Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: World Revolutionary Center [e tutti l'ati sturiellet]

http://www.tnr.com/article/world/94230/libya-qaddafi-africa-foreign-policy
Judging from the fervor of their celebrations, the Libyan people are
acutely aware that they will benefit from the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.
But Libya is hardly the only country that has reason to rejoice.
As committed as the dictator was to destroying his own country, he
posed an equal—perhaps even greater—danger to developing countries in
other parts of the world. From the time he assumed power, Qaddafi
leveraged Libya’s oil money, and his own willingness to have his
country become a pariah state, to support insurgencies from East Asia,
to South America, to southern Africa. With any luck, a number of long-
running civil wars will disappear from the world stage together with
Qaddafi himself.
Qaddafi always made it clear that he wouldn’t follow the informal
rulebook established by other Arab and African leaders, according to
which they never meddled in other countries’ affairs: Indeed, his
political vision always extended beyond his own borders.
One of his pet projects, in fact, was the World Revolutionary Center,
which he established near the city of Benghazi. Stephen Ellis referred
to the institution as the “Harvard and Yale of a whole generation of
African revolutionaries.” While many of his graduates shared an anti-
Western ideology—which appealed to the Libyan dictator’s own self-
image as one of the few statesmen willing to stand up to would-be
imperialists—sometimes the rebels on his bankroll had no discernable
ideology at all. Qaddafi’s ideological inclinations were often
outweighed by his appetite for power, his desire to be seen as a
dominant powerbroker in Africa, his fantasies of revenge against
America, or simply his love of mischief.
Very occasionally, Qaddafi backed insurgents, like the African
National Congress during South Africa’s apartheid years, who were
fighting for laudable goals. But far more often than not, Qaddafi’s
beneficiaries were as antidemocratic and brutal as he was: Among them
were future dictators and thugs such as Chad’s Idriss Deby, Sierra
Leone’s Foday Sankoh, Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore, and Liberia’s
Charles Taylor. Taylor, the Liberian warlord now facing charges of war
crimes at the International Criminal Court, led one of the grisliest
wars in modern history, overseeing the deployment of child soldiers,
and the regular use of amputations, rapes, and sexual slavery. Sankoh
also played a major role in that war, though he later died in custody.
Meanwhile, Compaore, who has ruled with an iron-fist for nearly twenty-
five years in Burkina Faso, regularly rigs his elections to maintain
power, most recently last year.
Libya thus became the hub of a global network of insurgents and
warlords: Qaddafi’s trainees used the ties they established during
their time in Libya to further support each other and bolster their
staying-power. Compaore, for instance, sent troops to aid the West
African insurgents: He also was the one who first introduced Taylor to
Qaddafi—love at first sight for the two despots, but a match made in
hell for the people of Liberia.
At the height of Qaddafi’s power in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, as
civil wars bloomed in the wake of the Cold War and the price of oil
kept the Libyan economy flush, Qaddafi’s reach extended far beyond
Africa. Qaddafi’s aid—in the form of arms, money, and training—to
Muslim separatists in the southern Phillipines long bolstered their
bloody insurgency against Catholic-dominated Manila. Despite Qaddafi’s
relatively secular leanings, Libya is said to have been channeling
funds to the Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist-group-cum-kidnapping-gang in the
southern Philippines with ties to Al Qaeda.
And despite his much-hyped rapprochement with the West in the early
2000s, during which he publicly gave up his weapons of mass
destruction program and welcoming leading officials like Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice to Tripoli, Qaddafi never entirely stopped
supporting insurgencies and dictators. He apparently always continued
his backing for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a
drug-running terrorist organization that has helped make parts of
Colombia ungovernable.(As longtime Qaddafi-watcher Douglas Farah has
noted, one captured FARC hard drive contained a letter from the group
requesting $100 million from the Libyan leader.) And his assistance to
Robert Mugabe went unabated, even long after the Zimbabwean dictator
lost all international credibility by openly stealing national
elections.
The constancy of this support has turned out to be mutual. Even as
Qaddafi’s rule has crumbled in recent months, exposing his lack of
support among average Libyans, the groups he funded abroad have stood
by him. Rebels in the southern Philippines have publicly protested the
NATO attacks on Qaddafi’s installations. Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, who has backed the FARC alongside Qaddafi, has denounced the
international intervention in Libya, saying that international powers
were “kicking, spitting ... on the most basic elements of
international law.” Even many African National Congress leaders still
have a soft spot for Gadhafi, since he stood by the ANC during the
apartheid era—Nelson Mandela and current South African president Jacob
Zuma have both called Qaddafi a “brother leader.”
But with Qaddafi gone, the insurgencies he backed will either have to
find new patrons, or face the prospect of dying out. Some are already
on their last legs. The southern Philippines’ insurgent groups are now
engaged in serious peace talks with the government (talks that
Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam had originally attempted to broker). In
Burkina Faso, Compaore’s rule is increasingly threatened by army
defections and street protestors attempting to convert the Arab spring
into an African fall. Unable to rely upon assistance and rhetorical
support from Libya, Compaore seems likely to face the same fate as
Qaddafi himself. Robert Mugabe, who seems to be gearing up at nearly
90 years of age for another national election, will also be weakened
by not being able to rely upon Qaddafi: African reformers, such as
Botswana’s democratic government, will undoubtedly be emboldened in
renewing their calls for Mugabe to go.
The rebels who have now taken power in Tripoli would be wise to
acknowledge the destabilizing role that Qaddafi had Libya play on the
international stage over the past four decades. That is not to say
that they are responsible for the mayhem caused by the former regime.
But by recognizing their political inheritance, and perhaps setting
aside some funds for victims of Qaddafi’s international terror, they
will be eschewing Qaddafi’s own attitude of radical fervor. Marking
such an end to the country’s era of perpetual revolution would be the
most promising development of all for Libya.

 
Che poi è lo stesso grande lascito positivo (e troppo spesso dimenticato)
della Guerra del Golfo.
Quando un dittatore guerrafondaio che finanzia il terrorismo in un modo o
nell'altro scompare, il mondo diventa sempre un po' migliore.
-- 
Io non gufo l'Inter. Le spacco le corna.

 nell'altro scompare, il mondo diventa sempre un po' migliore.
senza la scusa del terrorismo, il capitalismo può mostrare appieno il
proprio fallimento senza mascherarsi....un mondo perfetto