September 2011

An Arab Fling: The West and International Justice in Libya

It was so promising. Everyone appeared to be on board when, last February, the international community decided that the situation in Libya should be investigated by the International Criminal Court. Not only did the UN Security Council refer the situation in Libya to the Court, but it did so unanimously. However, despite hefty rhetoric about the importance of bringing the Libyan leader to justice, Western states have been happy to instrumentalize the Court in order to isolate Gaddafi and have just as keenly abandoned their interest in bringing the Libyan tyrant to The Hague. Their initial and overwhelming zeal for international justice also obscured their complicity in sustaining Gaddafi's regime and its crimes against the Libyan people. Readers of the UN Security Council Resolution 1970 will note that the resolution imposes a temporal limit on the ICC's jurisdiction. While the Rome Statute declares that the Court can investigate events since July 1, 2002, the ICC was instructed to only investigate alleged international crimes in Libya since February 15, 2011. In addition, the referral explicitly removes citizens of non-state parties from the jurisdiction of the Court. Despite the questionably legal nature of such restrictions, the referral was celebrated as marking a new chapter in international justice and the relationship between the ICC and the Security Council. Yet, ironically, as the intervention in Libya began to succeed and Gaddafi became increasingly isolated, commitment to achieving international justice waned. That Western states sought to prohibit the Court from investigating any Libyan crimes prior to February 15, 2011 is unsurprising. Doing so would have exposed a litany of instances in which Western states propped up the Gaddafi regime and were complicit in systemic and systematic human rights violations. It doesn't take much research to discover the extent to which Western states and Libya developed a remarkably cozy political, military and economic relationship. Virtually every major Western state had significant dealings with Gaddafi and his regime. Despite protestations from human rights groups and Gaddafi’s victims, he was no longer the “criminal” tyrant who presided over a “reign of terror”, as described by Ronald Reagan. Instead, he was convinced to take responsibility for Lockerbie, renounce sponsorship for international terrorism and become a partner in the fight against radical Islam, and dismantle his nuclear and weapons of mass destruction programmes. Justified by realpolitik, Gaddafi became a “friend”, an “ally” and “one of ours”. It was a remarkable transformation and one which ushered in a wave of bilateral deals which helped keep his police state in power and his people oppressed. Getting Gaddafi on the right side of terrorism and nuclear proliferation was necessary and the concessions achieved by restoring Gaddafi's image were surely worth it. However, as Stephen Glover has argued: “What is not defensible is the subsequent indulging of this horrible man, and treating him as though he were a normal leader of a normal country.”