can predict what is going to happen in Libya next Friday — or in the next few months. Gaddafi is determined to prove to the world that he is neither Zine el Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia nor Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Gaddafi, it seems, is not going to succumb to Facebook page, the new tool, the rebels in Tunisia and Egypt used for establishing solidarity among themselves. Nor is Gaddafi going to cower under a table hearing rebels singing a revolutionary rap song on the streets.
Gaddafi has dispatched his loyal forces with tanks to pound and jet fighters to strafe the protesters, mostly unarmed. Hundreds of protestors have already been killed.
Gaddafi’s cruelty against his own people would perhaps never be known to the world because he knows how to cut all lines of communication, including those linked to world-wide web that empowers Facebook and Twitter, making it impossible for rebels to network and for journalists to glean information.
There is a loud cry around the world for helping the Libyan revolutionaries, appealing America to enforce a temporary no-fly zone in Libya so that Gaddafi’s forces cannot continue bombing his own citizens. That form of intervention, many believe, may save many lives without alienating Libyan revolutionaries who are squeamish about a presence of American soldiers in their land, given the sour experience about foreign interventions that the people in other Arab countries had.
But, Americans also learnt some sour lessons from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. America might well be overextended at present due to its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. By injecting military force into Libya, many Americans are afraid, America will have to assume a responsibility with all the perils that it entails and may eventually be drawn into taking sides in a civil war among multifarious Libyan tribes.
In case America aligns itself with the Libyan rebels under pressure from the world, many American citizens, who don’t like to see their sons and daughters sacrificing their blood in a faraway land, would not support such an alliance and may give a very harsh lesson to President Obama in 2012 US election.
Even if America decides to mount military operations against Libya the Pentagon may say they need at least six months for preparations. And six months may be too costly for the rebellion in Libya to sustain in the face of Gaddafi’s tanks and jet fighters.
All said, if America ultimately decides to help the democracy lovers in Libya, Obama and his allies in NATO should not waste time dithering over what will happen.
Today the world is at a crossroads when many of the future leaders will choose either of the two roads: one road leading to freedom and democracy and the other to captivity and tyranny. Leaders of the present-day world will have to make the choice between liberty and tyranny and their choice will determine which power ultimately prevails — the power of the likes of Gaddafi or the power of the democracy lovers.
If Gaddafi wins, the road to tyranny will be smooth and broadened as a beacon of hope to the likes of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Than Shwe of Myanmar and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
There are some sneaky moments in the course of history when the civilization faces a crossroads. A little mistake or a little myopia on the part of the world leaders at those moments causes the humanity to suffer and pulls the advancement of civilization from victory back to ignominy.
E-mail : maswood@hotmail.com
thefinancialexpress
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