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After months of diplomacy led by President Koroma and others, it was the French that finally backed the forces loyal to Alassane Qattara, the legitimate leader of the country, to snuff the illogical and pompous Laurent Gbagbo from power. When the Libyan conflict started six months ago and the liberation fighters took over Benghazi, instead of taking an active role to mediate, the Union simply wanted the freedom fighter to surrender to Gaddafi. That made AU representatives very unpopular throughout the conflict.For Sierra Leoneans, the fall of Gaddafi should bring out celebration from all quarters. For years, the Libyan dictator has been meddling with Sierra Leone. During the Siaka Stevens regime, the rogue Libyan leader fermented trouble in Freetown when he saturated the city with his infamous Green Book and called for the overthrow of the government. Later, it was Gaddafi that trained Sierra Leonean terrorists Foday Sankoh, Sam Bockarie and Issa Sesay to cause unfathomable atrocities in Sierra Leone. To cover his tracts, the flamboyant bizarre leader visited Sierra Leone after the war and donated rice and cash to the defunct SLPP regime.

Let’s now forget for the last four months this group of men who rule the continent have failed to resolve the situation in Ivory Coast which we may as well say has slipped back into a civil war. So far more than 400 people have died in Ivory Coast and all they do is hope on planes meet in Addis Ababa.
No wonder we have heard no calls on the AU from Libya’s opposition. But these African leaders were so anxious to enter Libya to bargain with Gaddafi who has bought his way around the continent over years. Gaddafi has personally supported rebellions that brought some of these leaders to power and provided them money to buy subsequent elections to appear democratically elected. I don’t understand the African solution neither do leaders like Museveni explain that solution that they peddle around to make Africans believe we are on the same page.

Africans want an African solution but current leaders like President Museveni who stifle freedoms in their own borders will not deliver us the much needed African solution. And that’s what North Africa has realized and therefore moved to rid their countries of these leaders. Like Desmond Tutu has Libya wouldn’t be seeing these strikes if African leaders were answerable to their peers and populace.

Image courtesy of African Report

Gaddafi backed several insurgencies in African including Chad and Uganda. And months after his death, at the height of a violent uprising, his weapons continue to fuel unrest.

According to reports, the over 1000 Tuareg militants, commanded by a former colonel in the Libyan army — brought with them enough of an arsenal to match the Malian army.

Emboldened by their new weaponry, they have formed the National Pour la Libération de l'Azawad (MNLA) – a so-called liberation movement.

The rebels have retaken some towns and attacked half-a-dozen more  in the north...[continue reading]

Regionally, the hearts of most Arabs pounded for the courage of the Libyan people. Now the League of Arab States has a rare opportunity to reconstruct into a League of Arab Democracies. Not long ago the Saudis invited the Jordanians and the Moroccans to join the Gulf Co-operation Council. It is still not clear what motivated such a move, other than monarchical affinity.The moment right now favours democratic synergy. Nabil Al-Arabi, the Arab League chief, should be inspired by the Libyan people's coming victory to restructure the organisation he presides over, even if he creates a second chamber for the purpose of the greater sake of co-operation among the Arab world's new democracies.Libyans did not begin the Arab revolution. However, they are about to close one link in the Arab revolutionary chain: three neighbouring countries with a total population of 100m Arabic-speaking people, covering a surface area of more than 3m square kilometres, are free. That is how it must have felt when the colonists left Algeria to join Morocco or Tunisia, or when the free officers came, one by one, to ditch monarchical rule in several Arab states.The three countries should experiment with open borders and the free movement of people, goods, and ideas to show that the dawn of Arab democracies will not have any semblance to the era of Gaddafi, Mubarak and Ben Ali. Mr Al-Arabi has a golden opportunity to make this a reality. Just as Arab youth are steadfast in the struggle for freedom and democracy, their elder statesmen should meet them halfway in helping reconstruct a better Arab world.

The revolution has moved Libya into the democratic wave of the Arab spring. There will be continued interactions between Libya and Africa; but culturally, ideologically and financially, Libya has moved towards a greater identification with its north African, Middle Eastern and south Mediterranean neighbours. Libya is embracing its Arab heritage.
In a way this should be no surprise: Gaddafi's embrace of pan-Africanism, while popular south of the Sahara, had little backing from Libyans. But the question of support for Libya's revolution has divided sub-Saharan Africa....The momentous changes of the Arab spring herald the emergence of a new African dynamic. Pan-Africanist ideals of solidarity and African empowerment continue to resonate; but we may also be moving towards a "post-Africanism" – an Africa which sees itself as part of an interlinked global community. In some ways, we are moving towards an Africa without borders – a globalised Africa. Thus Africa should not wallow in Afro-pessimism about "losing Libya". We never "had" Libya. The new Libya, warts and all, is an opportunity for Africa, not a threat to be punished. Africa should engage with the new Libya and, in so doing, with itself.

Image via Wikipedia

"If Africa's leaders held their peers to account there would be no need for the people of Libya to suffer human rights violations," he said in a statement.
"And there would be no need for United Nations sanctioned military interventions in Libya. Instead, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has for more than 40 years honed his skills in the art of resource management to win friends and influence people. And as a result, Africa seems powerless to stop him."