La guerre sans l'aimer: Journal d'un écrivain au cœur du printemps libyen - Writer's Diary from Libyan Spring Revolution - Perfect for History Enthusiasts & Political Science Students

I worked in the UN mission just after the Revolution and I have continued to work on Libya ever since. I have personally met some of the characters in this book and worked on dealing with the legacy of the Revolution.What many critics of the international intervention fail to mention and/or understand is that Qaddafi was a monster who both terrorized his own people and other countries around the world. Indeed, he often supported different opposing sides a the same time. Though it was richer than its neighbours because of the oil, the country was about one eighth as wealthy and developed as other similar countries who had started from the same beginnings in the 1950s.Yes, he was indeed in the process of massacring people -as he had often done before - before the international intervention. What would have happened had he stayed is a big what if. Very likely, the situation would have turned into something like a Syria.What the international community failed to recognize or did not want to recognize was just how screwed up the country was. I have worked in a lot of failed states around the world and I have never seen one as broken in its sense of community as Libya. There had been a certain fractiousness going back in history but he pushed to new heights . Almost every institution was rotten, especially the security services. Though he bought mountains of weapons, the regular forces were completely hollowed out. In the regular forces, most of the officers were aging colonels and most of the troops were aging sergeant -majors. The deal with regular people was "we'll give you a basic allowance to do nothing as long as you shut up and stay at home. Most of the thinking jobs were done by east Europeans, Palestinians and other professional from Arab countries with little oil. The dirty jobs were done by sub-Saharan Africans, Bangladeshis, etc. Meanwhile his family and cronies pissed money away as they gave Saddam Hussein's sons a run for their money for loutishness. Anyone who disagreed with this would find themselves in a nasty prison or worse including Moussa Sadr, the great Lebanese Shia leader.Now that there were cell phones and the internet, Libyans could better see what was going on in the world. I was not as easy to cover up massacres.Because of Qaddafi's erratic behaviour, he had no serious friends when the end came, unlike Bashar Assad in Syria.Rebuilding Libya was going to be a long-term project requiring a lot of resources. Sadly, the UN and the international community instead had the stupid idea of a "light-footprint" approach, which was doomed to fail as we failed to take advantage of the short window of opportunity available after a crisis.I give four stars to this because Bernard-Henri Levy provides valuable first-hand observation. Whatever one might think of a lot of his pomposity, he was actually there and played a role this time. Unfortunately, he often goes off on long, inflated tangents about himself, his family and other irrelevant topics. He could have cut out at least 250-300 pages. However, the remaining pages are very valuable to any Libya watcher or person interested in the evolution of conflicts.