Unwilling to tolerate a ceasefire yet unprepared to fight a ground war, Western powers are stuck in a Libyan desert, writes Graham Usher A month after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) authorised a no-fly zone (NFZ) over Libya the frail international consensus expressed by that resolution is starting to fray. On 14 April Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said NATO airstrikes "exceeded" the UNSC's mandate to protect civilians. Three days later British Prime Minister David Cameron said the resolution "restricted" NATO's power to protect them. The split was predictable. Britain and France drafted UNSC Resolution 1973 to provide legal cover for a military offensive they hoped would drive Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from power as swiftly as popular revolutions ousted the Egyptian and Tunisian dictators. Russia -- with China, Brazil, India and Germany -- abstained (rather than veto the resolution) out of fear that Gaddafi was about to lay a Srebrenica-like waste to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, a city of 800,000 people. Their abstention was "not so much a willingness to act but more an unwillingness to be blamed if things went really badly," said one UN watcher. Barack Obama gambled. Keen to see Gaddafi go but loath to commit military forces to another foreign war in another Muslim country he hoped an initial burst of US firepower enabled by Resolution 1973 would not only save Benghazi but tip the military scales in favour of the rebels in their fight against Gaddafi. He lost the bet. Inexperienced, undisciplined and often inept, the militias of the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) were no match for regime forces that, according to one count, also outnumbered them 10 to one. Absent the air cover provided by NATO the rebels would have been crushed. The exception is Misrata, the only rebel city in western Libya. There lightly armed civilian-turned- fighters have somehow managed to hold the city despite a two-month siege, relentless bombardment by Gaddafi's forces and mounting civilian casualties. On 18 April the UN called for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian access to the city. Gaddafi reportedly agreed to access but not to a ceasefire. The result is an impasse, there and elsewhere. Gaddafi controls the west of Libya while the rebels, shielded by NATO, have the east. Misrata represents the failure of Gaddafi to cow his people and the failure of NATO to protect them. Neither side has the military edge. The stalemate could last months. Which is why no one, not even NATO, believes a military solution is achievable. Turkey and the African Union have flown peace plans. Both call for a ceasefire followed by a national dialogue on a political settlement. Neither calls for Gaddafi's head, though the Turkish proposal has him naming a "transitional" successor. Gaddafi accepted the AU ceasefire. The TNC did not. There can be no settlement without the removal of Gaddafi "and his sons", said a spokesman. They are quietly backed in the rejection by the US, Britain and France, which have provided the lion's share of the firepower over Libya. All three want regime change: the prospect of a vengeful Gaddafi presiding over a pariah state has become intolerable. So while UNSC Resolution 1973 grants no mandate to remove Gaddafi by force, "it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in power," wrote President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the International Herald Tribune on 15 April. Until his departure, "NATO and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds." Anything less "would be an unconscionable betrayal" of the Libyan people. Regime change was endorsed by meetings in Doha of the Libya "Contact Group" (a coalition of 21 Western, Arab and African states) on 13 April and by NATO foreign ministers in Berlin the next day. With the letter from Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy, those decisions have closed the door on a ceasefire or political negotiations anytime soon. But while these alliances are united on aim, they are divided on means. In Doha, there was no agreement on arming the rebels, with Qatar in favour but European states against. In Berlin, there was no pledge to widen or even increase NATO member state military contributions. And NATO contributions are already paltry, reflecting how wary member states are about becoming embroiled in another Afghan-like civil war. Of its 28 members, only 14 are participating in Libya. Only six are conducting airstrikes. And of the eight not conducting airstrikes only two are Arab: the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. This is an embarrassment. France, Britain and the US all played up the Arab League's request for a NFZ as supplying the political legitimacy for their intervention in Libya. But that request now seems less an expression of Arab sentiment than a trade in which Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia delivered the League on Libya in return for Western quiescence on the Saudi-led occupation of Bahrain. Faced with a stalemate, what options do the US, Britain and France have? One -- barely uttered -- is to take the Iraqi road by sending in foreign foot-soldiers to take out Gaddafi by force. For now it's a non-starter. It would be opposed at home in all three countries, could enflame the region (which has so far been passive about Libya) and would gainsay pledges by Obama and Cameron that no US and UK ground troops will fight in this war. It would also violate Resolution 1973 which rules out "occupation" and "invasion" as means to enforce its writ. Another is to nurture the TNC as a state-in-waiting that would eventually replace the regime in Tripoli. The danger is that it may also replace Libya as a unitary state: leaving the Gaddafi regime an impoverished Saddam-like rump in the west and the TNC a kind of Libyan Kurdistan in the east. This would confirm the worst Arab fears of partition. It would also provide the Western powers with a new base in North Africa, a client regime in East Libya and access to some of its richest oilfields. Finally, the US, Britain and France could ratchet up enough military, diplomatic and economic pressure to try and force a palace coup against Gaddafi. This seems to be the unspoken hope of diplomats from all three countries. But "hope" -- as Obama once told George W Bush after the latter had committed US forces to earlier civil war in Iraq -- "is not a strategy".
