Stop the civil war
The Gaddafi family this morning seems bent on civil war. It is using the Libyan army and hired thugs to empty the streets of Tripoli, especially Green square, and to hold the relatively few towns in the west that have not yet fallen to the protesters (or should we call them the rebels?). Despite high level defections, the Colonel and his sons are using military force (tanks, RPGs, in addition to aircraft and helicopters earlier in the week) against the civilian population.
The risk here is civil war. Already what has occurred could leave Libya with a bitter legacy of murder and mayhem, now against the population, but likely in the future against the regime. Or, worse, the regime could survive, reimposing order and slaughtering its opponents.
President Obama was clear enough yesterday that Gaddafi’s behavior is unacceptable, but the Administration still seems to lack a robust plan for stopping it. Sending the Secretary of State to a Monday meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission is not going to do it–that’s a body that has disappointed human rights concerns repeatedly. And Monday is still a long way off.
It looks now as if the best hope to avoid the worst is action from within Gaddafi’s closest circle. Who knows whether that is a real possibility, but the high-level defections that have already occurred suggest it might be. It might also be useful to make it clear to the non-Libyans defending Gaddafi that they are welcome to defect–so far the rebels appear to have been more inclined to kill them.
I am still puzzled by the lack of asset and travel freezes, as well as an arms embargo. Sure, they would be mostly symbolic at this point, but symbols count. And where is the Sixth Fleet?
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In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica massacre, the international community elaborated the concept of an international responsibility to protect civilians. This was the recommendation of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Security in 2004 presented to the UNGA. The Panel affirmed the “‘responsibility to protect’ of every State when it comes to people suffering from avoidable catastrophe — mass murder and rape, ethnic cleansing by forcible expulsion and terror, and deliberate starvation and exposure to disease” and noted “a growing acceptance that while sovereign Governments have the primary responsibility to protect their own citizens from such catastrophes, when they are unable or unwilling to do so that responsibility should be taken up by the wider international community.”
The bloody civil war in Libya is such a catastrophe and it will not be avoided by words of condemnation or even sanctions and no-fly zones. It will take a massive intervention by the world community — under a UNSC mandate and including a strong NATO commitment as well as troops from all Perm Five states. If the international community sits by and watch this unfold, “never again” will take another, perhaps fatal, body blow.
Ironically, Libya also has oil. Inaction to prevent a gross disturbance in world energy supplies also suggests just plain impotence.