Tidbits on Libya and the EU

A brief from EUobserver reports that on May 26 Hadeiba Hadi, the Libyan Ambassador to the EU, defected from his post as representative of the Qaddafi regime in Brussels. His staff also resigned.

In a statement made to the AFP, Hadi explained that he and his team felt obliged to make a decision to "no longer represent the regime," which is currently embattled against rebel forces seeking to ouster the Libyan leader from his decades-long rule.

Speaking of EU-Libyan affairs, last week EU foreign affairs chief Lady Catherine Ashton opened an EU office in Benghazi, Libya, where rebel governing structures like the Transitional National Council (TNC) are based. In a statement made following a meeting with the TNC's Chairman, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Ashton promised EU partnership in policy areas including security, economy, health, education and civil society. 

The EU's move to set up shop in Benghazi marks perhaps the boldest diplomatic decision for Libya's long haul. This takes one step further the decision by French president Nicolas Sarkozy to be the first to recognize the Libyan rebels' legitimacy. Much remains to be seen in the development of a Libya without Qaddafi in charge -- and even this, though desired by much of the international community, is a far-from-certain outcome. 

In an unexpected result from the G8 conference currently taking place in Deauville, France, Russian president Dimitri Medvedev has offered to try to coax Qaddafi into stepping down. This seems like an unreliable hand-off of negotiating power should the decision-makers in Europe and the US decide to go with it. But it may allow Russia to assert itself as a key player in conflict resolution, while the EU and US would benefit from some much-needed relief to then focus on issues closer to home such as the ongoing euro crisis and global recession more broadly. More to follow.

Germany’s Libya Abstention and the World: What Now?

         Germany’s March 17^th decision to abstain from the United Nations vote for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya has unleashed a firestorm of international criticism – as well as open skepticism on the country’s current and future fitness for leadership on the world stage. The tumultuous last few weeks have observers voicing three primary concerns on whether Germany should (or even could) assume the world leadership position it claims to want: 1) a paradox, both in policy and in image, 2) battered confidence on the part of its foreign partners, and 3) an uncertain future in global leadership.

         Germany’s actions are paradoxical at national, European and international levels. The country long followed draconian foreign-affairs strictures such as “never alone” and “never again Auschwitz,” which guided the country since it emerged, shuddering and ashamed, from its losing role in World War II. After abstention, these tenets seem, at least in the immediate, to have largely been cast aside – with no alternatives proposed to replace them. Equally problematic are the polling results of German opinion on Libya: Reuters reported in April that a whopping 71 percent of Germans support international intervention in the country. According to a contributor at the online Atlantic Community, 65 percent of Germans – essentially, many of the same voters – would disapprove of German participation therein. The country shows a sort of diplomatic allergy to the often ugly business of conflict prevention. Berlin still insists it wants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but after its ill-considered abstention, its Western UN allies will surely be loath to grant such a diplomatic trump card to a partner increasingly seen as unreliable.

         The battered confidence in Germany’s recent diplomacy is perhaps best reflected by the United States and France. (...)

Libyan Ambassador to US Breaks with Qaddafi

The Libyan ambassador to the US has resigned over the uprising currently roiling his home country, reports the Washington Diplomat, a DC monthly covering the diplomatic community in the American capital. At the time of this writing, the article was available in print but not online.

Ali Suleiman Aujali, the 60-year-old who was until last month Qaddafi's representative in Washington, is still residing in the city while his country's rebel government continues in its struggle to establish an alternative government from the authoritarian rule that has lasted over 40 years. A career diplomat, Aujali has served in ambassadorial posts in Malaysia, Argentina, Brazil and Canada.

Aujali's service, juxtaposed with his new and vociferous denouncement of Qaddafi, raises the question as to how Aujali managed to serve the leader since Ajali's public service began in 1969. In a recurring theme of the article's expansive profile, Aujali distinguishes between Libya's diplomatic corps and that group's boss. 

"You must know that not every Libyan diplomat is the last 42 years has dirtied his hands with blood or money... I have never been a mouthpiece of the regime," he explained. When questioned on his marked about-face in recent days, he borrowed a classic Arab proverb, saying, "different occasions require different speeches."

The change in tone resonates with the defection of Moussa Koussa, who last week resigned as Libya's foreign affairs czar. He has fled to London and faces unclear prospects as to whether he may face prosecution relating to the 1988 airplane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. The event is widely believed to have been orchestrated by those close to Qaddafi and at his request.

France, Libya and Laïcité

The scholars Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse weigh in on the recent about-face by European leaders over mutliculturalism. The article's thrust is that the moves made by Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron are 'tacking to the right' in order to drain far-right voters toward their bases, and that such bald ploys only serve to undo decades of effort at integrating Europe's Muslims. These and other leaders only "savage a straw man" in attacking multiculturalism, and shoot themselves in the foot in the process. Below is a snapshot of the article's multiple thematic threads.

"The anti-immigrant opinions first voiced in late 20th-century Europe increased in intensity during the terrorism jitters of the 2000s and have been reinforced by burgeoning anti-Islam sentiment during the 2010s. What's happening is that the deleterious political impact of the 2008-2009 economic crises is now being felt, and the result is a sizeable populist wave throughout Western Europe.

This wave generally takes the form of extreme right parties -- even though some of them, like in the Netherlands and Britain, incorporate liberal elements like the defense of gay rights and women's rights. (The English Defence League has both Jewish and gay branches.) All of these populist movements, however, have one feature in common: they are explicitly anti-Islam. Just as anti-Semitism was the common denominator of populist movements in the 1930s, the single-minded focus on Muslim immigration has become the defining trait of anti-establishment parties in today's Europe. The logical effect is to push the center-right parties to the right, for fear of losing their constituency.

And tack right they have. In Germany, Merkel's speech was designed to catch up with the national debate sparked by Thilo Sarrazin's bestselling book, Germany Does Away With Itself,  as well as with an assertive nativist wing of her governing coalition. Sarrazin, a former Bundesbank board member originally from the Social-Democrat SPD party, has sold more than a million copies of his book, which denounces the dumbing-down of Germany through Muslim immigration. In Britain, Cameron must keep an eye on his populist wing as well as the British National Party. In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte is cracking down on headscarf wearing and other behavioral signs of Muslim religiosity among state employees and unemployment check recipients in exchange for the parliamentary support of Geert Wilders's anti-Islam faction. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who successfully courted voters from Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in 2007 by broaching the theme of "national identity," kept the flame alive with an official debate on the subject in 2009 and another on the wearing of the burka in 2010. This spring, his UMP party announced yet another debate on "Islam and laïcité" -- as France calls its official policy of religious neutrality.

 The laïcité debate follows on the heels of Sarkozy's aggressive maneuvering in the Libya crisis and may try to bring the French voice on Islam closer to home, in a sense. If the French populace can engage with high-profile political figures and thinkers on the current events of the Muslim world and how they might think about these things as a country, a laïcité discussion may center the discordant voices on whether France should be as active as it currently is. EurAmerican follows religious trends closely, so watch this space for more on how this debate develops in France and elsewhere.

NY Times Suggests EU's North African Policy Is Unclear

See this New York Times piece on the European Union's mixed-bag policy suggestions on the current turmoil in North Africa. EU leaders have in recent days spent much fretting over the prospective masses of immigrants from the Mediterranean's southern crescent. The article underscores the particular concern that the possible collapse of the government in Libya could unleash "chaos and anarchy," which may in turn prompt huge flows of migrants into southern Italy and other European nations from that point on. 

The British foreign secretary William Hague has signaled that the North African situation has far broader implications for EU foreign policy, terming it a “major test, a historic test for the EU.”

“Clearly if we can succeed in bringing more democracy and more stability to North Africa and the Middle East that will be the greatest achievement for the E.U. since enlargement,” he added, referring to the bloc’s expansion to bring in former Communist states. “If we don’t succeed, the dangers to the E.U. of instability or extremism on our frontiers are immense.”

Other EU chiefs moved beyond hypotheticals and toward crippling financial restrictions for Libyan leaders who may be considering flight from the country. There is an implication the same would hold true for other government officials in the region, though whether other EU seniors will rally behind the pronounced position seems politically unlikely.  

A few EU politicians voiced benevolent, if politically unrealistic, aspirations to have functional democracy materialize in nations so long accustomed to authoritarian rule.

"Belgium’s foreign minister, Steven Vanackere, suggested that European parliamentarians should help countries like Egypt to develop a parliamentary system."

Also see how protests in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, were fought off with troops and warplanes on Monday, Feb. 21. In a symbolic shift in political capital, Libya's diplomats at the U.N. openly renounced Col. Muammar El-Qaddafi, the country's leader since the 1980s, called for his resignation and calling him a genocidal war criminal for his violent crackdown on protesters.