By Steve Hynd
What if popular support for Gaddafi in Western Libya, Tripoli in particular, is stronger than we've been told? The hope is apparently that his forces will desert en masse under allied air assault but what if that doesn't happen? As I wrote yesterday, the plan is obviously regime change, no matter all the talk about protecting civilians, but that requires someone go to Tripoli, either the rebels or a coalition ground force. What happens if there's enough resistance to that to create a long and drawn out civil war or insurgency? And how will all that play in the wider region?
These are all questions we should be asking now rather than later. Reuters today:
Western forces pounded Libya's air defenses and patrolled its skies on Sunday, but their day-old intervention hit a serious diplomatic setback as the Arab League chief condemned the "bombardment of civilians."
...Arab League chief Amr Moussa called for an emergency meeting of the group of 22 states to discuss Libya. He requested a report into the bombardment which he said had "led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians."
"What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians," Egypt's official state news agency quoted Moussa as saying.
Arab backing for a no-fly zone provided crucial underpinning for the passage of the U.N. Security Council resolution last week that paved the way for Western action to stop Gaddafi killing civilians as he fights an uprising against his rule.
The intervention is the biggest against an Arab country since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Withdrawal of Arab support would make it much harder to pursue what some defense analysts say could in any case be a difficult, open-ended campaign with an uncertain outcome.
...Explosions and heavy anti-aircraft fire rattled Tripoli in the early hours of Sunday. Defiant cries of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) echoed around the city center.
Libyan state television showed footage from an unidentified hospital of what it called victims of the "colonial enemy." Ten bodies were wrapped up in white and blue bed sheets, and several people were wounded, one of them badly, the television said.
The mood in Tripoli turned markedly anti-Western, and crowds shouted defiant slogans and shot in the air.
Gaddafi has promised a "long war", and if so we can expect more of the above - both regional outrage over dead civilians and entrenchment of Libyan loyalists to Gaddafi. The word "quagmire" is looking more probable than "cakewalk".
Update: Dave Schuler has two really good questions.
Question 1
If the rebels against Qaddafi advance from their present strongholds, will the member states engaging in hostilities in Libya pursuant to UNSC Resolution 1793 bomb them? I don�t think so but I think the resolution might be construed that way.
Question 2
A collapse of the Qaddafi government wouldn�t automatically create a viable new government to replace it. Protestations of Resolution 1793 to the contrary notwithstanding, wouldn�t the member states engaging in hostilities against the Qaddafi government automatically become �occupying powers� under the presently prevailing laws of war with an obligation to preserve civil order in Libya until such time as the responsibility could be handed over to a new Libyan government? If not, why not?
I've asked a version of the first myself, and disagree with Dave; the US and its allies will indeed bomb to support a rebel advance, so as to affect regime change and so that they don't have to be the "occupying powers" of the second. Raymond Pritchett (Galrahn) of Information Dissemination blog agrees, saying that there's enough slip-and-slide in the UNSC resolution to make a case that it's allowed, and tweets: "I've had it confirmed that is the interpretation by many nations, including the US".
Amr Moussa is a complete and utter joke as is the Arab League. Imposing a no-fly zone was always going to require a massive bombardment. This is all wearingly familiar, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteHi Bodour,
ReplyDeleteYep, SecDef Gates warned this is what the process of supporting regime change from the air would look like. And it is indeed all wearyingly familiar - even down to the date. March seems to be the month for starting wars.
The notion of "responsibility to protect" is a good one but the devil, as they say, is in the details. I can't see how accidentally killing civilians helps fulfil any "R2P" mandate, but the West is obviously more concerned about casualties among its own airmen than among pro-Gaddafi citizens.
Regards, Steve
Comment deleted for racist rant. Please don't comment like this again otherwise not only will it be deleted but your IP will also be banned.
ReplyDeleteThe management.
The way I see this is that by enforcing a no fly zone is to basically destroy Libya's external national defense system. This renders Libya as defenseless against foreign comers and puts whoever wins the political struggle in the position of having to negotiate the nations defense with those that currently have air supremacy. This stinks to high heaven of a version of disaster capitalism where essentially we've taken advantage of a local political crisis and amplified it in order to position ourselves as a mafia selling protection against the mob - and you know who that is.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, like all these seemingly pointless wars, there will be an extended period where whomever emerges with political power will be forced to negotiate basing rights with the west.
This is the common thread that connects all these incursions together in the long run, and accounts for why the pattern is repeated over and over again regardless of how ineffectual it appears.
If we didn't already have basing rights in Bahrain we'd be in there as well.