Thursday, April 07, 2011

The outbreak of a mass uprising in Libya, back in February, contained all the elements of high drama. Today, the situation in the country is moving closer and closer to farce.

At first, there was a robust military intervention led by the United States and its European allies. Now, the Libyan rebels are outraged that NATO forces are unable to deal a final blow to the Gadhafi regime, despite the statements by the Western alliance, dutifully detailing the percentage by which Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s forces have lost their power to fight.

The quibbling over who is able to strike where, and how effectively, is only the tip of the iceberg. The country is now descending into civil war. A regular army, irrespective of how one might term Gadhafi’s forces, remains well-equipped and ruthless.

It has the resolve as well as the means to shell civilian areas indiscriminately and fight the rebels, who had mistakenly hoped that NATO would quickly help tip the balance and allow them to easily resist the onslaught of Gadhafi’s forces.

Now, the rebels are caught between a rock and a hard place, spending efforts at securing political recognition from Europe and elsewhere, while unsure of how the Western alliance is truly keen on ending the fighting quickly.
With every passing day, the body count in Libya is rising. And with every day, the damage to Libya’s economic infrastructure, and particularly its oil sector, is rising as well.

As things stand today, it appears that years will be required to see the country overcome what was once thought to be an easy task for Western powers who said they were determined to stop the killing.
It is turning into a never-ending struggle, with no winners or losers in the military sense, but only massive devastation.

The conflict might end in a de facto partitioning of the country into rival spheres, with the groundwork already laid in the form of tribal divisions. This will create, instead of the announced hope for a prosperous Libya, two deprived countries.
Western powers have spent a considerable amount of time mobilizing the world court of public opinion against Gadhafi’s regime, and have made emphatic statements that he and his cronies must go if there is to be a durable solution to the crisis.

These Western powers cited a host of principles, such as human rights and international law, in justifying their original course of action. But their dithering over recent days has soured public opinion in this region over what is taking place, as people suspect that in the end, deals will be struck to ensure that Western oil interests emerge as the real winner.
A job of this magnitude, left half-done, will not only be useless, but disastrous as well.