The American Attack on Libya: A Perspective From the Mideast

NICOSIA, CYPRUS — So much depends on the point of view. Looking from west to east, or from northwest to southeast, the American bombing of Libya can been seen merely as a military assault on a center of “international terrorism,” a repetition of the clearing-out of the pirates’ nests in 1804.

But viewed from here, looking east to west, the attack was something far more portentous. It was a military assault that was intercontinental--not from the nearest continent to North Africa, not from Europe, that old antagonist, but, for the first time, an assault from a much more powerful antagonist and from a continent much farther away. It was an interracial and an interreligious assault on a leader whom President Reagan himself said was advocating a worldwide “fundamentalist Islamic revolution.”

It was an attack across a political chasm: viewed from west to east, justified, but from east to west, a wicked attack on a supporter of national liberation movements, especially that of Palestine. Little wonder that the 101 members of the Nonaligned Movement, looking from east to west or from south to north, were angry enough to issue a resolution--presented in person by their foreign ministers at the United Nations--sternly condemning the American military action.

And the reaction of Libya’s Arab brothers? Altogether more modulated--chasm or not--and very different from the reaction in 1956 when something similar happened, the Anglo-French attack on Suez. In the 30 years since then the gap between the Arab regimes and the Arab people has widened; this time there was no unanimity of protest from both governments and people. As they did 30 years ago, Arab governments denounced the attack, with even hyper-cautious Saudi Arabia talking of “American aggression,” but Iraq, angry about Libya’s support of Iran, said nothing at all and in Egypt, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, the official response was noticeably mild. The Arab media were more bellicose, though in Jordan and Tunisia the papers were ordered not to editorialize lest they stir up popular passion.

On the level of popular activism, the difference was most noticeable. In 1956, during the months of the Suez episode, “the Arab street” in every Arab capital and major town pulsated with popular demonstrations. This time the few demonstrations could be easily spotted and named: two in Khartoum, a smallish one in Tunis, a small one in Amman.

Significantly, perhaps ominously, those three countries have been thought of as “moderate,” which means that in the more “conservative” Arab countries the volatile street had been held down by the more efficiently repressive state apparatus.

The Arab governments, this time, could afford to confront the Arab street because this was much less risky than in 1956, for two reasons. Kadafi is not the widely popular pan-Arab charismatic leader that Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser was; appeals to the Arabs to rise and strike the alien enemy came from Libyan radio in Tripoli, not from Nasser’s “Voice of the Arabs” calling from Cairo. Col. Kadafi’s policy adventures in Egypt, Sudan and Tunisia had divided and weakened the Arabs even when he meant to unite and strengthen them.

But perhaps more important, in the past 30 years the forces and ideas that Nasser energized and used--Arab unity and Arab nationalism--have suffered hard knocks and outright defeats--the military humiliation of the 1967 Six-Day War, the death of Nasser, the separate peace of the 1979 Camp David agreement, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Arabs “have supped full with horrors.” Tired, dispirited and numbed, Arab popular feeling is, for the time being, not prepared to confront the Arab regimes head-on.

That is why there were far more anti-U.S. demonstrations in Europe and Asia than in the Arab world. And when Libya called for an emergency Arab summit meeting, at least four governments--Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia--were able to say that, for varying reasons, they would not or would rather not attend.

The most dangerous mistake the United States and Western Europe could make, however, would be to misinterpret this popular passivity as a sign of Arab weakness to be exploited. The fire smoldering beneath the ashes is, in the longer run, far more dangerous than the open flame. A new, young Arab generation is pushing forward to take control of affairs. Popular Arab anger against the United States and Israel has long since hardened into enduring hatred. It has been toughened by the Libyan bombings, especially the killing and wounding of Kadafi children, for the Arabs are an emotional people with strong family feelings. After all, it took two years for the anti-Western feelings generated in 1956 to surface in 1958 when the monarchy was overthrown in Iraq. The eventual victims of the bombing of Libya will be the regimes in such countries as Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan. The slayings of the British and American hostages in Lebanon are only the first, small retaliations.