======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================
http://airminded.org/2011/03/19/libyas-century-as-a-target/
Tuesday, 18 March 1941
Libya’s century as a target
Libya now holds an unfortunate record. It is the country which has the
longest experience of aerial bombardment. Libya was first bombed in
1911, by Italy; now, in 2011, it is being bombed by its own air force.
That makes it just under a century from the first bomb to the latest.
It helps that Libya was the very first country to experience aerial
bombardment from aeroplanes and from airships. I'm using the word
'country' here in a loose sense, as it was then part of the Ottoman
Empire (technically, the provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica).
Italian forces landed in Tripoli in early October 1911, after a (naval)
bombardment. Its total air forces in Libya never totalled more than nine
aeroplanes and two airships. The aeroplanes first carried out a bombing
mission on 1 November 1911, attacking Ain Zara (one bomb) and Taguira
(three bombs). The two airships didn't go into action until March 1912,
but still managed to carry out over 300 sorties between them before the
end of hostilities in October. The effect of airpower on the Italian
victory was negligible, but a precedent was set.
Libya then became an Italian colony for three decades. But it wasn't a
pacified one until well into the 1930s. Italy presumably used its
airpower to help crush dissent, as did Britain, France and Spain in
their own Middle Eastern and North African possessions. Unfortunately I
have no specific information about Italian air operations in interwar
Libya, but it's probably safe to say they were somewhere towards the
less humanitarian end of the air control spectrum.
Then there was the Second World War, when between 1940 and 1943 Axis and
Allied armies washed back and forth over Libya. By and large, this was
not the Libyan people's war, and they don't figure much in histories of
it. But they could not have escaped its effects. Bombers from both sides
would have attacked primarily military objectives -- logistical
interdiction was especially important in the desert war -- but towns and
villages were bombed too, and towns and villages have inhabitants, and
most of those inhabitants were Libyans. So they suffered as well.
Libya became an independent kingdom in 1951. As far as I can tell there
was no bombing during the kingdom's existence. There may have been some
during several coup attempts in the late 1960s and early 1970s (the
first of which, in 1969, was the one in which Colonel Gaddafi first rose
to prominence). There was definitely bombing during Libya's war with
Egypt in July 1977. Gaddafi, now in power, started it, very
ill-advisedly; Egyptian forces counter-attacked and bombed towns in the
east of Libya.
Then, of course, there was the American bombing of Libya on 15 April
1986. This was in retaliation for a Libyan terrorist attack in Berlin,
when a disco was blown up in West Berlin. USAF F-111s flying from
Britain and US Navy A-6s, A-7s and F/A-18s dropped their bombs on
barracks, airfields, air defence sites and the Murat Sidi Bilal camp.
Murat Sidi Bilal was chosen in an apparent attempt to kill Gaddafi
himself. Obviously this failed, but about 60 other Libyans were killed,
including about 15 civilians (though one claimed victim, Gaddafi's
adopted daughter Hanna, appears not to have existed). One F-111 and its
crew were shot down by Libyan air defences.
And now we come to the present day. I won't attempt to summarise recent
events in detail. Briefly, the Libyan air force has been bombing
pro-democracy forces and areas, including protesters in the capital,
Tripoli, and other civilian targets in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest
city. Remarkably, it seems that some pilots have refused to do so,
landing their aircraft in Malta or handing them over to the
revolutionaries (who now have their own small, but free, air force). It
has even been claimed that one pilot intentionally flew his aircraft
into a pro-Gaddafi barracks in Tripoli.
Gaddafi's use of airpower against his own people has played a large part
in outraging world opinion, and helped motivate calls for the UN to
authorise a no-fly zone over Libya. (The idea of a no-fly zone harks
back to the international air force and related ideas, but I won't go
into that now.) But bombed civilians evidently weren't quite enough to
justify the no-fly zone; it took serious military reverses for the
revolutionaries and the prospect of their sudden collapse to bring about
an authorisation from the UN Security Council, which came about in just
the last 24 hours.
A no-fly zone itself would likely involve further bombing of Libya, in
order to eliminate threatening Libyan anti-aircraft and radar sites. But
if so, I hope those will be the last bombs to fall on Libyan soil.
Democracy and bombing don't go well together.
Oh, and the previous record holder for the longest experience of
bombing? Ironically enough it was Italy, with ninety-five years (from
Venice in 1849 to the end of the Second World War in 1945).
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
Set your options at:
http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com