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Prolonging Conflict in Libya

As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the weakness of France and Britain is their lack of a local partner who is as powerful and representative as they pretend [bold mine-DL]. In the rebel capital Benghazi there is little sign of the leaders of the transitional national council, which is scarcely surprising, because so much of their […]

As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the weakness of France and Britain is their lack of a local partner who is as powerful and representative as they pretend [bold mine-DL]. In the rebel capital Benghazi there is little sign of the leaders of the transitional national council, which is scarcely surprising, because so much of their time is spent in Paris and London.

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The aim of Nato intervention was supposedly to limit civilian casualties, but its leaders have blundered into a political strategy that makes a prolonged conflict and heavy civilian loss of life inevitable.
~Patrick Cockburn

At his new blog, Micah Zenko grades the NATO war in Libya, and gives it a D on the protection of civilians. Zenko explains:

It is unknowable how many would have died in the absence of an outside military intervention. However, before NATO intervened, the number of civilians killed in Libya was comparable to fatalities in the uprisings in Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. The Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, estimated that “500 to 700 persons had been killed in February alone when Libyan security forces had fired live ammunition at demonstrators.” In two months, deaths have escalated dramatically. Last week, a Libyan rebel spokesperson estimated that at least 15,000 people had been killed in the civil war. A running Wikipedia page that uses open-source information, finds 4,900 to 5,800 deaths, and another 900 to 3,100 people missing in Libya.

As the war drags on, it is increasingly likely that intervention will not have helped and will have made things significantly worse. This is what makes the refusal to consider seriously offers of cease-fire so hard to understand. While hostilities continue, relief aid cannot make it to the country’s civilian population, and people trapped in besieged cities such as Misurata cannot be evacuated or provided with the food, water, fuel, and medicine that they very much need. By prolonging and intensifying the conflict, the U.S. and NATO are exacerbating the humanitarian situation in the country for the entire population. A negotiated settlement is imperative if the war is not to create a humanitarian catastrophe larger than the one it was supposed to prevent.

Cockburn considers the possibility of a negotiated settlement:

Could the war be ended earlier by negotiation? Here, again, the problem is the weakness of the organised opposition. If they have the backing of enhanced Nato military involvement they can take power. Without it, they can’t. They therefore have every incentive to demand that Gaddafi goes as a precondition for a ceasefire and negotiations. Since only Gaddafi can deliver a ceasefire and meaningful talks, this means the war will be fought to a finish. The departure of Gaddafi should be the aim of negotiations not their starting point.

As I have said before, U.S. and NATO support for the rebels has given them every incentive to pursue maximalist goals and reject any cease-fire or negotiations in the meantime. By empowering one side in a civil war and giving them every sign that our governments intend to fight on until their ultimate objectives are achieved, the U.S., France, and Britain have made any negotiated settlement practically impossible. That prolongs U.S. and NATO involvement, but more important it extends and worsens the plight of the Libyan population for the sake of advancing the political cause of the rebels.

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