Continuing to Question the No-Fly Zone: AFRICOM's Role in Libya

One week ago, the UN Security Council declared a no-fly zone over Lybia with Security Council Resolution 1973. As MADRE Executive Director Yifat Susskind noted in her Q&A on military intervention in Libya, "We cannot allow the focus on the no-fly zone to divert our attentions away from the need to identify alternatives to promote democracy and human rights in Libya."

Recent discussion of the role of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in the conflict further calls into question the humanitarian justification. As Horace Campbell of Syracuse University reveals,

AFRICOM is fundamentally a front for U.S. military contractors like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. U.S. military planners who benefit from the revolving door of privatization of warfare are delighted by the opportunity to give AFRICOM credibility under the facade of the Libyan intervention. No African country has agreed to let AFRICOM onto the continent. The U.S. needs to stop bombing Libya and meaningfully work with the African Union, which (less mailable to Western interests than the Arab League) has been pushed aside.

Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and specialist in Africa, continues the critique of AFRICOM by stating,

AFRICOM makes its first major foray in Africa with massive air strikes on Libya. The velvet glove of humanitarian trainer has at last been taken off to reveal the fist of the military and its dominant role in U.S. Africa engagement. Established under the Bush administration and strengthened under Obama, AFRICOM has been rejected by African governments, scholars, and human rights champions. AFRICOM’s lead role in the assault on Libya will breed greater anti-Americanism while draining much needed monies and threatening civilian lives, with each bomb dropped.

As the military intervention in Libya escalates, we must continue to ensure that the demands of Libyan civilians and their human rights be at the forefront of this analysis. For more on MADRE's coverage of the conflict in Libya, click here and here.