Maikel Nabil

Maikel Nabil, 26, is the first Egyptian blogger to have accused the Egyptian army of using extreme violence against peaceful protesters.

On March 28th, 2011, Nabil was arrested after having published a blog post in Arabic entitled “The People and the Army have never been one hand“. Images, videos and personal analysis offered a documented account exposing the military violence being used against peaceful protestors. He was arrested at his home and, although a civilian, presented before a military court.

On December 20th 2011, after 9 months of imprisonment and 125 days of hunger strike allowing milk, juices and medication only, Maikel Nabil was finally sentenced to two years by a military court. He was then immediately transferred from El Marg’s Prison clinic to be placed in solitary confinement.

Already considerably weak and underweight, Nabil decided to extend and intensify his hunger strike and is now refusing all liquids, food and medication. and is now in his 9th day of that strike.

Nabil contests the military court’s legitimacy, its verdict, being arrested for his writings and opinions, and being detained in inhumane conditions. Nabil also stands for the 12,000+ Egyptian citizens that are currently languishing in prison since January 28th 2011, after facing expedited military trials.

Without regard to his fragile physical condition, Nabil is now held in solitary confinement, in a tiny, garbage-filled prison cell without a bed. His general practitioner, cardiologist and parents have no access to him. His physical condition has entered a critical phase as vital organs are giving signs of failure (kidney and liver)

On military violence against Egyptian peaceful protestors
In his incriminated blog post, Nabil documented what many saw and witnessed, but feared to expose. Since December 17th 2011, the world has seen the hideous footage of a female protestor being stripped, beaten and stomped by soldiers, while others were being shot at with live ammunition. On that single day,12 died and over 500 were severely injured or tortured. On October 9th 2011, international networks also broadcast the Egyptian army’s APCs running over and smashing protestors gathered around the Maspero State TV building, killing 24 and injuring hundreds. Endless hours of footage continue to document the ongoing inhumane crackdown of the Egyptian military on Egyptian citizens. For having exposed the truth, Nabil is enduring a sadistic agony.

Maikel Nabil’s short biography
Born in Assiut on October 1, 1985. Graduated as a veterinarian in 2009. Also a political activist, Maikel Nabil has a long history with the military institution as both a conscientious objector and founder of the No to Compulsory Military Service movement. His engagement against compulsory service caused his repeated arrest and brief detention in November 2010. On his blog, Maikel Nabil describes himself as a liberal, secular, capitalist, feminist, pro-western, pro-Israel, atheist, materialist, realist, pro-globalist, intactivist (sic), anti-militarist and pacifist.

Particularities of Maikel Nabil’s case
Although of Coptic Christian descent, Maikel Nabil is vocal about his atheism, in a country where religious conservatism is on the rise and sectarianism against the Coptic community has become violent. His public support for peaceful relations with Israeli people made many Egyptians fail to support his campaign for release and free speech within Egypt. For the average man on the street, Maikel Nabil falls perfectly into the Egyptian military’s narrative vis-à-vis Egyptian revolutionaries “sponsored by foreign elements”. In State controlled media, he is addressed as “an anti-nationalist, christian-atheist, pro-Israeli element”. Nabil is being judged on two levels, by both the military and a conservative society, for his atheism, his perspective on Israel, his openness to gay rights, his support for freedom of speech and, primarily, for exposing military crimes.

Bernard-Henri Lévy at Djebel Nafoussa © Marc Roussel

I have just returned from Jebel Nafusa, a mountainous plateau in north-western Libya that constitutes, after Misrata in the east and Brega even further east, the third front of the war in Libya. What I saw leads me to challenge more strongly than ever the oddly defeatist declarations that have emanated from Washington, London and Paris in recent weeks.

They tell us, for example, of a rebel army that is disorganised, ill-prepared for combat, undisciplined. On the Gualich front, which is its first line of attack against Muammer Gaddafi’s forces, I have witnessed just the opposite: about 50 well-trained men, supervised by former servicemen who have defected and are proud to have retaken the 60km, separating them from the regional command base, in 10 days. In short it is the opposite of a quagmire.

The defeatists also tell us that these fighters cannot see beyond the boundaries of their villages, and are incapable of the physical and political unity that could lead to the conquest of Tripoli. Yet whether in Arab country or Berber, one sees and hears something very different: a rebellion whose objective is Tripoli; tribal chiefs for whom Libyan unity has become an imperative; officers perfectly aware of the fact that this goal is attainable only in close co-ordination with Nato’s operational commanders. Once again, this is nothing like the disorder, the improvisation, and the “tribal mindset” we keep hearing about.

A good deal of worry has been expressed about the quality of the insurgents’ weapons and the disparity of force that is supposedly the consequence of this. They are probably lacking some of the heavy weaponry necessary if they are to march on the capital. Nato should also probably respond to their requests for the bombardment of a number of positions where, as I write, enemy artillery keep their guns trained on civilians. But great progress has been made with the delivery of several dozen tons of arms, particularly by France.

Col Gaddafi’s forces have been described as an army that “could resist” – sic – the coalition. Using the fine word “resistance” in reference to the rabble of a cornered tyrant seems to me to be a blow to common sense, particularly when we have heard reports that point to the possession by this tyrant of the dirty weapon par excellence, napalm. It also happens that, at Zintan, I was able to enter a madrassa that has been transformed into a military prison as well as a hospital ward where wounded prisoners are being treated.

There we gathered two sorts of eye-witness accounts: tales of mercenaries from Niger, Mali, and Sudan, and then the account of a Libyan artillery gunner who told me how some of his comrades remain at their posts only because colleagues ordered to shoot at the least attempt at desertion are at their backs. Is that, really, the “loyalist” army ready to die for its “Guide”?

In short, I decidedly do not understand the disillusioned tone of commentators who never found 42 years of dictatorship too long but who suddenly find the 100 days or so of the liberation interminable. I understand even less the repeated calls for “political negotiations” that, alone, will permit us to escape from the “quagmire” that David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have supposedly thrown us in to. There is only one “political solution” to the crisis that began with the offensive launched by this regime against its people: that is the departure of Col Gaddafi, and I have the feeling we’re close to it.

But on what terms? There are three conditions for success. First, the French and British do not give way to threats and must continue on the path they have begun. This war, because it targets a dictator who had pledged to drown his people “in rivers of blood”, is a just war. Second, Washington, even if it is in retreat and leaves the bulk of operations to its European allies, must not fall into the self-flagellation of viewing this Libyan war in the same light of disapproval as the absurd Iraq war. The Iraq war was based on a government lie (the famous and elusive “weapons of mass destruction”), there is no such situation with the Libyan war. The Iraq war was a war of revenge – no comparison with the Libyan war. The Iraq war, in a kind of democratic Messianism, believed in democracy brought in from outside – in Libya, we have relied on demands for democracy that come not only from inside the country, but also from the depths of its society.

Third, that the international community does not fall into the trap of turning Col Gaddafi into a “desert rat”, defying coalition forces and becoming a kind of demi-hero, with his back to the wall, alone against all. We must not lose sight of the repression visited on his people, nor of the fact that his reaction, on day one of the intervention, was to threaten to answer our air strikes with strikes on our civil aircraft.

Col Gaddafi has not changed. He has not stopped being a baroque but bloody tyrant – he will remain so unless we maintain the momentum.

The writer is a philosopher whose support for the insurgents helped to prompt the intervention

Dear Ambassadors,

We are calling your attention to the dramatic situation in Syria and to the Security Council’s proposed Resolution regarding Syria.

You are well aware of the situation in Syria which has been submitted to your attention.
Whole cities such as Deraa, Homs, Lattaquié, Kamchli, Banyas, whose names have become familiar to us all, have been cut off from the world, deprived of electricity and telephone communications. These cities are patrolled by tanks in the streets and by helicopters in the air, shooting into the crowds, sniper fire from the roof-tops striking the people below, militia bursting into homes one by one and abducting men between the ages of 15 and 80.
You must surely know the names of these prisons where they are herded : Tadmor (Palmyre) ; Palestine, Adra, Douma (Damascus) ; Sied Naya : the Hades of Syria. You must surely know of the tortures these thousands of men endure. You are most certainly aware and appalled, as we are all, of how students, democrats, ordinary citizens are treated, throughout the country, people who peacefully request a dignity and freedom they have never had at the price of thousands of arrests and hundreds of deaths.
The Syria of the El Assad clan is a dictatorship passed down from father to son for over forty years and who, with total impunity has instilled fear in the very heart of each citizen using barbaric means and overriding each and every humane law. Millions of defenseless citizens were forced into rebellion. This friendly and hospitable people were pushed to their limit and, with their bare hands, knowingly faced a death machine aware of the heavy price they would pay. For the last two months, the demonstrations in Deraa, Homs, Kamchli, Banyas and Lattaquié have ended in massacres by the army, militia and secret service. However, regardless of the terror and with great courage, the protestors, after burying their dead, would begin again the next day. This is admirable. This is monstrous. This happens behind closed doors within sealed borders. Humanitarian organizations and the international press are banished. “Silence, we’re shooting”!

Mr. and Ms. Ambassadors, you of all people are aware of the situation and at this very moment are faced with decisions. In fact, the international community has already begun to act.

Germany, Great Britain, France and Portugal have proposed a Resolution condemning this repression and which should be submitted to the Security Council of the United Nations of which your fifteen nations are current members.

The outcome of this Resolution is in your hands. It qualifies the repression in Syria as a Crime against Humanity. It does not propose sanctions against Syria nor military intervention. It is limited to condemning the repression and clearing the path for investigations into the Crimes Against Humanity. However limited, this Resolution is necessary.

Mr. and Ms. Ambassadors, for the battered people of Syria and their peaceful fight for freedom, it is essential that you adopt this Resolution.

With current unanimous international pressure and support by the Security Council, the Syrian government could eventually cease the massacres it inflicts upon its people daily throughout the country and with total impunity.

International public opinion, above and beyond its diversity, would finally be heard sending a message throughout the world affording immense comfort to the Syrian people and confirming the moral influence of the Security Council and each of its member states all becoming advocates of a universal conscience!

We strongly hope that this proposed Resolution be submitted for review and vote by the Security Council. It must imperatively obtain in advance the greatest amount of support by you, Mr. and Ms. Ambassadors of the Security Council. It would be tragic and morally unacceptable if, because of the threat of an eventual veto or the occasional abstention here or there, this proposed Resolution not be reviewed by your conscience only to finish in the bin of abandonment.

Most sincerely,

ADDRESSED TO :

Peter Wittig (Germany)
Hardeep Singh Puri (India)
Colombie : Nestor Osorio (Colombia)
Jose Filipe Moraes Cabral (Portugal)
Baso Sangpu (South Africa)
Ivan Barbalic (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti (Brazil)
Denis Dangue Rewaka (Gabon)
Nawaf Salam (Lebanon)
Joy Ogwu (Nigeria)
Baodong Li (China)
Susan Rice (United States of America)
Gérard Araud (France)
Mark Lyall Grant (Great Britain)
Vitaly Churkin (Russia)

(Copy to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations)

SIGNATURES :

Umberto Eco
David Grossman
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Amos Oz
Orhan Pamuk
Salman Rushdie
Wole Soyinka

Mustafa Abdeljalil

Declaration of Mustafa Abdeljalil

On February 17th, after four decades of oppression and injustice, the Libyan people revolted and freed a great part of the country at the cost of thousands of martyrs, whose names we shall always cherish.

The Libya that is taking shape marks the beginning of the rule of law and justice.

We have formed local committees, then a National Council of Transition to bring our struggle that knows no turning back to its goal, the birth of the first democracy, and to take over the administration of our country, bled dry, in anticipation of the day when all Libyan men and women, once rid of Qadhafi and his family, can express themselves in the light of day through general, transparent, and free elections.

Today, alas, the tyrant is still here.

Initially on the defensive, he soon pulled himself together.  His army of mercenaries has driven our fighters back before Syrte.

His tanks, his artillery, his infernal troops are pounding them in the middle of the desert.  Our intrepid chebabs, who marched off without tanks or heavy artillery to liberate beleaguered Misrata and a Tripoli crushed under the enemy yoke, were forced to retreat, at the cost of serious casualties.

Without the aid of the French planes that saved Benghazi from the bloodbath promised by the dictator, without the intervention of the international community, led by Monsieur Sarkozy and his allies, all of Libya would have been once again in chains.  For in the desert, nothing can stop the armoured vehicles except air power.  For the time being, the planes of the West have often managed to do so, and for this we are infinitely grateful.

But NATO’s air fleet cannot deliver the occupied cities where Qadhafi’s forces, using the civilian populations as a human shield, have now taken cover.
We, the free Libyans, haven’t yet forces that are adequately trained to accomplish this task that is more urgent and vital than ever for all our fellow citizens who are being bombarded or reduced to slavery.

Six weeks of freedom cannot make of thousands of citizens an army; they need more time.

For the time being, we’re hanging on, and of that, already, we are proud.

We are not asking that others fight the war in our stead on our ground. We do not ask for foreign troops to come to hold back the enemy. We do not expect the friends of Libya to liberate our country for us. We ask to be given the time and the means to build a force that will keep the dictator’s mercenaries and praetorians at bay and then liberate our cities.

Unless it reverses its decision, the international community should continue to give us assistance, not only with their aircraft, but also in the form of arms and supplies.

Give us the means to free ourselves, and we will surprise the world.  Qadhafi’s strength came only of our youth and our weakness at the outset.  Wait, and you shall see that he is a paper tiger.

It would be unjust, it would be fatal to sacrifice us on the altar of an almost unconditional peace on the pretext of this initial weakness.

Would this actually be peace, or rather a surrender that would not say its name ?

Can one reasonably negotiate with Qadhafi, this tyrant—moreover, when his forces dangerously threaten free Libya?

In the name of blind realism, this eternal excuse of the partisans of desertion, will you reduce here and there the support that has saved us, measure it, and, tomorrow, tie our hands ?

Liberty needs time to triumph.

We have waited forty years for its hour to strike; we need still a little more time.

I implore our foreign friends not to compromise our combat for a free Libya and, beyond that, for all peoples who love liberty and justice, through lassitude or impatience.

Forced retreat through the desert for a rebel

The attitude of Turkey, opposed to Resolution 1973 from day one and partisan, admittedly or not, of support for Qadhafi, is shameful.

The attitude of Algeria, whose insurgents, once again the other morning, intercepted pick-up trucks loaded with mercenaries in the middle of the desert and for whom “Arab solidarity”, its leitmotif for the past fifty years, thus actually signifies solidarity with Arab dictators, is a disgrace.

The attitude of Egypt, a country that shares a border with Libya and has an army, the second most powerful in the region after Israel, whose tanks would be able to plow through Qadhafist lines in a few hours is, if not shameful, at the very least inexplicable.  Egypt’s tanks are capable of liberating the besieged peoples of Misrata, Zaouïa, Zentan, and Tripoli, whose sole crime is to have wished to march in step with Tahrir Square, to have breathed in the air of the wind of revolution coming from Cairo.

The attitude of the Arab League, source—it can never be repeated enough—of the call for aid that led the international community to bring help to the struggling Libyan people through a historic vote of the United Nations, yet apparently, since then, caught in a process of constant reassessment of its gesture, regretting its audacity, back-pedalling, is not, unfortunately, inexplicable, but rather conforms to the stance that has become increasingly clear since Ben Ali was toppled:  the holy terror the blooming of an Arab spring inspires in the holy alliance of the region’s oil producers, who, deep down, would just as soon have seen it halt at the gates of Tripoli.

The attitude of the United States, that entered this war of liberation dragging its feet and is currently in the process of tiptoeing away from it, the attitude of an Obama whom, here in Benghazi, some are beginning to suspect of imagining a new Dayton, a partition agreement like that in Bosnia in 1995, a fence-sitting pact that would maintain an even scale between victims and butchers and politically ratify the military balance of power, frozen in the field, makes no sense at all.  In the eyes of History, how can one have solemnly proclaimed that Qadhafi must leave, that he no longer enjoys the legitimacy to govern or represent his people, and now, lead us to understand that, really, one cannot die—oh, sorry—pay for Benghazi ?  Ah, the price of Tomahawks!

The position of the African Union, which has spared no effort in recent years to bail out the Sudanese State criminal Al-Bashir and, the past few weeks, until the very last minute, to save the face of Gbagbo, the butcher of Ivory Coast, the attitude of these Congolese, Malian, and Mauritanian envoys arriving here in Benghazi where I am writing these lines, bearers of the gospel of the good colonel to an astonished National Council of Transition, is an insult to the very values of Africa and its past commitments.  Are we to believe that the anticolonialism of Senghor and Césaire, the combat of Lumumba and then Mandela, the thoughts of Franz Fanon, appealing to Africans to shake off their chains and free themselves from their tyrant—all that, fifty years later, has been reduced to this pathetic rhetoric on the right to self-determination, itself reduced to the right of tyrants to determine the fate of their people ?

The way NATO and its «Thing» work, its structure of command and its operational methods, its instances of bungling are the subject, here in the field, of dreadful and, I fear, not entirely unfounded questions.  How, one of the young commanders at the gates of the ghost city of Ajdabiya, the last safety bolt preventing the mercenaries of Tripoli from charging forth again to take Benghazi, could the coalition’s planes confuse our precious column of tanks with one of Qadhafi’s, and then bomb them ?  “How can one explain this ?” rails General Abdel Fattah Younès, this former Minister of the Interior who has rallied to the revolution and who, while Qadhafi daily ups the price on his head (last quoted at two and a half million dollars), is trying, somehow, to organize the armed forces of free Libya. Indeed, how can one explain what he implacably demonstrates for me in the control room of his Headquarters, backed up by maps and reports:  «From now on, it will take an average of seven to eight hours for the allied command to process the information we provide concerning enemy movements.  But seven or eight hours is more than enough time for the targets to move, melting into the civilian population, disappearing.”

There remain Qatar, Great Britain, and, of course, France, for whose determination and saving gesture I have heard incessant praise since I have been here.  Without France, people tell me absolutely everywhere, without “Monsieur Sarkozy and the people of General de Gaulle», without this first French strike on Saturday, March 19^th, that stopped the first tanks cold in their tracks at the south gate of the city, nothing and no one could have prevented the “rivers of blood” promised by Saif al-Islam, the mad son of Qadhafi.

But this time, will France be enough ?  Once again, it is five minutes to midnight in Benghazi.

The Observer, Sun 27 Mar 2011 00.06 GMT

Place du 17 fevrier (date anniversaire de la Revolution) Tobruk, Bernard-Henri Lévy devant le poste de police incendié par les opposants au regime de Kadhafi.

Criticism? Bernard-Henri Lévy waves his hands as if dismissing an irritating insect buzzing around him in the Café de Flore. “I say to my critics, you are right, but in that case you do your job and I will do mine,” he says. “All they have to do is do their job, and I don’t have to do this.”

Unruffled as ever in his trademark Charvet white shirt, half-unbuttoned to reveal his tanned chest, the 62-year-old French philosopher is used to being in the line of fire – some of it, from Bosnia in the 1990s and Burundi in 2000, all too real and dangerous.

But last week the censure was political: the self-appointed intellectual-at-large was under attack for reportedly persuading France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to meet and recognise the rebels in Libya. He has been nicknamed “foreign minister B” and was allegedly the driving force behind Sarkozy’s “diplomatic blitzkrieg” to secure international approval for military action against Muammar Gaddafi. In short BHL, as he is known, is accused of meddling in affairs of state.

All of which leaves this handsome dandy of a man almost totally indifferent. “Honestly, I don’t give a damn,” he says, as he drinks Ceylon tea in his favourite Left Bank haunt. “What has happened is so much more important than this derisory criticism. What is important in this affair is that the devoir d’ingérance [the right to violate the sovereignty of a country if human rights are being excessively violated] has been recognised. For the first time this concept was endorsed by the Arab League, by the African Union and by the UN security council. This is huge.”

He adds: “And what is even more important is that we avoided a bloodbath in Benghazi. Compared with these things, criticism of Bernard-Henri Lévy is quite honestly of no importance.”

According to a version of events recounted in Le Point magazine, which he does not dispute, Lévy’s Libyan adventure began before he left for the country. He called Sarkozy, asking if he was interested in making contact with the rebels. The answer was yes.

He attended a rebel meeting in Benghazi and asked to speak. “I explained that the world was looking at them and that their struggle was our struggle. It was a very dramatic meeting, very tragic; it was like Sarajevo at its worst time,” he told the Observer.

“I told them, I can be in contact with Nicolas Sarkozy; we are political adversaries, but I can try to persuade him to see you. What do you think about coming to Paris and meeting the president?”

The rebel leaders agreed but, following Lévy’s address, began making demands about official recognition. More phone calls to Sarkozy followed. The demands were met and the French president launched himself into getting European and UN approval for military action against Gaddafi.

Lévy’s involvement infuriated France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, who was not fully informed of the moves. Again, Lévy shrugs. The animosity between the men is historic. “Nicolas Sarkozy telephoned me when he had the result of the UN vote. It was 11.30pm. He said: ‘We have won’.”

“I told him two things: I did not vote for you and I will still not vote for you, but thanks to you, I am proud of my country.”

He believes that Sarkozy’s motives were political and personal: “Of course, it was a combination of the two: saving Libya and helping Sarkozy. But I believe from the bottom of my heart that he was being sincere. I have known him long enough to know that; whatever the personal politics behind his decision, he was genuinely concerned.”

And his own motives? “I am just doing my work. I believe that in a normal, civilised, adult democracy an intellectual should be able to speak to a political leader, even if he is not from the same political family.”

Asked why Libya, he replies: “It was an accident of history. I happened to be in Egypt when Gaddafi sent his planes to shoot at the pacifist demonstrations in Tripoli. It seemed to me such an enormous, unprecedented thing, and I felt the Egyptian democrats around me were so horrified by it that I decided on instinct to go to Libya straight away.

“Afterwards there was the reasoning, and that reasoning was that if we let this butcher massacre his own people, the consequences will be terrible not only for Libya but for the region in general. An unpunished Gaddafi would sound a death knell for the Arab spring, the end of this democratic movement and the immense hope it had raised.”

Bernard-Henri Levy, the French author and philosopher (his latest book is “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism”), has played a high-profile role in convincing French President Nicolas Sarkozy to take the lead in recognizing the rebels in Libya and establishing the no-fly zone. He spoke with Global Viewpoint Network editor Nathan Gardels on Thursday.

Sur la corniche de Benghazi, devant l'ex-Palais de justice, la population se rassemble tous les soirs a l'heure de la prière, pour manifester son soutien a la Révolution et écouter les nouvelles du front.

Nathan Gardels: It’s been said that you have played the key role in convincing Sarkozy to enter into this war.

Bernard-Henri Levy: The key role, I don’t know. President Sarkozy is certainly old enough to know what he has to do. Especially since, as you may know, I am a fierce opponent of his policies. I didn’t vote for him in 2007. I will not vote for him in 2012. And he knows it.

Gardels: Then why is it that you were present on March 10th, at the Elysée, when he received the representatives of the National Council of Transition and recognized them as the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people?

Levy: Well, that’s something else. I was there because I was the one who arranged the meeting. I am the one who convinced Sarkozy to receive these three men and who had suggested this “diplomatic recognition” to him. I was in Benghazi covering a story in the liberated section of Libya. As luck would have it, I met these people from the National Council of Transition and, in particular, its president, Mustafa Abdel Jalil. And it’s true that I called the president of my country from Benghazi to tell him, “There are people here, good people; these people hold the same values as we do, and they’re going to die to the last one if we allow Qaddafi to go on to the conclusion of his criminal logic. Would you accept to receive them in Paris and thus send a strong signal to the butcher?” Nicolas Sarkozy immediately said yes. And he confirmed his agreement the following Monday, on the morning I returned, when I went to see him at the Elysée.

Gardels: Fine. But why did you operate in secret? And place your partners, in particular the Europeans, before the fait accompli?

Levy: Because talking about this idea, verbalizing it, revealing it, would have meant its failure. When you consider everything that happened afterwards – squawks of protest from one and the other, dilatory maneuvers of all kinds – you can imagine what would have taken place beforehand: The operation would simply have been drowned in the flood of quibbling and neo-Munichesque blah-blah-blah. It would have been sabotaged before it had even begun. It had to be secret. For this powerful political act, this decisive act of sovereignty, this act that would break with all custom, all diplomatic rules, all conformisms, the effect of surprise was absolutely necessary. Nicolas Sarkozy understood that. And I am grateful to him for that.

Purpose, parameters of West’s operation in Libya

Gardels: From your point of view, what is the purpose of the operation?

Levy: The purpose is written in the resolution. To protect civilians. To prevent the bloodbath Qaddafi is anticipating. And, beyond that, to break the military machine that Qaddafi, as you know, had turned against his own people. Protecting civilians, then, is putting the army and the power of Qaddafi out of commission.

Gardels: Have we accomplished this?

Levy: The coalition has smashed the military airports, destroyed the heavy artillery, cut off the supply lines. But, for the time being, it has been unable to prevent him from sending his last tanks into the heart of Misurata, transforming the city’s inhabitants into just so many human shields. Qaddafi has hunkered down in the cities. Imagine a Hitler whose bunker would have been all of Berlin. That is Qaddafi today.

Gardels: Do you have any news from Misurata?

Levy: Yes. This afternoon [March 24]. From one of the city’s teachers, whom I reached by phone. Qaddafi’s mercenaries are firing on the hospital. Killing the wounded. The city dwellers no longer leave their homes for fear of being gunned down like rabbits by snipers. Blood is flowing in Misurata.

Gardels: What does one do when the rebels go on the offensive under cover of the no-fly zone and then are caught on some front line, locked in battle? Does the coalition have to support them?

Levy: It all depends on what you mean by “support.” If it’s sending troops on the ground to accomplish the Libyan revolution in the place of the Libyan people, no, that is not in the mandate voted by the United Nations, that is not what the National Council of Transition is requesting, and it is not what the president of the French Republic said to its emissaries at the Elysée. His words were quite clear and he hammered on them several times: “No one is going to come and accomplish your revolution in your place; the Libyan revolution belongs to the Libyan people and to them alone. We, the French, I can tell you we would have hated for this people or that to come and steal our 1789.” On the other hand, we must arm the insurgents. Arm them and train them. I believe that is what the Egyptians are doing. And perhaps the French.

Legal framework gives legitimacy to war

Gardels: If France goes too far, won’t you lose the legitimacy the support of the UN confers?

Levy: This is what I am telling you: One of the major differences between this war, inevitable, and the war in Iraq, detestable, is the mandate of the United Nations, its absolutely legal framework. It would be regrettable to stray outside of this legal framework. And I believe France will not do so.

Gardels: What about the faltering Arab League?

Levy: I wouldn’t say it has “faltered.” All right, it’s wavering a bit. You have a guy at the head of it, Amr Moussa, who has some political ulterior motives and who’s playing both sides, it’s true. But on the whole, the League is hanging on. Don’t forget, it was the League that launched the first appeal to save the Libyan people from the predicted slaughter. And, at the time I’m speaking, fundamentally, it has not changed its position and thus still supports the allied operation.

Gardels: Arabs seem at odds with the French effort to overthrow Qaddafi? Why?

Levy: What Arabs? Not Arab public opinion, at any rate. The Egyptians, for example, the intense strength of the new Egypt, support their Libyan brothers, are stirred by them and suffer with them and, contrary to what Monsieur Moussa may believe, have no problem with the presence of American, English, and French planes in the skies over Libya.

Gardels: The successful Arab revolts – in Egypt and Tunisia – have indelible legitimacy because they were totally indigenous. Will French intervention coupled with the Americans and British undercut the legitimacy of the Libyan revolt, playing into Qaddafi’s hands on his claim that this is Western imperialism after Libyan oil?

Levy: The oil argument is an idiotic argument. Had the problem been oil, the easiest solution would have been to maintain Qaddafi’s presence. One can “deal” very well with dictators.

Libyan rebels are secularists, want unified country

Gardels: If the French aim is successful and Qaddafi falls, who are the rebels the West is allying with? Secularists? Islamists? And what do they want?

Levy: Secularists. They want a unified Libya whose capital will remain Tripoli and whose government will be elected as a result of free and transparent elections. I am not saying that this will happen from one day to the next, and starting on the first day. But I have seen these men enough, I have spoken with them enough, to know that this is undeniably the dream, the goal, the principle of legitimacy. I would add that this National Council of Transition does not represent, as I have read all too often, only Cyrnaica. [Cyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya.] All of the regions are represented there. All the tribes. Including Qaddafi’s tribe or the tribes that are allied with it.

If Qaddafi wins, death of Arab spring

Gardels: President Obama has argued for action in Libya because Qaddafi is killing his own people. But so are they too in Bahrain and Yemen, Western allies in “the war on terror.” Isn’t there a case for intervention in those places as well?

Levy: Yes, certainly. But for now, let’s take down Qaddafi. You shall see that this will serve as a warning for all the other dictators. We cannot intervene everywhere. But an intervention can set a tone, serve as an example and a dissuasive factor. If Qaddafi wins, it will be the death knell of the Arab spring. If he is beaten, a fair wind of democracy will blow once again – and even harder.

Gardels: What are the parallels, or lack of them, to Bosnia, Kosovo and, in the French case in particular, Rwanda?

Levy: The parallels are obvious. Beginning with the hatred of the cities, the urbicide temptation, that Qaddafi shares with the Serb Radovan Karadzic or the Hutu perpetrators of genocide. The difference is that in Bosnia, or Rwanda, it was allowed to happen. Whereas in this case, intervention was decided upon very rapidly. And that is to the honor, this time, of the international community.

Place du 17 février (date anniversaire de la Révolution), Tobruk, Bernard-Henri Lévy devant la tente du commandement provisoire de la ville.

PARIS — With his open shirt and flowing dark mane, France’s most infamous public intellectual has adopted the cause of Libyan freedom, taking an outsized role in French foreign affairs in the process.

Even his detractors – and he has many – acknowledge that Bernard-Henri Levy helped engineer France’s pathbreaking recognition of Libya’s fledgling rebel authority, a major impetus for the coalition then gathering to back its struggle.

Largely unheralded abroad, BHL, as he is universally known here, is omnipresent in France, the most visible star in France’s crowded constellation of big thinkers, glitterati and talking heads.

Even those unfamiliar with his ideas or opinions immediately recognise the trademark white dress-shirt, mostly unbuttoned to expose an ever-tanned chest, and his now-graying, wavy black locks.

Levy, 62, is the quintessential “intellectuel engage” that special breed of thinker-qua-activist long lionised in France. Think Jean-Paul Sartre or Andre Malraux, two of Levy’s heroes.

Levy courts controversy, frequents war zones and loves paradox.

An Algerian-born Jew, he was an early and ardent defender of Bosnian Muslims during the war in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

To research a book on Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, kidnapped and killed by Al-Qaeda in Pakistan 2002, he spent weeks prowling the byways of Karachi.

Politically on the left, he calls conservative French President Nicolas Sarkozy his friend, even if he has lobbied against many of his policies.

In early March, Levy went to the eastern Libyan town of Benghazi, liberated days earlier by rebel forces after a bloody firestorm of protest.

He encountered members of the just-formed interim national council, and arranged for some of them to sit down with Sarkozy in Paris on March 10.

At the end of that meeting, which Levy attended, France became the first country in the world to recognise the provisional body as legitimate, and to call for targeted airstrikes against forces loyal to Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi.

French foreign minister Alain Juppe, who was in Brussels during the Paris tete-a-tete, was apparently caught off-guard by the announcement, which briefly threw European diplomacy into a tizzy.

“Bernard-Henry Levy does not have a lot of fans at the foreign ministry,” noted one diplomat dryly, asking not to be identified.

“The problem is not that he is consulted by the president of the republic,” said another foreign service veteran, also requesting anonymity.

“What is shocking is the uncoordinated free-for-all, leaving the impression that the last person to say something is right.”

But what mattered in the end was the result, another well-placed government official said.

“After all, it kicked off a dynamic… and made a common European position on the interim council possible,” he said.

Levy’s was quickly dubbed “the new foreign minister” by several media, a title he had already earned during the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia when he arranged a meeting between Bosnia’s ex-president Alija Izetbegovic and then-French president Francois Mitterrand.

“I’m about action, the rest doesn’t matter,” Levy told AFP.

An irrepressible writing machine, he has nonetheless found time to write more than two dozen books along the way.

He also runs and edits his own magazine, La Regle du Jeu, or the Rules of the Game, and contributes regularly to a dizzying array of newspapers and journals, both mainstream and esoteric.

Levy is not without detractors, some put off by his showmanship and others critical of what they describe as slipshod and slapdash research.

Last year he was caught red-faced for citing and praising the work of a philosopher who, it turned out, was invented as a joke by a journalist.

The writer took it in stride, admitting he had been duped and tipping his hat to the prankster.

The New Yorker, March 25, 2011.

Réunion avec les membres du Conseil National de Transition, l'instance qui dirige la Révolution, dans l'ex-Palais de justice de Benghazi, pour discuter du soutien que la France peut apporter a la Libye libre.

Paris is France’s New York, its Hollywood, and its Washington, D.C.— the country’s political, artistic, financial, and cinematic capital. As a result, in France these domains are intertwined with an unusual, and often surprising, intimacy. In particular, the politicization of intellectuals — and the converse, the intellectualization of politics — has been a key feature of French life at least since the eighteenth century. In the runup to France’s military engagement against Qaddafi’s regime in Libya, that trend seems to have taken a strange practical twist: the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy — who began his career, in the seventies, as a political philosopher and has been an extraordinarily prominent media figure — played a vigorous role in rallying the French government, and perhaps even our own, to the cause of military intervention on behalf of the Libyan uprising.

My attention was piqued by his surprising presence in a March 10th article in Le Monde, about France’s breaking of diplomatic relations with Qaddafi’s government and recognition of the National Transition Council as Libya’s legitimate government. The announcement was made in Paris after the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, met with three representatives of the Council. The article adds:

Soon thereafter, Bernard-Henri Lévy, who was present at that meeting, specified that the new Libyan ambassador to France would be accredited “in the coming days.” He added, “The French embassy in Libya will be transferred from Tripoli to Benghazi.”

“We are the first to say that Qaddafi is no longer the legal representative. It’s an event of major importance,” said the philosopher, according to whom the head of state “affirmed this, at the beginning of the meeting, very forcefully. The emissaries were surprised by the clarity of the French position.”

A week later, in Le Figaro, Renaud Giraud reconstructed the events that led up to that meeting. It’s an exciting story, which starts with Lévy’s disappointment at having gotten to Egypt only after the fall of Mubarak. He decided to be one of the first in Libya: “To cross the Egyptian border at Tobruk, BHL, accompanied by his associate Gilles Herzog, couldn’t find a taxi: he climbed into the van of a travelling vegetable vendor.”

In Benghazi, he managed to meet, ahead of other journalists, with Mustafa Abdeljalil, who was the leader of the Council, and invited him and several other leaders of the uprising to return to France with him, as Giraud reports, “promising to do everything he could” to get them to meet Sarkozy.

That evening, from his satellite phone, he managed to reach Nicolas Sarkozy: “Would you be willing to meet with the Libyan Massouds?” The President of the Republic immediately agreed.

When Sarkozy met with the Council members and declared France’s recognition of them as Libya’s legitimate government, Giraud writes, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alain Juppé, was neither present nor aware of the turn of events—of the plan that Sarkozy “had concocted two nights earlier with” Lévy.

After arranging for the Council member Mahmoud Jebril to meet with Hillary Clinton, who was in Paris at the time, Lévy then went on the radio to urge France to seek to take military action in defense of the uprising. On the afternoon of March 17th, Sarkozy called Lévy to say that he would make such a move at the U.N., and called him again when it was voted upon.

In a chat with readers of Le Monde yesterday, Lévy, asked about his role behind the scenes, answered with modesty:

My role, I repeat, was extremely simple: bringing to Paris the members of the National Transitional Council; welcoming Mahmoud Jibril in Paris, the day of the G-8 summit, so that he could plead his cause to Hillary Clinton; inviting Ali Zeidan to Paris too, the day before yesterday, to present the overview of his project for society to journalists. That’s all.

And he repeated that he had “No role. Except having had, one evening, in Benghazi, the crazy idea to pick up the phone and call my country’s president and recommend that he receive a delegation from Free Libya.”

It’s worth noting that Lévy is the kind of public intellectual who has long played a leading role in practical political matters there. He has written admiringly of André Malraux’s active and heroic participation on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and, in his fascinating book on French intellectuals and their politics, “Les Aventures de la Liberté” (translated here as “Adventures on the Freedom Road”), he interviews a member of Malraux’s regiment who said (I’m quoting from memory), “Malraux knew what needed to be done and, instead of sitting in the Café de Flore, he did it.” In his remarkable book about Jean-Paul Sartre, for whom the political engagement of the intellectual was a fundamental value, Lévy emphasizes the connection between Sartre’s public image and his philosophical thought.

What Lévy’s prominent unofficial role in the government of France says about the country’s politics is another thing altogether. NATO may well have ended up mandating and maintaining a no-fly zone over Libya anyway, but the outcome of events there seems to be measured in days, even hours. Had the U.N. not taken up its debate when it did, the uprising might well have been utterly routed, mooting the discussion and leaving the world to wonder why it had delayed. It’s entirely possible that, with the U.N. resolution having come in time to save at least some vestiges of Libya’s heroic resistance, Lévy’s timely intervention may indeed have been the decisive accelerant to action.

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P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, I had the privilege of interviewing Lévy in the course of research for my book about Jean-Luc Godard; Lévy contributed a blurb for the book. In 2009, I wrote an article for Lévy’s magazine, La Règle du Jeu.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

Journal du Dimanche : We have learned from your laregledujeu.org site that Sakineh’s execution may take place as soon as tomorrow.  What is your reaction?

Bernard-henri Lévy : Prudence, of course, first of all.  For, like all information that comes out of Iran and, in particular, all that concerns Sakineh’s ordeal, the news is not completely verifiable.  The Iranians are playing with our nerves.  Perhaps they are testing us so as to anticipate the intensity of our reactions should they carry out this act.  Perhaps they’re even behaving like all hostage-takers—and Sakineh is a hostage of sorts—trying to raise the stakes with plans for this or that future political bargain in view.  But at the same time, our sources are reliable.  Since the beginning of this affair, the International Committee Against Stoning, based in London and in Frankfurt, has never been proven wrong.  And so I believe one must take the threat seriously, very seriously.  The reasoning, from that point on, was very simple.  Last night, as soon as we learned of this letter of the High Court of Tehran to the Chamber of application of sentences at Tabriz prison, demanding that the execution be speeded up, and as soon as we then confirmed the information with Armine Arefi and our Iranian contacts at La Règle du Jeu, we said to ourselves, «It’s better to alert public opinion right away, better to do too much than not enough; if, God forbid, the worst should happen, we would regret not having raised our voices soon enough nor loudly enough for the rest of our lives.”

J.D.D. : How does one qualify this execution, should it actually happen?

B.-H. L. : Without a doubt, as a crime of State.  A crime against humanity, perhaps, for, through this innocent woman, all the women of Iran and all those who, outside Iran, might become, like her, the prey of Islamic fanaticism are targeted.  And this is, of course, a message addressed not exactly to the West, but to all those, westerners or not, who believe in democracy, liberty and equality between men and women.  This message is, “your freedom, we don’t give a damn about it, and here’s what we’re doing to your equality; yes, we are barbarians—but proud, very proud, to be such barbarians.  A word to the wise is sufficient.”

J.D.D. : What can one do, besides pray?

B.-H. L. : Reply.  Do not give up or disarm.  And, when one is France, that is to say a great country that enjoys a seat as a permanent member of the Security Council, use this symbolic weight in favour of this living symbol Sakineh has become. In late August, Nicolas Sarkozy uttered words for which, regardless of the importance of my political disagreements with him, I shall always be grateful.  As you recall, he said that the fate of this woman was France’s “responsibility”.  Well, he must repeat those words and make it clear to the opposing camp that these are words that ripened and were long weighed, with power and morality in the balance.

J.D.D. : In the last few hours, have you been in contact with him?

B.-H. L. : Indirectly, yes.  I know he takes this threat seriously.  And he takes seriously as well his own commitment at the end of last summer.  If you would like my opinion, at the time we are speaking, French diplomacy is not inactive.

J.D.D. : What do you plan to do in the coming hours?

B.-H. L. : Talk.  Talk some more.  Talk in particular to my friends in the American press who, with the time difference, are just learning the news we have been living with since this morning.  With your permission, in fact, I will try to have this conversation we’re having published by the Huffington Post, in New York.  Every voice counts.  Every minute that passes is like a moment of a fatal countdown.  And we must all do everything to make the Iranians understand that, if they really decide to carry out this act, the emotion, hence the repercussions, will be immense and of global magnitude.  After that, we’ll see.  One must, if not pray, at least be vigilant, and wait until tomorrow morning.

J.D.D. : If the irreparable were to be committed, what would you do?  What would you demand?

B.-H. L. : I told your colleagues on French public radio at this morning.  If the irreparable should be committed,  we must consider the authors of this crime definitively not to be associated with and draw all the resultant moral, political, and diplomatic conclusions.  For myself, I would immediately begin thinking about a second campaign.  All the energy I will have put, for months, into defending Sakineh I would use to try to convince people that no leader of a civilized nation can deal, face to face, with Ahmadinejad.  I would think, in other terms, and I weigh my words, of a campaign advocating the rupture of diplomatic relations with Iran.  But, I repeat, we’re not there yet.  For the moment, I am hoping.  Oh yes, I’m hoping so much that, realizing the price such an infamous deed would cost them, the masters of Tehran will, for once, come around to the voice of understandable interests and, thus to the voice of wisdom.  Let us wait.