A third irremovable Arab president has fallen. Muammar Qaddafi’s final fate, like that of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh currently in Saudi, recovering from an attempted assassination, is still unknown. But one thing is pretty sure: like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Husni Mubarak, Colonel Qaddafi is the third political victim of the Arab spring. Quite a deed, if one remembers the proliferation of de facto monarchical republics in the Arab Middle East in the very recent past.

While there is much to rejoice in this news, many questions arise concerning the political and military developments of these last months in Libya. In this post, I will focus on the media coverage in and around Tripoli. Next week, I will analyse the emerging Libyan leadership.

It is striking to see how the most recent military developments in Tripoli are mostly portrayed as a “rebel-driven campaign.” To be sure, we are told of how NATO allies coordinate aerial attacks in their support for this the apparently final offensive, but very little is said about the active role that Qatar, France and England have taken in arming, equipping and training the Libyan rebel forces (not to mention intelligence gathering and strategic planning). It is, in fact, probably as much a victory of the Transitional National Council (TNC) as it is of the countries which have thrown in their lots in the hope of securing a substantial share of the (oily) pie and to obtain a prominent role as future regional leaders. Yet, very little has been said about the active role of the U.S. in the unfolding events. “Leading from behind,” Obama’s unique strategy, is perhaps more of a media performance than a military reality. The U.S. has been very much involved.

One can find evidence that the USA is not waiting, arms crossed, to see what will happen in the Cyrenaica and Tripolitana. An article in yesterday’s New York Times reveals pro-active American involvement in planning the future of a post-Qaddafi Libya:

With the lessons of postwar Iraq very much in mind, the Obama administration and its allies oversaw the drafting of “a transition road map” that creates an interim governing authority to fill the vacuum created by the monolithic Qaddafi regime until elections are held.

The road map did not specify dates or a timetable for the election. But the officials said the rebel leaders had consistently pledged to have an open, inclusive government. They have also pledged not to pursue vendettas or a “de-Baathification-style” purge of the political and security bureaucracy, something that fueled the insurgency in Iraq.

“We try to learn lessons,” a senior administration official said. “That’s why there was such as emphasis on post-Qaddafi planning. It wasn’t strictly because of April 2003, but that definitely was on people’s minds.”

A road map, as we know from the Palestinian context, is not just stale scenario mapping out different possible political outcomes. It can be a guide, at times even a semi-binding document for international actors. Even if the quote above does not clarify who exactly drafted this transition road map, the Obama Administration clearly is taking an active role in defining the next moves in Libya.

Thus, one has to recognize the sanitized media covering of the ongoing military campaign. Make no mistake: this has been the case throughout the six months of Libyan coverage. Now, the coverage is only about a rebel-driven campaign, obfuscating the active involvement of external actors. Then, in the first three or four weeks after the March UN Resolution installing a no-fly zone, the media hardly reported on civilian casualties, nor did they show pictures of dead people (the turning point seems to have been the deadlock over the Misrata siege when pictures and stories of the human drama unfolding in the Mediterranean city gave a different, more personalized account of the military operations).

We are thus confronted – again – with the politics of visibility. One can discern different scopic regimes granted to different sets of actors. The involvement of Libyans themselves needs to be seen on the front stage (or they need to be projected as being on the driver’s seat), while that of international actors should only be mentioned in the backstage. There is a logic to this, obviously, if we think of the American context. Politically, it is not a good idea for American politicians to be seen or perceived as having an active role in defining the future of Libya. Instead, one should only react, or act as far as possible away from the (media) spotlight.

There are many instances of this politics of (in)visibility. Last March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the TNC, beyond the public eye. The New York Times reported the meeting in these terms:

Mrs. Clinton met the opposition leader, Mahmoud Jibril, at her hotel here after attending a dinner with foreign ministers of the countries of the Group of 8, who discussed ways to increase pressure on Colonel Qaddafi’s government, including imposing a no-flight zone over Libyan territory. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Jibril met for 45 minutes but did not appear publicly out of concern for his security, an aide said.

Security was certainly an issue on that occasion, but there were also sophisticated political calculations of American officials to not be seen too openly with what was then an embryonic alternative leadership in Libya. The future will tell us how this new emerging leadership will manage to fulfil or betray the hopes of popular democratic openings.