Esquire's Politics Blog: 5 Post-Qaddafi Realities for Libya and the Rest of Us
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 11:35AM 
They came to bury Muammar Qaddafi, not capture him. After more than four decades of rule, he was still in the business of threatening and killing Libyans — a kind of start-up insurgency that would never go away. So if Qaddafi is indeed dead, then so much the better; the great bogeyman has been removed from the scene. Of course the world will (temporarily at least) lament the violence required for his departure from power, but as dictator-toppling exercises go, this one was about as good as it gets: First, the Arab Spring's power of example, then the rebels-turned-ruling-military-force driving him out from below, and finally an enabling from the human rights-minded powers that be.
But still: How did we really get here? And, perhaps more importantly, what now?
Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.
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Reader Comments (4)
Nato air power combined with a rag tag army of civilians on the ground. One year ago, no one would have predicted this. There are still some surprises left in the world.
The Libyans are happy and there are no American flags burning.
I agree with most of what you wrote, but there is a difference between "Arab big men" and "Sub-Saharan African big men".
Gaddafi was an Arab big man and he came to power during the last great move in the Arab World - i.e. the Nasser inspired revolutions of the fifties and sixties.
African Arabs are more homogeneous, less tribal and better educated than most Sub-Saharan Africans. That's an important distinction.
Mugabe, Museveni, Dos Santos, Dennis Sassou Nguesso, Joseph Kabila, Meles Zenawi, Isaias Afewerki, Idris Deby, Ali Bongo and Eyadema (that's not all - quite a long list!) are typical Sub-Saharan African big men - and they are not going anywhere. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the dynamics are different.
SSA is full of artificial states in which each tribes jostle for influence and the big man is first a tribal champion. The big man usually comes from the tribe that controls the armed forces. In countries where competition between tribes is intense or where tribes are evenly matched in terms of population (no dominant tribe), there is usually either a relatively decent democracy (Ghana, Zambia) or a "Big Man class" (with representatives from all major tribes - Nigeria).
(The 2007 election violence in Kenya resulting from a power struggle between two "big men" - Odinga (Luo) and Kibaki (Kikuyu). A power-sharing accommodation between Odinga and Kibaki was hammered out, but the next set of elections will determine whether the Luo and Kikuyu (Uhuru Kenyatta?) can live together in peace).
Even South Africa is regressing to the norm (Mandela > Mbeki > Zuma > Julius Malema?).
SSA went through a period of "revolution" triggered by economic problems in the eighties and nineties, but the results were different because everything quickly degenerated into an inter-tribal food fight. We are living with the results - Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and nobody really knows who is fighting who in Congo DRC.
SSA "Big Men" are not going anywhere anytime soon. To deal with the problem of big men, the problem of tribalism has to be dealt with and to deal with tribalism, you've got to (a) redraw borders (b) rejig the architecture of governance and (c) educate the people. The big men, being quite smart are not enthusiastic about (a), (b) or (c) and nobody outside Africa really wants to deal with that tar baby.
As a bonafide Sub-Saharan African, I can tell you that our "Big Men" are here to stay, it will take us at least two generations to get rid of them and the process will be organic, not imposed from above (or beyond).
That's why intervention in SSA should be looked at very differently from intervention in the Arabic North. You cannot simply apply the lessons learned in Libya to say, Nigeria or Congo.
Just wanted to point that out.
Agree with distinction.
Had to mange word constraint on that one.
But disagree on time horizon. In two generations time (roughly 40 years), Africa will have travel many light-years in terms of developmental time. The big men will fall must faster than you think. The continent will be transformed within two decades at best, with most of the change in the next ten years.
Disagree with you about the time frame.
A lot of us speak English, but we don't think in English. Because so few of you speak any African language (Swahili, Xhosa, Zulu, Hausa etc) you haven't got a handle on what we really think and you don't understand the dynamics at play in our corner of the World.
The "Big Man" is a product of our culture and fifty years (two generations) of post-colonial history. He can't be erased in one generation.
The Arab World, has a common identity - Arabic culture and language, Islam. On the other hand, Sub-Saharan Africa is a maze of artificial states with arbitrary drawn borders lacking a common national identity. The fundamental challenge here is not to create a more representative democracy or even economic development, but to build a common national identity - because many national projects in SSA have been subject to very serious failures.
Cast your mind back to the fifties, Sudan gains independence and Dinka tribesmen almost immediately start an insurrection, forty odd years later and 2.5 million dead, they've got their own nation. In the sixties, Katanga tries to secede from the Congo, Lumumba is killed, Mobutu comes to power, is overthrown by another big man, civil war ensues, 5 million die. In Nigeria, a power struggle between the Igbo and Hausa / Fulani manifests itself as the Nigerian Civil War, one million die, Hausa / Fulani dominate Nigerian politics for the next thirty years.
A power struggle between Savimbi and Dos Santos in Angola is misinterpreted by Reagan and the Soviets as a struggle between Communism and Capitalism - it was more of a struggle between two African big men and their followers, Dos Santos wins, but Savimbi's people are still simmering.
In the nineties, Charles Taylor destablises Liberia, an inter-ethnic free for all ensues. Foday Sankoh is impressed with Taylor's success, does the same thing next door in Sierra Leone. In Ivory Coast, the first big man, Houphouet-Boigny dies (and Ivoirian stability is buried with him). Since he was from the South and the North wanted a piece of the action, the North and South divide leads to a long Civil War, the South rallies behind Gbagbo, the French keep a tense peace. Gbagbo loses a "rigged election" (depends on who you talk to), another "Big Man" comes to power - Outtara (or his North Ivoirean backers).
The patterns are the same, SSA has endured fifty very bloody years of war over arbitrary lines drawn in the sand drawn by a couple of stupid Europeans drunk on their hubris at Berlin. These Europeans are your closest allies and you still defer to them on African policy.
Most SS Africans who have experienced the past fifty (very bloody years) have absorbed a few key lessons.
1. The national borders make no sense and the State is increasingly irrelevant. (Doesn't provide social services, whatever little social services on offer come courtesy of Bill Gates, USAID, EU or some other NGO).
2. The State is not working because of inter-ethnic / inter-religious bickering and a more homogeneous state would be preferable (Sharia Emirate in Northern Nigeria, South Cote D'Ivoire as a separate nation from the North).
3. My ethnic group has a long history and my family and my ethnic group provided me with the support structure to survive the brutality, poverty and uncertainty of the last fifty years. (This role is increasingly being shared by fundamentalist Christian and Muslim organisations).
4. I need an ethnic champion ("Big Man") to champion the cause of my tribe at the center.
5. I would very much like our "Big Man" to be the biggest SOB at the center, gives me some psychic satisfaction, although it doesn't mean much in the scheme of things.
6. He may be an SOB, but at least he is our SOB - (Mugabe couldn't have held on for as long as he has without Shona support).
No amount of twitter, facebook or globalization can erase the hard lessons learned over two generations (and more). So it will take at least two more generations and a UNSC less dominated by the World's great ex-colonial powers (Britain, France and Russia) to sort out the cultural, political, psychological and economic mess called SSA.
(The Brits are not going to admit to you that they were so stupid that they didn't see the folly of forcing an an unhappy marriage between conservative Christianity and conservative Islam - they did it TWICE: Nigeria and Sudan).
It helps that Carter Ham can speak Swahili. However, this is not really a military gig. With 25% of the State Budget being spent on the "Vatican in Baghdad" and most of the rest in Europe and Asia, the US won't be ready to seriously offer us help until early next decade.
Will the Chinese and/or Indians be forced to step in too? Probably, but not this decade - maybe in the mid 2020's. However, they are training a generation of smart young men and women who will emerge as the preeminent experts on SSA Africa in the next few decades. I don't mean this in an academic sense, but you'd be surprised at the number of Chinese who speak local languages and have intimate knowledge of doing business in the remotest parts of Africa - Beijing would be wise to capitalise on their skill sets.
Indians have even more impressive skills, but India is even less enthusiastic about being an activist power than China.