There is a small window for Gaddafi to retrieve an impossible Libyan predicament, registers Gamal Nkrumah It may not yet be over, but twinkling on the horizon stands the spectre of a post-Muammar Gaddafi Libya. The blood-and- guts bombardment by NATO warplanes of Bab Al-Azizia, the Gaddafi nerve centre in the heart of the Libyan capital Tripoli, is beginning to add up to something sinister and has taken its toll on the morale of the pro-Gaddafi forces. Yet instead of solutions to the problematic of a post-Gaddafi Libya, the country appears destined to be treated to yet another agonising instalment of Gaddafi versus the militant Islamists. That is a huge shame for Libya. Gaddafi has not yet buckled in, but should be applauded for holding on tenaciously to his principles. Predictably, upheaval is not likely to reverberate in other Arab and African counties. The possibility of Libya's Salafis generating unpleasant religious radicalism does not appeal to the Western powers, least of all to the United States. "The truth is, I think frankly, one of the reasons that we have been as cautious as we have in terms of providing other than humanitarian support and some non-lethal assistance to the opposition is because of what we don't know," US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was reported as saying. The Libyan people are left in a stew of lethal lawlessness by the military support provided by Western powers and the financial backing furnished lavishly by the oil-rich Gulf Arab states on anti-Gaddafi forces, mortally weakening the Libyan state. Without substantial change in Western perceptions of the political situation in Libya, all this mess will get worse. The worst of the Libyan crisis is already upon its hapless people. There are certain signs, albeit barely perceptible, that Gaddafi and his henchmen are waking up to the ramifications of these problems. The flurry of diplomatic activity in which the African Union, and in particular South Africa's President Jacob Zuma, and Greek and Turkish mediators have been in close consultation with officials of the regime. "Libya will not kowtow to the unjust embargo," Libya's Foreign Minister Abdel-Aati Al-Obeidi told the United Nations secretary-general's chief envoy to Libya Abdel-Illah Al-Khatib in Tripoli this week. Gaddafi's foreign minister stressed the savage bombardment of innocent civilians. Al-Obeidi condemned the massacre of scores of Muslim clerics during a prayer council in a mosque in the Libyan government held oil terminal of Brega. He also decried the targeting of Gaddafi and his family that resulted in the assassination of the Libyan leader's son Seif Al-Arab, which only strengthened the resolve of the Libyan people to defend the sovereignty of the country. The crunch of the matter, Al-Obeidi told Al-Khatib, was that after three months of fierce fighting and violence, and in spite of the aggressive intervention of Western powers in a desperate bid to prop up the anti-Gaddafi forces, the Libyan leader remains firmly in power and refuses to step down. Russia and China, permanent members of the UN Security Council, have expressed outrage at the turn of events, pointing out that the UN mandate was to protect Libyan civilians and not to slaughter innocent civilians who happened to support Gaddafi for one reason or another. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon spoke by telephone with Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi last Wednesday and the two sides concurred that the Libyan protagonists should negotiate a ceasefire immediately. Both the UN secretary-general and his chief envoy to Libya expressed a willingness to "better understand the situation in Libya". It has become a truism, buttressed by the hard realities on the ground, that Libya's political future will belong to one or the other factions that comprise the National Transitional Council (NTC) headquartered in Benghazi. The irony is that even though NATO air-strikes stopped Gaddafi's troops in their tracks, and redeemed Benghazi, Libya's second largest city and the bastion of the Libyan anti-Gaddafi uprising, saving it from falling into Gaddafi's hands, it has not enabled the NTC forces to threaten Tripoli. The Libyan capital is firmly in the grip of Gaddafi, even though the NTC and allied insurgents will do everything to break the will of the Libyan leader. If the NTC is already looking to a post-Gaddafi future in alliance with the West, then such a perspective underscores the urgent need to examine scrupulously the political intentions and ideological orientation of the disparate political groups that comprise the NTC. These proxies threaten not just Libya's immediate neighbours -- Egypt and Tunisia -- as they struggle to nurture their nascent democracies, but they threaten the stability of the entire Saharan and Sahelian regions of Africa as well. It has become increasingly apparent that the West, and in particular Washington, is subjecting the debilitating Libyan civil war to forensic reappraisal. With tens of thousands of Libyan lives lost, and a military stalemate with no end in sight, it has become clear that either the West is reluctant to get rid of Gaddafi, or that it is unwilling to do so. True NATO has razed the Libyan Security Services building, according to Gaddafi sources, but Gaddafi clings to power. Three months on from the outbreak of Libya's anti- Gaddafi uprising, smoke billows in Tripoli. The West aims at prising Gaddafi from power, but it doesn't look like he is going anywhere. NATO doesn't speak with one voice. And, Libya is virtually partitioned. The question is whether it is Gaddafi's stealth or NATO indecision and weakness that are spawning the current political and military impasse. Since 17 February, there have been 2,700 NATO air raids on Gaddafi strongholds, even though the Libyan leader insists that civilians have borne the brunt of the NATO blitz. The implications are still being played out. Gaddafi claims that NATO's most recent air strike was aimed at destroying the Anti-Corruption Agency which had carefully compiled financial and political corruption files on the NTC. "The files have survived intact. But how is this raid helping the protection of civilians? The real motive for the attack is to conceal the truth, the tangible evidence, about the corrupt NTC leadership, from the world," Libyan government spokesman Ibrahim Moussa told reporters in Tripoli. The noose is tightening around Gaddafi. There are reports that the Petroleum Minister Shoukri Ghanim and former Libyan Arab League representative Abdel-Moneim Al-Houni and Ali Tarhouni have also defected. They follow former interior minister Abdel-Fattah Younis, foreign minister Moussa Koussa and justice minister Mostafa Abdel-Jalil. International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luiz Moreno-Ocampo is now officially seeking an arrest warrant for Gaddafi, his son Seif Al-Islam and Gaddafi's right hand man and son-in-law Abdullah Al-Senousi, Libya's national security chief, for their ostensible crimes committed against humanity and in particular against the Libyan people. Moreno-Ocampo, of course, did not look into crimes committed by the NTC, let alone NATO forces. The minimum requirements for any credible inquiry are that it must scrutinise all allegations, including Libyan government claims that NATO has butchered innocent civilians with their air sorties. The focus should not be exclusively the drip-drip of dubious allegations of crimes against humanity by Moreno-Ocampo. There is short time left for Gaddafi, a finite window, maybe not to reverse entirely the threatening menace posed by NATO and its proxies in Libya, but to halt the country's slide towards an abyss. Can it be done?
