Libya is where the Arab spring could become winter, writes Graham Usher at the United Nations A week after the Security Council agreed to sanction and refer the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court in The Hague British and French diplomats are drawing up elements of a new Council resolution to authorise an Iraq-like No-fly Zone (NFZ) over Libya. The first resolution drew a rare unity among the council's 15 member states. The second would divide them between the United States, Britain and France on one side and just about everyone else on the other. For most of the world Libya is no longer a popular uprising against a brutal dictator but an attritional civil war fought between opposing geographical, tribal and political forces, with no clear victor. Even the US, France and Britain speak only gingerly of "contingency plans" for a NFZ, with none actively seeking military intervention. But the division between the West and the rest reflects differences over goals in Libya: the US, France and Britain are all more or less enthusiastic advocates of regime change, convinced that Gaddafi's survival is now more harmful than his ouster. President Barack Obama has called for the Libyan leader to "step down from power and leave". On 7 March he said NATO was "considering a wide range of potential options, including military options, in response to the violence that continues to take place in Libya". Some options are already in motion. Last week US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the US was moving two amphibious warships through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean mainly for "emergency evacuation and relief operations" but carrying 2,000 marines. And on 5 March seven British Special Forces soldiers and a diplomat were airdropped by helicopter into Benghazi in Eastern Libya "to initiate contacts with the opposition", admitted a coy British Foreign Secretary William Hague. They were arrested by militiamen from the Libya National Council (LNC), the self-declared shadow administration to Gaddafi whose base is Benghazi, which a few Western capitals already treat as the seat of an alternative Libyan government. Clearly the LNC is unsure whether British paratroopers dropping out of the sky uninvited are friend or foe. The mooted UN resolution on a NFZ may get a similarly cool response. Russia spent most of last week at the council making sure the Libya resolution could not be used to authorise the use of force. China too speaks only of "national dialogue", not regime change. And Brazil, India and South Africa -- all non-permanent council members -- will almost certainly oppose military intervention, especially one that has no regional covenant. "We hear the language of regime change. But we are not there yet. It's not up to us to tell the Libyans who their government should be," said a UN diplomat. It's not just the terrible memory of Iraq that makes many member states so averse to foreign intervention. Even Western diplomats concede enforcing a NFZ across Libya would be logistical nightmare, "larger in scale than Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo", three conflicts where UN or NATO no-fly zones were imposed, with varying effect. It would also be an act of war. "Let's call a spade a spade," United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress last week. "A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences. That's the way you do a no-fly zone." Finally, a US-led intervention would play into Gaddafi's narrative that the conflict in his country is not an internal revolt against his regime but a foreign conspiracy aimed at recolonising its oil. UN diplomats see only two cases where the Security Council might approve a NFZ: one if there is documented evidence of Gaddafi unleashing massive airstrikes against his people; and the second in response to a request made by the Arab League and African Union. Neither is especially likely, though the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on 7 March called on the Security Council to protect Libyan civilians, "including through a NFZ", and for a second urgent Arab League meeting on Libya in less than a month. But the GCC won't get an Arab consensus there on a foreign , US-led intervention. So why is a NFZ being considered? Libya is a media as well as a ground war. Diplomats admit one of the reasons the council has moved with such unwonted speed against the Gaddafi regime is less because of verifiable events than because of domestic pressure on governments fed on media reports that describe skirmishes as "battles" and moments of armed violence as "massacres". That news agenda is driven overwhelmingly by the LNC, with whom many Western journalists are embedded. The LNC is led by Libya's former justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil who commands a courageous militia of defected soldiers, tribesmen and professionals. But how representative it is beyond Benghazi is moot. Anecdotal evidence suggests most Libyans don't want foreign troops on their soil. However, on 2 March the LNC called for a NFZ over Libya and for US-led airstrikes against Gaddafi's "strongholds of mercenaries". With LNC fighters now losing ground to the Libyan armed forces, there are calls in Washington and other Western capitals that airstrikes be authorised, NFZs imposed and arms supplied to the rebels to shore up the "legitimate" LNC against the "illegitimate" Gaddafi regime. This looks and sounds eerily like Iraq, circa 1991 and 2003. Some Libyans in the opposition may genuinely believe foreign intervention is the only way their country can be rid of dictatorship. But others in the region will say an Iraq-like foreign "liberation" of Libya is "where the fire of revolution from Tunisia and Egypt could go out," says British International Relations analyst Brendan Simms. Even in Western capitals the appetite for intervention is tepid. Gates -- defence secretary during the worst years in Iraq and Afghanistan -- knows well how limited engagements can become America's longest wars. He was recently asked by officer cadets whether the US could afford -- militarily, financially and politically -- another front in another Muslim country. "In my opinion, any future defence secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined," he said.
