Would Libya have been better off if Muammar Gaddafi had been captured?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/muammar-gaddafi-death-impact-libya

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On 20 October 2011, Muammar Gaddafi was killed. While the interim Libyan government initially said he was killed in an exchange of gunfire, a Human Rights Watch investigation a year later could not reach a conclusion as to the exact circumstances of Gaddafi’s death, but suggested he may have been summarily executed.

It was an undignified and horrific end, but many would argue it was what Gaddafi deserved. He had led oil-rich Libya as an autocrat for almost 42 years, quashing all opposition with brutality and funding international terrorism. As Libya had become swept up in the Arab spring, Gaddafi lashed out, labelling his enemies “rats” and killing and injuring thousands of his own people.

Gaddafi’s death was a landmark, but three years later, it cannot be convincingly called a good one. Three years on, Libya is still as much of a mess as ever. Fighting is split among Arab nationalists, Islamists, regional militias and more.

Recently Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have intervened militarily, while the country’s largely impotent government-in-exile had to hold its meetings aboard a car ferry.

Given such a situation, it’s not unreasonable to wonder what might have happened if Gaddafi hadn’t died. Mary Fitzgerald, an Irish journalist based in Libya, raised this question on Twitter last week. “Three years ago today Gaddafi died a gruesome death,” she wrote. “Many Libyans say they would have preferred to see him face justice in a courtroom.”

It’s an important question, not just for Libya, but also for the region and even the wider concept of international law. Christopher Chivvis, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, says such an outcome had been possible: while Nato did intervene in Libya, it did not intend for Gaddafi to die, and there were hopes that another country might be willing to take him as an exile (none was). “In the end, he was killed by his own citizens,” Chivvis says. “Not surprisingly, given how he had ruled them.”

If Gaddafi had faced trial, be it in the international criminal court or elsewhere, Libya may have had a chance at peace and reconciliation after the end of his regime. It could have been a vital state-building exercise for a country that had existed for more than four decades under Gaddafi’s highly personalised, sometimes eccentric style of governance. Given the fractured nature of Libya today, some wonder whether a trial could have offered something to unite the country’s disparate forces. But it’s hard to say for sure, and other, less desirable outcomes were also possible. A high-profile trial in a post-conflict environment, says Tamara Cofman Wittes, director and senior fellow at the Centre for Middle East Policy at Brookings, can just add to grievance and polarisation depending on the local context and also on how well the trial itself is handled.

Wittes points to the problems in the trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the late dictator. Libya’s interim government began its trial against Saif al-Islam earlier this year, but it has been criticised by a number of international actors for how it has handled the case: Human Rights Watch has accused the Libyan government of failing to provide adequate legal representation to the defendants in the case, for example.

And while the ICC charged Saif al-Islam along with his father in 2011, it has been unable to compel the Libyan government to allow it access – just one of many challenges to the ICC’s legitimacy in recent years. “It is hurting it,” John Jones, Saif al-Islam’s British lawyer, told Time magazine last year. “It makes the ICC look spineless and toothless.”

Ultimately, Libya’s state today is about more than one man, and many feel that the western governments who were eager to get Gaddafi out failed to help Libya stabilise after his death.

“Would Libya be better today if [Gaddafi] were still alive? Probably not,” Chivvis says. “But the real issue is why the international community, after a seven-month air campaign, neglected post-conflict reconstruction.”

“When Gaddafi died, Libya actually had, by the standards of most post-conflict states, pretty good chances of making a smooth transition to peace and stability,” Chivvis explains. “It had wealth, was near Europe, had neighbours who were headed in the same direction, and it’s people had not, unlike Bosnia, for example, fought against each other in internecine civil war.”

He adds, “This is what is so tragic about the situation today.”

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post