Exit the Colonel

Author:Ethan Chorin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2012-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

FITNA (CHAOS)

Like so many of its utopian counterparts in the 20th century, this was a regime likely to self-destruct.

LISA ANDERSON1

CHAPTER 9

Benghazi: The First Five Days

It has become almost a matter of course that the end of war is revolution, and that the only cause which possibly could justify it is the revolutionary cause of freedom.

HANNAH ARENDT, ON REVOLUTION2

The Libyan uprising, was undoubtedly a youth-led popular revolt, initially centered on (and sustained by) a series of rather amazing, and still somewhat unexplained, actions that took place in Benghazi and environs from mid-February through end of March 2011 and beyond, against a regime that had long considered the East the equivalent of a province under revolt. Interviews with numerous Benghazi residents in summer 2011 revealed pride in “spontaneous public action,” but also acknowledged that the roots of rage went back a long time; the regime’s reaction to protests in January and February were simply the final straw in a series of deep insults and organized deprivation. While this is all very true, the role of individual leaders, and the actions of a core group of individuals—some courageous citizens pushed to acts of incredible heroism, others who had held high office under Gaddafi but whose loyalties remained to the East, academics who took part in Saif ’s reform process as aides or trainees, or their local interlocutors—played a critical, and thus far underestimated, role in steering the people and articulating their cause.

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