The Slippery Libyan Road

Sep 19, 2011 Editorial

The Arab Spring, which had seen off autocratic rulers in Tunisia (Dec 2010) and Egypt (February 2011), appears to have finally worked its wonders in Libya, which lies between them. Colonel Qaddafi has fled the capital Tripoli earlier this month as the rebels from Bengazhi in the east, under cover of NATO warplanes, announced themselves victorious in the civil war that had broken out in February.
NATO, of course, was working under the mandate of UN Resolution 1973 passed in March by the Security Council, that authorised a ‘no fly zone’ and to take ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians in Libya. The argument was that the Qaddafi regime, in retaliation to the uprising would have engaged in mass massacres of civilians in Benghazi.
In addition to allowing the incapacitation of the Libyan air force to even the odds against the rebels, the ‘no fly zone’ clause was interpreted as justifying ‘humanitarian bombing’ that added a suspiciously offensive tinge to the operation. The insertion of western agents to provide intelligence and training to the rebels and even troops, did not allay suspicions that the mission was ‘regime change’ by any means necessary. That Libya has the largest deposits of petroleum in North Africa – 46 billion barrels – did noting to allay these suspicions.
Qaddafi, in power for 42 years, has repeatedly vowed not to surrender and to die fighting for his homeland. Speaking from an undisclosed location on September 1, to mark the anniversary of the military coup that toppled the pro-Western monarchy of King Idris, Qaddafi said that there was no question of surrendering and called on NATO and the United Nations to stop interfering in the internal affairs of Libya. He squarely blamed the international community for plunging the country into a civil war. He had warned the international community before the war started that NATO military intervention would turn Libya into another Somalia.
While most accept that Qaddafi was a dictator, some fear that the intense involvement of NATO forces in the Libyan civil war ossify a dangerous precedent. The Ugandan-born academic Mahmoud Mamdani noted in a recent article that in the past decade Western powers had used two institutions – the U.N. Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) – to selectively intervene in countries. “The Security Council identifies states guilty of committing ‘crimes against humanity’ and sanctions interventions as part of the ‘responsibility to protect civilians’.” In the Security Council vote on Resolution 1973, five countries had abstained – including China, India, Russia and Germany.
Resolution 1973 represents a key extension of the gradually enlarged willingness to move away from the long established convention against intervention inside member countries. Previous resolutions had been along the lines of, for example, that passed on Sierra Leone “to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of its personnel and, without prejudice to the efforts of the government, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, within their capabilities.”
In contrast, the comparative clause in 1973 reads, “Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General’ are authorized ‘to take all necessary measures , . . . . . to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”
This explicit authorization to use force to protect the lives of civilians arose directly out of the experiences of the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s. The Libyan intervention now provides a precedent for international armed force being used to remove any repressive authoritarian government.
The global enforcement of consent of the governed is being attempted. The concern is that this enforcement is dominated by the west, which controls the UN Security Council. Whether this enforcement can be achieved in the near term is doubtful, but we are at an important inflection point in history.

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