Abstract
The 2011 uprisings in Libya can be seen as a particularly powerful episode of contentious politics in the region, with protests and high levels of violence persisting over months and eventually leading to the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime after more than four decades. Yet acts of resistance against the ruling political class and the way in which the latter ran and de facto “owned” the Libyan state for decades are not limited to the year 2011. Rather, the events during the so-called Arab Spring merely represent the heydays of a much longer history of contentious politics. Acts of oppression, such as the Abu Salim Prison Massacre in 1996, and countless instances of reported torture and assassinations carried out worldwide by the Libyan secret service in an effort to preempt opposition to the Gaddafi regime bear witness to the fact that not all Libyans supported the “brother leader” to the extent he desired.1
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Notes
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It has further been argued that nonintervention also reflected the personal preferences of Chancellor Merkel, Foreign Minister Westerwelle, and other leading political personnel in Berlin, see, for example, S. Brockmeier, “Germany and the Intervention in Libya,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 55, no. 6 (2013): 63–90.
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von Weitershausen, I. (2015). Foreign Engagement In Contentious Politics: Europe and the 2011 Uprisings in Libya. In: Gerges, F.A. (eds) Contentious Politics in the Middle East. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530868_7
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