Libya: will a ‘no fly zone’ fly?

March 9, 2011 at 11:15 pm (africa, Human rights, Jim D, Middle East, terror)

Let’s be clear: the best outcome to the present situation in Libya would be a decisive victory for the rebels with no outside intervention. That is what all socialists and democrats must hope for, and it still can’t be completely ruled out as a possibility.

But the latest news seems to suggest that the mad mass murderer Gaddafi is on the offensive, and his superior forces (and especially, his air power) seem to be pushing the rebels back. Reports from Zawiyah (30 miles west of Tripoli) suggest that Gaddafi’s forces have reduced the town “to ashes.”

 Until now, the evidence has been that majority of the the rebels probably do not want outside support, and in particular, do not want support from the UK or the US: it would play into Gaddafi’s hands,  we’ve been told, confirming his “narrative” of the uprising as the work of dupes of “imperialism” bent on seizing Libya’s oil wealth for the West. The farcical episode of Hague’s SAS/MI6 mission, seized by a bunch of anti-Gadaffi farmers, has naturally added to scepticism about the wisdom of any form of intervention.

Even so, the shrill letters in the Graun and the Morning Star, denouncing in advance any suggestion of “Western”, UN or any other “intervention”, as though that was presently the major issue, have been bizarre, to say the least. These (presumably) leftist hysterics have now been joined by Tory isolationists singing from exactly the same hymn-sheet.

It’s still far from clear that a ‘no-fly zone’ will get through the UN Security Council (Russia and China are presently opposed), though the recent calls for it from  Libyan rebels, and support from the Arab League, make it more likey that the objections will be overcome.

If  (as seems quite likely), Gaddafi bombs Benghazi, then the case for a no-fly zone will become unanswerable, just as it was in northern Iraq to defend the Kurds in 1991. As was the case then, I can see no possible leftist objection, apart from a  blind, dogmatic and ahistoric objection to any form of intervention under any circumstances.

BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze debated the issue tonight. As usual, panellist Claire Fox was an insult to the intelligence. Anti-intervention “witnesses” Sami Hermez  and John Rees were also pretty incoherent and noticeably unwilling and/or unable  to answer the questions put to them.

Soft-left groupings in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria have called for their own governments “and international authorities” to intervene in Libya in support of the rebels.