[Debate] "We need an open-ended, low-intensity no-fly zone" in Libya

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/08/crisis-libya>
The crisis in Libya
Once it's over in Libya, will it be over?
Aug 23rd 2011, 19:23 by Bagehot

. . . . .

On Monday afternoon, a Downing Street spokeswoman, under repeated
questioning from lobby reporters, called the deployment of British
peacekeeping troops on the ground "unlikely" but did not rule out the
possibility that the rebel government-in-waiting, the National
Transitional Council (NTC), might request "extra support" for
stabilising the country. Today's Daily Mail quotes sources saying that
200 British soldiers based in Cyprus are on standby to take part in
humanitarian operations in Libya, at 24 hours' notice.

Against that, Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative international
development secretary, has said the British government does not see
"any circumstances" in which British troops would be deployed on the
ground.

So what are officials saying? Speaking from outside Britain, a senior
official told me that—after the fall of the Qaddafi regime—NATO air
patrols and a no-fly zone would certainly have to remain in place as a
deterrent to fighting between different factions or tribes, and to
fulfil NATO's mandate from the United Nations to protect civilians.
How long might that last? Well, he said, the current plan is for
elections within 240 days, so perhaps until then at least: "We need an
open-ended, low-intensity no-fly zone."

Then, the same official said, there will be the much thornier question
of "boots on the ground". At a minimum, if Libya finds itself
welcoming teams of international aid workers, engineers or advisers on
reconstruction, and if the post-Qaddafi situation looks
"semi-permissive" (ie, dangerous but not lethal), such foreigners will
need protecting. If, in a worst case scenario, fighters from Benghazi
start taking revenge on tribes that were previously loyal to Colonel
Qaddafi, then the question of peacekeepers arises. Western countries
would like regional partners to "step up to the plate". That means
troops from Arab or African countries, in plain English.

There is talk of troops from Qatar, from Jordan or the United Arab
Emirates, or from the African Union, a regional grouping which already
provides peacekeepers all over its home continent). But this may not
work, said my source, and African Union peacekeepers "don't have a
great reputation". The EU is looking at NATO to see what that alliance
might do, and NATO is looking at the United Nations. But any mandate
from the UN to authorise peacekeepers in Libya would take many weeks,
and that leaves "a gap", the official said. That may leave everyone
pondering the unhappy prospect of western peacekeepers on the ground,
a development that would trigger alarmed cries of mission creep in
London, Paris, Berlin, Washington DC and (perhaps most importantly)
across the Arab world.

The problem is, for all that western leaders talk up the leading role
played by the NTC and the Libyans, the international alliance built
around United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 stretched its
mandate to the furthest possible extent, so that the protection of
civilians morphed into more or less overt support for the uprising
against Mr Qaddafi. "Now we own it," said the official.

Do we own this uprising? Clearly not. And British officials, up to and
including the prime minister, David Cameron, would never use such
language and insist in private and in public that this is Libya's
revolution. And yet... there is a certain amount of credit-claiming
going on that does muddy the waters.

As the French press reports with pride this morning, France feels this
was its war, or more specifically "Nicolas Sarkozy's war", to quote
the headline in Le Monde. The daily describes Mr Sarkozy poring over
maps, studying approaches to Tripoli and the terrain on the rebel
front lines, personally deciding on air-drops of arms to rebels in the
mountains in June (with the help of his "key ally", Qatar), and more
recently deciding to arm a rebel commando unit that sailed from
Misrata to the beach of Tripoli as part of the "final assault" on the
capital.

Le Monde describes Mr Sarkozy committing himself to the Libyan
"adventure in a way that has rarely been seen by a western leader
during a post-Cold War international crisis." His motives are
described as a mixture of buffing up his presidential image and
restoring France's reputation in the Arab world, after the humiliation
France suffered earlier in the Arab spring, when the then foreign
minister was caught offering French police assistance to the tottering
dictator of Tunisia, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. There is also the small
question of payback for Mr Qaddafi, who went out of his way to
humiliate Mr Sarkozy on a carnivalesque visit to France in 2007, at
one point calling on young people living in heavily-ethnic French
suburbs to "rise up". Accordingly, Mr Sarkozy has told those around
him that Mr Qaddafi is "mad" and "stupid" and that "we are going to
make him eat dirt", Le Monde reports.

Le Figaro, a centre-right daily and the house journal of the Sarkozy
government, headlines its piece "Nicolas Sarkozy's gamble in Libya
pays off", and notes that though the guiding principle of the conflict
has been to display a united front and avoid any hint of the West
versus the Arab world, and that although the "Franco-British
partnership" has played a "key role", there is no getting away from
the fact that France was "in the lead", that France was responsible
for 35% of all military strikes during the conflict, and that Libya
was "essentially, Nicolas Sarkozy's war".

The British press offers a slightly less gung-ho, but still pretty
boosterish take this morning, with a Daily Telegraph report headlined:
"Libya: secret role played by Britain creating path to the fall of
Tripoli", which opens:

For weeks, military and intelligence officers have been helping the
rebels plan their co-ordinated attack on the capital, and Whitehall
sources have disclosed that the RAF stepped up raids on Tripoli on
Saturday morning in a pre-arranged plan to pave the way for the rebel
advance. MI6 officers based in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi had
honed battle plans drawn up by Libya’s Transitional National Council
(TNC) which were agreed 10 weeks ago. The constantly-updated tactical
advice provided by British experts to the rebel leaders centred on the
need to spark a fresh uprising within Tripoli that could be used as
the cue for fighters to advance on the city.

-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>