As the military stalemate in Libya continues, NATO-led forces may soon be facing further unpalatable choices, writes David Tresilian in Paris With television pictures coming out of Libya this week focussing on the conflict in and around the western city of Misrata, during which shelling by pro-Gaddafi forces has caused the mass evacuation of civilians, pressure has been mounting on NATO-led coalition forces to find a way of breaking the stalemate in the Libyan conflict without at the same time being accused of mission creep. While military actions carried out by NATO forces under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorises the setting up of a no-fly zone over Libya and the protection of civilians and civilian-populated areas, have led to the destruction of much of the capacity of pro-Gaddafi forces and the reinforcement of rebel enclaves in the east of the country, the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has shown little sign of disintegrating. The rebel-led Libyan Interim Transitional Council (ITC), formed at the end of February and headquartered in the eastern city of Benghazi, has declared itself to be the "sole representative" of the Libyan people, and it has been recognised as such by six countries, including France, Italy, Qatar, Kuwait, the Maldives and Gambia. However, thus far the council has been unable to make headway in the west of the country despite the ongoing NATO-led airstrikes on pro-Gaddafi forces, and this had led to the present war of attrition. Reported on daily by international television channels, the conflict has focused on Libyan coastal cities, among them Misrata, Brega and Ras Lanouf, and it has led to the de facto partition of the country. While there have been attempts at mediation between the two sides in the hope of finding a political solution to the conflict, the most recent taking place earlier this month when a delegation of politicians from the African Union attempted to find common ground between the Gaddafi regime and the rebels, these have foundered on disagreements between the regime in Tripoli and the ITC over the role of Gaddafi and his family in any solution to the Libyan crisis. The African Union peace plan, which assumed that Gaddafi himself or his sons would remain in power in Tripoli while a political solution was worked out with the rebels, was rejected by ITC leaders, who have demanded that neither Gaddafi nor members of his family play any role in a political solution to the crisis. Meanwhile, the leaders of the coalition countries that have up to now carried out the majority of the NATO-led airstrikes, Britain, France and the United States, have consistently called for Gaddafi to step down before negotiations between the two sides can take place. While the NATO foreign ministers statement on the Libyan crisis, released following a meeting in Berlin on 14 April, said that NATO-led actions over Libya would continue until attacks on civilians had ended, the Gaddafi regime had withdrawn its forces from all occupied towns and cities and humanitarian access had been granted to the population, a subsequent letter signed by US President Barack Obama, British prime minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy took a tougher stance. The letter, published in the international media on 15 April, said that while "our duty and mandate under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and... is not to remove Gaddafi by force," it was nevertheless "unthinkable that someone who has tried to massacre his own people can play a part in their future government." Coalition efforts have focussed since on exploring whether the UN mandate can be interpreted to authorise further support for the rebels, whether financial or in military form, and whether the coalition's stated desire to see the end of the Gaddafi regime can be squared with the narrower terms of the UN mandate, which does not authorise intervention in Libya to bring about regime change. One indication that coalition members were preparing to intervene more directly in Libya, even at the risk of potential or actual "mission creep," in other words going beyond the ostensible terms of the UN Resolution, came last week when it emerged that Britain, France and Italy would be sending military advisors to Libya to assist the rebels. According to British Foreign Secretary William Hague, the British advisors, numbering ten, would not help train rebel forces or advise them on battlefield tactics, but would instead provide advice on "communications and logistics, including how best to distribute humanitarian aid and deliver medical assistance." The British announcement was followed by announcements from France and Italy along the same lines, French foreign minister Alain Juppé saying that "about a dozen" French advisors would be sent to Libya, whose mission would be to assist the rebels with logistical matters and would not become involved in fighting pro-Gaddafi forces. UN Security Council Resolution 1973 rules out the deployment of foreign ground forces in Libya, and it does not authorise assisting rebel forces in their fight to remove the Gaddafi regime. However, reports in the international press at the end of March had already indicated that "small groups of CIA operatives," authorised by Obama, were operating in Libya to help bleed Gaddafi's military, and that British special forces were also working on the ground in Libya. Another indication that coalition members may be preparing to step up assistance to the Libyan rebels even at the risk of mission creep came with Obama's authorisation last week of the use of US unmanned predator drones in carrying out airstrikes on pro-Gaddafi forces. The predator drones, or predator unmanned aerial surveillance weapons, also used in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, have the ability to home in on targets using powerful surveillance cameras, and coalition commanders are believed to have been urging their use in Libya because they would provide better targeting of pro-Gaddafi forces dug into positions next to civilian areas. A US predator drone was used to destroy a multiple rocket launcher belonging to pro-Gaddafi forces in the vicinity of Misrata last Saturday, according to NATO sources, with a further strike coming on Sunday evening. Also at the weekend, NATO forces carried out attacks on Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli, apparently destroying office buildings that NATO spokesmen said made up a "communications headquarters... used to coordinate attacks against civilians," something denied by the Libyan government. The latest round of attacks came just days after US Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in an interview with the London Financial Times, said that the United States did not intend to step up its involvement in policing the Libyan crisis, despite private requests by Britain and France for it to take a more active role in the military airstrikes. Biden said that the United States had other strategic concerns that dwarfed those in Libya, and it was for strategic reasons, rather than political ones, that Obama had announced in a speech at the end of March that the US would henceforth be playing only a "supporting role" in the Libyan crisis, having initially led the coalition air campaign. "There's a bad guy" in Libya, Biden said. "Everybody knows he's a bad guy," and so there were no political obstacles to US involvement. However, "the question is where should [US] resources be?" "Should we be spending more time knowing everything there is to know about the make-up of the opposition in Libya, or should we be having all the intelligence that is available to know and reasonably could be known in what's going on in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood," Biden asked, indicating that the US had more important strategic interests in the outcome of the forthcoming Egyptian elections than it did in the nature of the regime in Libya. While there has been increasing unease in Europe about the direction the NATO-led coalition's intervention in Libya is taking, with Britain and France in particular having possibly exposed themselves to another drawn-out conflict, public opinion in these two countries may still be behind the intervention. According to the Financial Times, writing in the wake of the Biden interview, while fighting on behalf of the Libyan rebels would be "unacceptable mission creep," there were other ways in which "the stuffing could be knocked out of the regime," notably by making "Colonel Gaddafi's life in his compound intolerable." According to an editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde, which has supported the coalition's intervention in Libya, that appeared on the day the sending of the French advisors to Libya was announced, the time was now ripe for a "serious national debate" on the direction the intervention was taking, indicating that up until now serious debate had not taken place, at least in France. "British parliamentary democracy could give an example here," the newspaper said, since voices in British parliamentary debates had already warned of the dangers of mission creep, pointing out that the "American intervention in Vietnam half a century ago had also started with the sending of military advisors."
