By Abdallah Schleifer
CAIRO: The UN Security Council has voted for a no-fly zone over Libya. Hours before that vote the embattled Libyan leader Qaddafi threatened to throw everything he had into the battle for Benghazi, to end it before any no-fly had begun; to be “merciless” when his forces stormed Benghazi. He also threatened to hit any or all available targets around the Mediterranean if the UN dared to impose a no-fly.
Now that the no-fly motion has carried, Qaddafi’s Foreign Minister suddenly declares a ceasefire, swears that Qaddafi’s army exists only to protect civilians.
Will the West and the Arab League buy this? I assume Qaddafi is counting on the same American failure of nerve we demonstrated when we betrayed the very rebellion within Iraq against Saddam Hussein back in 1991 that we had encouraged, and where we are still suffering from the bitter fruits of that betrayal.
If Qaddafi can secure temporary quiet on the Eastern front with his tanks, artillery and the elite special forces commanded by his two sons still in place (the only reliable regular forces that he has; everywhere else the rest of the Libyan Army either defected, faded away or retreated when the uprising began) then he will have secured a lease on life.
If President Obama buys this latest Qaddafian scenario and adopts a wait and see attitude, this will mean an inevitably protracted on-and-off again civil war. Right now it’s an insurgency that we can formally recognize as the sole legitimate government and respond immediately as allies of a legitimate government requesting assistance, by providing air cover (meaning air strikes against Qaddafi’s tanks and heavy field and sea artillery as well as a no-fly zone) as the insurgents resume their drive to liberate Tripoli , an offensive that was thrown back this past week precisely because of Qaddaffi’s superiority in air power and heavy weaponry.
If Qaddaffi’s government is illegitimate as declared by the Arab league and by Presidents Sarkozy and Obama and Prime Minister Cameron then his offer of a ceasefire is irrelevant and as treacherous as everything else that has characterized the rule of this man for the past 40 or so years and it should be dismissed as such.
President Obama has already procrastinated enough over the past week. To grasp on to this last straw of a illegitimate and murderous regime would be beyond foolishness
What are we waiting for? Another Srebrenica? Let our air force, and the British and French air force take off Saturday at dawn.
I still remember Bill Clinton’s campaign promises. He would save the Bosnians. And then he sat back and waited in the White House until Srebrenica fell and 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered before our air force went into action.
The killings already began over the past week in the back streets of Tripoli. Hundreds of protesters and suspected sympathizers of the insurgency were hunted down, taken away and murdered. The UN mandate is not only for a no-fly zone but by whatever means necessary, to protect civilians. Rhetoric will not save Libyan lives or bring back home the tens of thousands of Libyans who have already fled over the past week from Qaddafi’s reign of terror. Let the rhetoric end.
Abdallah Schleifer is professor emeritus of journalism at the American University in Cairo, former NBC News bureau chief in Cairo and former Washington DC bureau chief for Al Arabiya’. He is a Global Expert for the UN Alliance of Civilizations.
