Libya on the whole is a very moderate Islamic country. Gaddafi
deliberately made Islamists the enemy in Libya during his rule. This was so
prevalent that people, even after the dictator’s death, are slow to trust the
new democratic government in Libya because Gaddafi told the people they were Al
Qaeda. As a result the Muslim Brotherhood only won 17 seats in the new Libyan
Parliament. William Hague is thus mostly right that the West helping Libya is
not the main cause of the war in Mali as on the whole these people are not from
Libya. Although I bet that they are using the weapons that the Rebels took from
Gaddafi.
These Islamists have been around for ages, at least since the
Algerian Civil War in the 90s, but most likely in some form or another for longer
than that (see permanent state of war half of Africa has been in since the end colonialism).
During the Civil War in Algeria these terrorists were slowly kicked out to Mauretania,
Mali and Nigeria (to name but a few countries).
There has been for a long time underlying Islamic
Terrorism in North Africa and the recent attack in Algeria and taking over half
of Mali has only been able to take place because of misfortunate circumstances
(mostly weak governance in Mali). The West have not a lot to do with this. Al Qaeda
is mostly interested in taking over countries rather than attacking the West in
Africa and we did not unwittingly let forth a flood of terrorists from Libya. I
suppose you could argue though that the West is to blame for giving up
colonialism in Africa, although I doubt the leftie media are going to argue for a New
British Empire. They're not that mad.
