By Richard Dalton
Three weeks ago I wrote something that helps explain why foreigners have interfered in this crisis and not in others: “Humanitarian intervention is not yet firmly rooted as a concept or in practice. And UN members are selective in the crises they wish to address. They often disregard situations that are objectively worse than the Libyan one now. That can be because there is a powerful patron that blocks action that might be aimed at another state. Or it can be because the problem is simply too big for potential interveners to take on.”
The states that voted for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 did so because they considered that the formal conditions for an intervention had been met: demonstrable need in terms of extreme danger to large numbers of civilians, demand from within Libya supported in the region, a legal base and clear limits to the mission set out in the resolution.
Further, and informally one might say, the object of the intervention — Gaddafi’s Libya — had no loyal friends in the international community to argue against the course proposed by the sponsors of the resolution, and the military task appeared to be manageable.
None of the other crises in the “Arab spring” come close to satisfying these formal or informal criteria — not Bahrain, not Yemen. However reprehensible the repression of legitimate aspirations for freedom in each of these is, there is simply no consensus in the region or more widely that their very different situations require the permanent members of the Security Council to intervene by force.
I also wrote: “UN member states would have to be convinced that under cover of a rescue mission the states doing the job did not have an ulterior motive and that the mandate for it could be tied down to the minimum needed to help end the tragedy and hold the ring for a new set of well-intentioned rulers to emerge. They would have to be persuaded that the mission would succeed quickly, that there would not be a prolonged war that created yet more disruption and death.”
It is here that the coalition carrying out Operation Odyssey Dawn has encountered political turbulence. On March 21 and 22, a number of countries questioned the nature and extent of the attacks. In response, the coalition partners have insisted both that they will not exceed the mandate in the resolution and that it gives them wide powers. As Prime Minister David Cameron said in the House of Commons on March 21, “We are in no doubt that Colonel Qaddafi is still arranging his forces to inflict further attacks on the civilian population — notably in Misurata — and we are determined to stop him.”
This means that if there is no ceasefire as demanded by the UN, and uprisings in Libya’s towns and cities face more merciless attacks, it is likely that the coalition will intervene by air, or even in limited extreme cases by land, to prevent people being killed in large numbers. They will do so because they believe that dictators should not be allowed to stamp out aspirations for justice, liberty and fuller and better lives, and that despite inevitable controversy in many quarters there is enough international, particularly Arab, support for such action. Nevertheless, the coalition must put more sustained effort into explaining its tactics, stressing its consistent position from the beginning that it is for the people of Libya to determine who rules them.
The weakest point in the announced strategy of the intervening powers is how they will permanently avert the risks to civilians, that is, how the end-game will go. They are improvising. All Cameron could say on March 21 was, “Inevitably information about the Libyan opposition is not complete . . . . It is important that in supporting the implementation of the resolution the international system plans now for stabilizing the peace that will follow . . . . . This could include rapidly restoring damaged infrastructure, keeping important services such as health and education running, reforming the security sector and ensuring an open and transparent political process to elections.”
So far, UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon and his envoy Abdel Illah Al-Khatib are lying low. At the right time they should give a strong lead. It was the UN that created independent Libya in 1951 and it is to the UN that many Libyans will turn if Gaddafi goes and a new government and constitution are needed, with reconstruction to follow.
That is not assured. It is too soon to be confident that Gaddafi will be defeated within weeks with his core support melting away. It would take a much more evident weakening of Gaddafi’s position, including fresh successful uprisings in the west of the country, to nerve a critical mass of people to take on his enforcers in the crucial streets of Tripoli. It is possible that he will hang on in the west, where two-thirds of Libya’s population live and from where state institutions can be controlled, and stave off the challenge from the East, leading to an unstable stalemate.
Those who support international intervention in Libya will need strong nerves as they cope with the ebb and flow of this complicated, media-scrutinized crisis that will be resolved in months, not weeks.
Sir Richard Dalton is an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. He is a former UK ambassador to Libya and Iran. This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with bitterlemons-international.org
