The only aspect that Western democracies have impeccably tended to is the oil business, which was back into full swing shortly after the regime fell. Where the profits of said businesses are going is not entirely clear.

We still know how the situation was before democracy came to Libya, thanks to the American Library of Congress and its study on the North African nation. The Federal Research Division carried out an in-depth study of Libya under Gaddafi, finding that among other things:

"The welfare available to Libyans included much more than was provided under the social security law: work injury and sickness compensation and disability, retirement, and survivors' pensions. Workers employed by foreign firms were entitled to the same social security benefits as workers employed by Libyan citizens. Subsidized food, inexpensive housing, free medical care and education, and profit-sharing were among the benefits that eased the lives of all citizens. The government protected the employed in their jobs and subsidized the underemployed and unemployed. In addition, there were nurseries to care for the children of working mothers, orphanages for homeless children, and homes for the aged. Education is free at all levels, and university students received substantial stipends."

All of the above is now (temporarily?) gone, but hey, who needs hospitals, schools and a welfare state when you have democracy?

Needless to say, oil, not freedom, is what France, Britain and the U.S. (and their allies, from Qatar to Italy) were after when they invaded Libya, armed the rebels and triggered the instability now reigning in Libya. A Wall Street Journal article dated April 15, 2011 makes it absolutely clear that the only thing that worried Western democracies at the time was the control over Libyan oil. It is only too logical then for the same freedom-loving forces to have abandoned the Libyan people to their tragic destiny once their resources were stolen, pardon, "secured."

It is in fact significant that the rebels in Benghazi had formed on March 19, 2011 the Central Bank of Benghazi (CBB) before even forming a transitional government. If banks had been nationalized under Gaddafi, the first thing rebels did was to seize Gaddafi's frozen assets to hand them over to the "liberators" (custodian banks in Britain and Switzerland might know a thing or thing regarding those assets…)

So while chaos reigns, violence and sectarian divisions keep worsening by the day, Libya remains obscured by Western media except when the violence they have helped to spread backfires. As lives are destroyed and the fate of a whole nation lingers in uncertainty, business, one suspect, is the only thing that goes on normally. The recent attack on the French embassy was not the first nor will be the last in a country where economic interests have long superseded humanitarian concerns.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.ccgp-fushun.com/opinion/giovannivimercati.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.