In the wake of the “Arab Spring” revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt in late 2010 and early 2011, the conventional narrative, at least in the Western media, soon became one of an unstoppable tidal wave of emancipation. This was expected to leave no stone unturned, at least in the decaying Arab republics, which many academics continued to argue were structurally weaker than the region’s monarchies.1
In this context, the Benghazi uprising in eastern Libya in February 2011 was widely portrayed as the start of yet another revolution — both nationwide and organic — that would soon see Muammar Qadhafi’s regime swept from power by an overwhelming majority of the population. As the weeks dragged on, however, with Qadhafi still effectively in power and the bulk of the Libyan armed forces apparently remaining loyal,
this narrative had to be abandoned and replaced by a new one depicting a desperate regime clinging to power by wielding extreme violence against its people and deploying vicious foreign mercenaries. Certainly, by March 2011 it was generally assumed that Qadhafi’s fighters, whoever they were, would massacre thousands of civilians if they managed to re-enter Benghazi,
and if the Western powers and their regional allies did not step up to the plate with some sort of humanitarian intervention on behalf of the “Libyan revolution.”
Although at the time several analysts did try to question the details underpinning these two interlinked narratives,2 it took more than five years before any real willingness emerged in Western government circles to investigate more thoroughly the events of 2011. Published in September 2016, for example, a British parliamentary report recognized that the eventual NATO-led interventio
(Operation Unified Protector) had gone badly wrong and conceded that the intelligence it was based on was not necessarily credible in the first place. Entitled “Libya: Examination of Intervention and Collapse and the UK’s Future Policy Options,” it drew the conclusion that former British Prime Minister David Cameron was primarily to blame for the ensuing chaos in the wake of Qadhafi’s removal,
due to “his decision-making in the [UK] National Security Council” and his “failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.”3 But beyond this superficial and heavily politicized reading of the Libya conflict, which offered little insight into its root causes or the real objectives of Britain and the other intervening external powers,
a substantial body of evidence has now emerged that allows for a much deeper understanding of the Libyan uprising and the NATO intervention. In particular, the contents of hundreds of recently declassified files, court-subpoenaed materials and leaked official correspondence
strongly suggest that the two mainstream narratives of 2011, and even the British parliament’s belated findings, have largely obscured the real reasons behind Qadhafi’s removal and the methods used to make it happen.
