Human Rights and Terrorism since 1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
On March 17, 2011 the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1973, imposing a no-fly zone over Libya and authorizing member states to take measures to protect Libyan civilians from the government of Muammar Gaddafi, which was using repressive measures to crush a popular uprising against his decades-long rule. Subsequently, NATO warplanes began bombing Libya, which U.S. president Barack Obama justified in the name of human rights, specifically the so-called “responsibility to protect” doctrine, developed by the UN and other international bodies in the wake of their failure to respond to genocidal violence in Europe and Africa in the 1990s. The U.S.-led campaign came twenty-five years after President Ronald Reagan, in April 1986, ordered similar air strikes against Libya following the bombing of a Berlin nightclub which was blamed on Libyan intelligence agents. Reagan justified U.S. actions then in the name of counterterrorism, stating that Gaddafi had made Libya “a synonym for barbarism around the world.” After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Gaddafi switched hats, cooperating with U.S. and European-led counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda, until the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011 caused many Western governments to pivot against him.
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