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Recent attempts to unify Libya through the drafting of a constitution have been met with apathy from Libyans. Only a ‘paltry’ 500,000 people turned out to vote in February’s vote on the draft constitution committee, compared with three million for the 2012 parliamentary election.
Libya sits on a tremendous wealth of oil, which should be enough to secure relative prosperity for its six million citizens. However, three years on from Western intervention, the amount of oil being produced has fallen sharply, and shows little sign of recovery. Prior to intervention in 2011, 1.7million barrels of oil were being produced every day. This has recently shrunk to 1.2million barrels a day, with recent blockades by militias meaning as little as 230,000 barrels a day are now being produced.
Should Libya’s virtual implosion fail to disturb Cameron, there’s also the knock-on effect of his intervention, which is now spilling into other countries. Earlier this month, a militia in eastern Libya sold a tanker’s worth of oil to the bête noire of the West, North Korea. Only the US navy prevented the oil’s export, an intervention which led to Zeidan being forced to stand down as prime minister due to a vote of no confidence (making him the second Libyan prime minister to stand down since 2011).
And what of those rebels Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama bombed a path for in 2011? Many have now made their way to Syria to fight for al-Qaeda affiliates. In addition to this, the black market has been ‘flooded’ by Gaddafi-era weapons. As a recent New York Times investigation discovered: ‘Extremist fighters, some of them aligned with al-Qaeda, have the money to buy the newly arrived stock, and many rebels are willing to sell.’
The aftermath of the West’s intervention in Libya should be seen as the stuff of nightmares, not a moment of glory. Yet the mess left in Libya is ignored as the West now concentrates its attentions on Ukraine. Some commentators have now started to use the parlous state of Libya to argue that Western governments must demonstrate that they’ve thought through the consequences of intervention before going to war. But the clear lesson from Libya – as well as from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria – is that the consequences of Western interventions are always likely to be chaotic.
Patrick Hayes is a columnist for spiked.
Picture: PA
