Category Archives: War in Libya

NATO’s mission in Libya

The Los Angeles Times reports:

A Russian envoy’s trip to the Libyan capital Thursday yielded no major breakthroughs amid escalating international efforts to end the four-month-long crisis in Libya.

Both Mikhail Margelov, Russia’s special envoy to Africa, and Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Ali Mahmudi said the major issue — the future of Moammar Kadafi — remained unresolved.

Kadafi “is not prepared to go,” Margelov said he was told by Libyan officials, according to the Russian Interfax news agency.

Later, Mahmudi repeatedly made the same point — that Kadafi has no intention of leaving Libya — during an almost two-hour news conference with foreign journalists. He labeled attempts to force Kadafi’s departure a “red line” that cannot be crossed.

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Gaddafi losing friends and influence in Africa

Reuters reports:

Muammar Gaddafi is losing friends in Africa, the continent where his largesse once bought him the title “King of Kings” but which is now turning to other foreign allies to help shape its future.

Moves by countries including Senegal, Mauritania, Liberia, Chad and Gambia to distance themselves from Gaddafi are partly a gamble that NATO-backed rebels will finally succeed in ending his four decades of authoritarian and quixotic rule.

But they also show Gaddafi’s waning role in a region where foreign investor appetite, trade ties with Asia and a domestic yearning for democracy are all eclipsing the lure of Libyan petrodollars and weakening the old-boy networks they propped up.

“The rest of the continent has passed him by. The favors he can call in are few and far between,” said Tara O’Connor of London-based Africa Risk Consulting.

Meanwhile, Libyan rebels dismiss election offer from Gaddafi’s son:

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is willing to hold elections and step aside if he lost, his son said, an offer quickly dismissed Thursday by rebels and the United States.

Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera: “They (elections) could be held within three months. At the maximum by the end of the year, and the guarantee of transparency could be the presence of international observers.”

He said his father would be ready to step aside if he lost the election, though he would not go into exile.

Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi later appeared to put the potential concession in question, telling reporters: “I would like to correct (that) and say that the leader of the revolution is not concerned by any referendum.”

He added that there was no reason for the Libyan leader to step down in any case, because he had not held any formal political or administrative post since 1977.

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War Powers Act does not apply to Libya, Obama argues

The New York Times reports:

The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities.

In a 38-page report sent to lawmakers describing and defending the NATO-led operation, the White House said the mission was prying loose Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s grip on power.

In contending that the limited American role did not oblige the administration to ask for authorization under the War Powers Resolution, the report asserted that “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.” Still, the White House acknowledged, the operation has cost the Pentagon $716 million in its first two months and will have cost $1.1 billion by September at the current scale of operations.

The report came one day after the House Speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, had sent a letter to Mr. Obama warning him that he appeared to be out of time under the Vietnam-era law that says presidents must terminate a mission 60 or 90 days after notifying Congress that troops have been deployed into hostilities, unless lawmakers authorize the operation to continue.

Mr. Boehner had demanded that Mr. Obama explain his legal justification for passing the deadline. On Wednesday, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said he was still reviewing the documents, adding that “the creative arguments made by the White House raise a number of questions that must be further explored.”

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Drinking cappuccino as the bombs fall in Tripoli

Der Spiegel reports:

No one was paying much attention to the time, but it was probably a few minutes before 11 a.m. on Tuesday of last week when the action began in Tripoli, clearly visible from the windows of the Rixos hotel.

The morning hours are usually calm in Tripoli, and this too was a quiet, clear morning. Behind the tall trees in the adjacent park lies Bab al-Aziziya, the fortress-like headquarters of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The compound is as large as an entire city neighborhood and is surrounded by a massive wall, machine gun nests, barriers and watchtowers. It’s a short walk from the hotel to Bab al-Aziziya.

Suddenly the first jet came screaming through the sky, but the noise it made was different this time: higher, shriller and much louder. Then the sound of loud explosions punctuated the air. The walls shook and the bombing continued unabated.

NATO jets were attacking Tripoli at low altitude for the first time. They came in waves separated by a few minutes. Then, around 2 p.m., they came a second time. They dropped 60 to 80 large bombs. Giant brown and black clouds of smoke rose into the sky on the other side of the park.

The bombing represents a new phase in the war over Libya, say NATO officials, who are trying to increase pressure on Gadhafi. They know that time is short, now that the Libyan leader appears to have his back against the wall. In Tripoli, it feels as if the NATO forces were now directly targeting the dictator, a man responsible for the deaths of so many people. In theory, however, Gadhafi can not be made into a target, because the United Nations resolution on Libya only permits the Western forces to engage in actions intended to protect civilians.

Meanwhile, a group of reporters from around the world are holed up in the five-star luxury of the Rixos, watching the hunt at close range — in an atmosphere that couldn’t be more bizarre, at room prices of €300 ($435) a night and dinner at $50 a person.

Some would call it perverse, the idea that journalists are spooning the foam from their cappuccinos in the hotel’s outdoor bar while precision bombs rip apart bunkers and probably soldiers just beyond the nearby trees. But life at the Rixos and at Bab al-Aziziya follows its own rules. Gadhafi’s people escort the reporters to the hotel, and guards are posted in the driveway to prevent them from setting out on their own. Anyone who wants to investigate the situation outside the hotel must do so in the company of a friendly government “minder.” Of course, this makes it impossible to speak with rebels in the city.

CNN reports:

As Washington urged African countries to reject the government of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, rebels reported progress Monday against government forces in western mountain cities.

After a siege of nearly two months, rebels have freed the city of Al-Rayyana, northeast of Zintan, said Talha Al-Jiwali, a rebel fighter. Nine rebels were killed, and 35 were wounded, he said.

Al-Jiwali said forces entering Al-Rayyana found that more than 20 residents had been killed, a number of the women had been raped, and the town’s electricity and water had been cut.

In nearby Zawiet al-Baqool, just east of Zintan, 500 to 600 government forces retained control, but the fighting was ongoing, he said.

The Times reports:

One of the greatest abandoned cities of the Ancient World is at risk of destruction after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces took over the ruins of Leptis Magna as a base for operations, rebel leaders claimed yesterday .

Rebel commanders in the city of Misrata said that Libyan government troops had moved Grad rockets and munitions into the World Heritage Site, on the coast between Misrata and Tripoli, to avoid NATO bombing.

“We received information yesterday that Gaddafi’s forces are hiding inside Leptis Magna,” said Abu Mohammad, the overall commander of rebel forces for the nearby town of Zlitan.

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Gadhafi insider defects

The Associated Press reports:

Another member of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has defected and fled the country, two Libyan analysts in London said Monday, as fighting continued between government troops and rebel forces.

Sassi Garada, one of the first men to join Gadhafi when he took power more than 40 years ago, left Libya through Tunisia, according to Noman Benotman, a Libyan analyst in London who was in contact with his friends and family. Guma el-Gamaty, U.K. organizer for Libya’s interim council, also confirmed the defection.

There were initial reports that Garada fled to Britain, where he has several family members, but Benotman said Garada was in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports:

Germany, which declined to participate in the NATO air campaign against Libya, on Monday recognized the opposition National Transitional Council as the legitimate representative of Libya, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said during a visit to the rebel capital of Benghazi.

The announcement by Mr. Westerwelle comes after weeks of hesitation by Germany over which rebel leaders or movements, if any, it would recognize as an alternative to the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

“The Transitional Council is the legitimate representation of the Libyan people,” Mr. Westerwelle said after arriving in Benghazi. “With this council, we want to support the building of a democratic and law-abiding Libya.”

Germany will open a small mission in Benghazi, joining the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, Britain, France, Spain, Malta and Qatar, which have established a presence there in the past several weeks. Washington, however, has not extended diplomatic recognition to the council.

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Gaddafi faces new ICC charges for using rape as weapon in conflict

The Guardian reports:

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) is likely to add rape to the war crimes charges against Muammar Gaddafi on the back of mounting evidence that sexual attacks on women are being used as a weapon in the Libyan conflict.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters at the UN in New York last night there were strong indications that hundreds of women had been raped in the Libyan government clampdown on the popular uprising and that Gaddafi had ordered the violations as a form of punishment.

The prosecutor said there was even evidence that the government had been handing out doses of Viagra to soldiers to encourage sexual attacks. Moreno-Ocampo said rape was a new tactic for the Libyan regime. “That’s why we had doubts at the beginning, but now we are more convinced. Apparently, [Gaddafi] decided to punish, using rape.”

The move came as Gaddafi’s forces responded to Nato’s intensified aerial bombardment of Tripoli on Tuesday by launching a heavy attack on rebel positions outside the liberated city of Misrata, unleashing a barrage of Grad rockets and mortars against rebel positions to the east, west and south of Misrata early on Wednesday morning, and followed up with an infantry assault. The Hikma hospital reported at least 10 rebel fighters died and 26 were wounded.

Reuters reports:

“We are all happy when NATO bombs like that,” the taxi driver said on Wednesday, the morning after the heaviest Western air strikes on the Libyan capital.

“Everyone here has rebel flags at home, just waiting for the day when the rebels finally reach the outskirts of the city, when we will pour out into the streets.”

Muammar Gaddafi remains in firm control of Tripoli after crushing protests in February.

But NATO bombardment, fuel shortages, defections of top officials and slow but important rebel advances on the battlefield are tightening the noose around the Libyan leader.

Alone in their shops and cars, out of earshot of the feared secret police and their informants, Tripoli residents are about as likely to express support for the government as opposition.

Supporters are passionate, even in private. But it is the opponents who speak with more confidence about the future.

Dissent is still mostly furtive. In the Ben Ashour district, one man said police had interrogated every employee at a shopping center after activists planted a small rebel flag on top of it.

Pro-Gaddafi graffiti is sprayed throughout the city. But nearly as common, especially in outlying districts, are blotches where government supporters have painted over anti-government messages scrawled at night.

Pro-government graffiti is sometimes defaced, with the leader’s name scribbled out in the common slogan “God, Muammar, Libya and that’s all!”

Reuters reports:

To get an idea of who might wield influence in post-civil war Libya, take a look at the flags flying in the rebel-held east of the country.

Outside the courthouse in Benghazi — rebel headquarters and symbolic heart of the uprising against the 41-year rule of leader Muammar Gaddafi — fly the flags of France, Great Britain, the United States, the European Union, NATO. There’s one other flag, too: Qatar’s.

“Qatar, really, it’s time to convey our gratitude to them,” Abdulla Shamia, rebel economy chief, told Reuters. “They really helped us a lot. It’s a channel for transportation, for help, for everything.”

It has a population of just 1.7 million people, but the wealthy Gulf monarchy has long sought a major voice in political affairs in the region. It has brokered peace talks in Sudan and Lebanon, owns the influential pan-Arab news network Al Jazeera, and recently won the right to host the 2022 soccer World Cup. Now the gas-rich nation has placed a big geopolitical bet in Libya, splashing out hundreds of millions of dollars on fuel, food and cash transfers for the rebels.

A representative from the Emir’s palace declined to comment on what products Qatar has delivered to Libya, and on the ruling family’s motivations behind its Libyan engagement.

It’s certainly a gamble. If the rebels win, Qatar is likely to pick up energy deals and new influence in North Africa. But if they lose, Qatar’s ambitions may further alienate it among its neighbours.

“I guess ever since the late 1990s, Qatar has been trying to break the Saudi-dominated status quo and carve out a niche position,” said Saket Vemprala from the London-based Business Monitor International consultancy.

“At the moment I think it’s more geopolitical, they want to broaden their (influence in the) region and become a more significant player … And it certainly makes it easy for them to portray themselves as being on the right side of history,” he said.

That sentiment is on display on a huge billboard in front of the courthouse. Over a picture of Qatari ruler Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani reads the promise: “Qatar, history will always remember your support for our cause.”

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Libya rebels frustrated by Nato’s safety-first strategy

The Guardian reports:

Tension between Libyan rebels and Nato commanders is growing over the military tactics being used to put pressure on Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.

Rebel leaders in Misrata say they are being urged not to launch further pushes against regime troops to the east of the city, and claim they have been told not to cross certain “red lines”, even though they feel prepared for battle.

The frustration on the ground has been heightened by their belief that Gaddafi’s troops are demoralised and depleted after nearly three months of conflict.

While coalition officials insist they have not issued any direct orders not to attack, they concede they are worried about civilians being caught up in further chaotic fighting, and do not want rebel troops being accidentally hit in bombing raids by Nato warplanes. These continued on Monday and Tuesday, when Tripoli experienced what were perhaps the heaviest daylight bombardments by Nato since the air strikes began in March.

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Waves of NATO aircraft intensify strikes on Tripoli

Reuters reports:

Waves of NATO aircraft hit Tripoli on Tuesday in the most sustained bombardment of the Libyan capital since Western forces began air strikes in March.

By Tuesday afternoon, war planes were striking different parts of the city several times an hour, hour after hour, rattling windows and sending clouds of grey smoke into the sky, a Reuters correspondent in the center of the city said.

The Libyan government attributed earlier blasts to NATO air strikes on military compounds in the capital, a day after rebels drove Muammar Gaddafi’s forces out of a western town.

Bombs have been striking the city every few hours since Monday, at a steadily increasing pace. On Tuesday they began before 11 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) and were continuing five hours later.

Air strikes were previously rarer and usually at night.

The New York Times reports:

The nightly propaganda tour to NATO bombing sites around the Libyan capital — the main component of every foreign reporter’s routine in a city controlled by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — led to a rustic backyard in the predawn hours of Monday where a family with several small, frightened children, said to have been dining outside late into the night, had supposedly endured a narrow escape from a NATO missile.

But a NATO missile with Cyrillic script on its components? With that discovery from the wreckage, the official briefing about 50 journalists paused in his fulminations against NATO, but only to recalibrate his account. Yes, he said, it was a Russian missile, part of Libya’s armory, but it had reached the backyard by what foreign reporters familiar with arcade games quickly dubbed the “bank shot” or “pinball” method.

In that sequence, a NATO bomb or missile first hits a Libyan arsenal somewhere out in the dark, igniting the Russian missile and sending it blasting off into the night. The effect, the handler said, was the same, regardless of the missile’s provenance. NATO had nearly killed innocent Libyan civilians.

“It is an aggression,” he said. “It is evil.”

The Libyan government has a growing record of improbable statements and carefully manipulated news events, but four months into the conflict here, it is showing signs of desperation and disorganization. The loyalist locker seems increasingly bare.

The Associated Press reports:

The small note in curly handwriting was quietly passed by a medic to a foreign reporter in a Tripoli hospital.

Its hastily scrawled contents suggested that Libyan officials were lying when they said a baby girl was wounded in a NATO attack. Government officials had bused reporters to the Tripoli Central Hospital to see the baby, whom they identified as Haneen.

She lay on a stark hospital cot, with colorful tubes attached to her body. Her foot was bandaged.

“This is a case of road traffic accident,” the medic’s note read.

“This is the trouth,” said the last line, the word misspelled.

That small scrap of paper underlines the absurdity confronting reporters who try to cover Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

It appears that officials exaggerate the scope of and casualties from two months of NATO airstrikes that have targeted sites critical to Gadhafi. Regime officials try to prove that alliance strikes, instead of protecting Libyan civilians, is doing them harm.

Those thundering NATO strikes do sometimes kill and wound civilians. They do cause damage to homes, hospitals and roads.

But some government officials appear determined, understandably, to exagerate the damage done and casualties caused.

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War fatigue in America

Paul Pillar writes:

Signs are increasing that the American people are growing tired enough over fighting two and a half (or whatever the right number is, depending on how you count what’s going on in Libya) wars for their fatigue to affect policy, especially through the actions of their elected representatives in Congress. The war in Afghanistan, now the largest and most expensive in terms of ongoing operations, and now in its tenth year of U.S. involvement, has been the subject of several expressions of impatience. Less than two weeks ago a resolution in the House of Representatives calling on the administration to accelerate a withdrawal from Afghanistan came very close to passing (the vote was 204 to 215). Now Norm Dicks (D-WA), an influential Democrat on national security matters who is the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee on defense, has become an outspoken critic of the war. “I just think that there’s a war fatigue setting in up here,” says Dicks, “and I think the president is going to have to take that into account.” Skepticism about the war is increasingly being voiced by Republicans as well. Even Sarah Palin is expressing unease.

On Libya—on which Congressional dissent is fueled in part by the administration’s blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution—two resolutions of protest were put to a vote in the House of Representatives on Friday. One that was introduced by Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and called directly for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Libyan conflict was defeated but attracted 148 votes, including 87 Republicans. The other, which was proposed by Speaker John Boehner as an alternative to the Kucinich resolution and passed, called on the administration to provide a more detailed explanation of the costs and objectives of the U.S. involvement in the war.

Then, of course, there is the Iraq War. It is still by far the most expensive of the expeditions in terms of cumulative costs, with the bill now exceeding $800 billion in direct costs and with all the eventual indirect costs making it more like a three trillion dollar war. But simply adhering to existing policy and agreements will mean that an end to this nightmare is just seven months away. There is no need for new action by Congress.

In general, bowing to popular fatigue is not necessarily a very careful and effective way of formulating national security policy. And throwing into the same hopper three wars that have been fought for different reasons (whether looking at the original rationales or at objectives that later emerged, which in each case were different from the original rationales) doesn’t necessarily represent careful policy-making either. But when drawing down or terminating each of these expeditions is in the national interest—which it is—then the national war fatigue is a force for good. It can and should be harnessed to effect a change of course in Afghanistan and Libya and to resist any diversion from the course toward the exit in Iraq.

The New York Times reports:

President Obama’s national security team is contemplating troop reductions in Afghanistan that would be steeper than those discussed even a few weeks ago, with some officials arguing that such a change is justified by the rising cost of the war and the death of Osama bin Laden, which they called new “strategic considerations.”

These new considerations, along with a desire to find new ways to press the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to get more of his forces to take the lead, are combining to create a counterweight to an approach favored by the departing secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, and top military commanders in the field. They want gradual cuts that would keep American forces at a much higher combat strength well into next year, senior administration officials said.

The cost of the war and Mr. Karzai’s uneven progress in getting his forces prepared have been latent issues since Mr. Obama took office. But in recent weeks they have gained greater political potency as Mr. Obama’s newly refashioned national security team takes up the crucial decision of the size and the pace of American troop cuts, administration and military officials said. Mr. Obama is expected to address these decisions in a speech to the nation this month, they said.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former ambassador of the Taliban to Pakistan, and Hekmat Karzai, the Director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS) in Kabul, write:

In December 2009, President Obama sent an additional 30,000 troops to confront growing violence in Afghanistan. Though the impact of the US military and diplomatic surge remains uncertain, we can nevertheless conclude that 2010 was easily the most violent year in the decade-old conflict.

The Taliban’s response, however, to this renewed attention by the international community was a surge of their own, which they launched through bold attacks and targeted assassinations of senior Afghan government officials. Their efforts have clearly made an impact on the ground.

The past three decades in Afghan history are filled with nothing but violence: cities turned into rubble; atrocities committed by countless different factions and – most importantly – generations lost to the violence.

Indeed, Afghans are now tired and just want to live in peace in a country where their children can go to school and live a normal life.

The process of reconciliation has become an important demand of Afghans and most are convinced, and will tell you, that the only way to end this bloody conflict is through a political settlement with the Taliban. Of course, there are a few voices that claim this blood bath should continue until the Taliban is “defeated”, but their arguments are divorced from the reality on the ground.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

When Dennis Kucinich earlier this month introduced a bill to compel the withdrawal of all American troops from Libya within 15 days, the leadership of both parties and the political class treated it the way they do most of Kucinich’s challenges to establishment political orthodoxy:  they ignored it except to mock its unSeriousness.  But a funny thing happened: numerous liberal House Democrats were joined by dozens of conservative GOP members to express support for his bill, and the White House and GOP House leadership became jointly alarmed that the bill could actually pass; that’s why GOP House Speaker John Boehner introduced a Resolution purporting to rebuke Obama for failing to comply with the War Powers Resolution, but which, in fact, was designed to be an utterly inconsequential act.  Its purpose was to protect Obama’s war by ensuring that Kucinich’s bill failed; the point of Boehner’s alternative was to provide a symbolic though meaningless outlet for those House members angry over Obama’s failure to get Congressional support.

Still, Kucinich’s bill attracted an extraordinary amount of support given that it would have forced the President to withdraw all troops from an ongoing war in a little over 2 weeks.  A total of 148 House members voted for it; even more notable was how bipartisan the support was:  61 Democrats and 87 Republicans.  Included among those voting for mandatory withdrawal from Libya were some of the House’s most liberal members (Grijalva, Holt, Woolsey, Barney Frank) and its most conservative members identified with the Tea Party (McClintock, Chaffetz, Bachmann).  Boehner’s amendment — demanding that Obama more fully brief Congress — ultimately passed, also with substantial bipartisan support, but most media reports ultimately recognized it for what it was:  a joint effort by the leadership of both parties and the White House to sabotage the anti-war efforts of its most liberal and most conservative members.

Senator Richard Lugar writes:

The president promised that he would act consistent with the War Powers Resolution, which requires congressional approval to continue military action beyond 60 days after it commences, and to consult closely with Congress. These commitments have gone unfulfilled. The administration even barred Defense Department officials from testifying at a public hearing and canceled a private briefing for senators by a Marine general. This disdain for Congress and constitutional principles led to Friday’s nonbinding House resolution.

Belatedly, the president and his allies are trying to establish congressional endorsement for the war through a nonbinding Senate resolution approving “the limited use of military force by the United States in Libya.” But this illustration of the president’s go-it-alone attitude would set a dangerous precedent.

These “sense of the Senate” resolutions are most often used to commemorate non-controversial events such as last month’s resolution celebrating National Train Day — not to authorize a war. The resolution would have no force of law and would not have to be passed by the House. Nonetheless, it would be touted by the administration as evidence of congressional approval for the war.

Passing this resolution would be a profound mistake that would lower the standard for congressional authorization for the use of military force and would forfeit the Senate’s own constitutional role. By setting this precedent in the interests of expediency, Congress would make it far more likely that future presidents will deem a nonbinding vote in one house as sufficient to initiate or continue a war, or marginalize Congress’s involvement in far more consequential war-making decisions than we face now in Libya.

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West presses rebels for more details on a post-Gaddafi government

The New York Times reports:

As NATO airplanes and attack helicopters struck fresh targets in Tripoli and the oil port of Brega on Sunday, senior British and American officials said there was no way of knowing how long it might take for the rebellion against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — already in its fourth month, and the third month of NATO airstrikes — to drive him from power.

But Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, returning from a brief visit to the rebel headquarters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, hinted at concern in Western capitals about what might come after the toppling of Colonel Qaddafi. Mr. Hague said he had pressed the rebel leaders to make early progress on a more detailed plan for a post-Qaddafi government that would include sharing power with some of Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists.

In particular, Mr. Hague said, the rebels should learn from Iraq’s experience, in which a mass purge of former Saddam Hussein loyalists occurred under the American-backed program of “de-Baathification,” and shun any similar undertaking. The reference was to a policy that many analysts believe helped to propel years of insurgency in Iraq by stripping tens of thousands of officials of jobs.

According to news agency reports, crowds in Benghazi’s streets greeted Mr. Hague and Britain’s overseas aid minister, Andrew Mitchell, with shouts of “Libya free!” and “Qaddafi, go away!” as they met with leaders of the rebels’ Transitional National Council, headed by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who was justice minister in Colonel Qaddafi’s government until the rebellion began in February. Back in London, Mr. Hague described the rebel leaders as “genuine believers in democracy and the rule of law,” but said that they should make more detailed post-Qaddafi plans.

Al Jazeera reports:

Libyan rebels have entered the northwestern town of Yafran, previously held by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, reports say.

Youssef Boudlal, a Reuters photographer in the town, on Monday said the town had been wrested by the rebels.

“We are inside the town … There is no sign of any Gaddafi forces. I can see the rebel flags … We have seen posters and photos of Gaddafi that have been destroyed,” he said.

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Rebels in western Libya seize mountain towns

The Associated Press reports:

A rebel leader says his forces have seized two western mountain towns from Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in a push toward the Libyan leader’s stronghold in the capital, Tripoli.

Col. Jumaa Ibrahim of the Nafusa mountain military council says Yefren and Shakshuk, the site of a strategic power station, were freed the day before. Ibrahim says the rebel forces are still battling with Gadhafi forces over a small town at the base of the mountain. He said Friday “our aim is the capital.”

The victories are a significant breakthrough for the rebels as they try to break Gadhafi’s hold on the western half of the coastal nation. The rebels so far have mainly been centered in the east, leaving the two sides locked in a stalemate.

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Nato’s strategy in Libya is working – talks with Gaddafi won’t

Ranj Alaaldin writes:

On Monday, the South African president, Jacob Zuma, once again went to Tripoli in an attempt to broker a peace deal between Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and the opposition forces. As expected, he failed.

But mediation or ceasefire initiatives such as South Africa’s, and others encouraged elsewhere, have something wrong with them: they offer Gaddafi a lifeline at a point when he is facing an increase in defections and significant opposition progress on the battlefield, and when he is becoming increasingly isolated internationally – as shown last week when Russia shifted its position by calling on him to stand down.

It is clear that the west, in the form of the Nato-led coalition, has a strategy in Libya and it is working. It should be left alone.

Three key components have comprised this strategy, the explicit objective of which has been to end Gaddafi’s reign of terror and the heart of which has been to ensure the Libyan uprising remains a Libyan-dominated enterprise, and not a western one.

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Libyan ambassador to Italy: “Gaddafi’s regime is over”

Libya.tv reports:

The days are numbered for Muammar Gaddafi’s rule and a diplomatic solution for his exit is no longer an option, according to an internationally prominent Libyan diplomat who has defected. Hafed Gaddur, Tripoli’s longtime envoy to former colonial ruler Rome, was well-known in Italy as a powerful Gaddafi associate who had Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on speed dial and brokered multi-billion dollar deals between the two nations.

“Gaddafi’s regime is over,” Gaddur said in an interview under the frescoed ceilings of the Libyan embassy in Rome, which now flies the rebel tricolour. “There are no more diplomatic solutions for him. It’s just a question of time now.”

Horrified at Gaddafi’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests, he said he threw his weight behind the rebels on Feb. 25. He cut off all ties with Tripoli in April after deciding Gaddafi would never agree to a diplomatic solution for his exit.

Libya.tv also reports:

Libya’s top oil official became the latest leading figure to desert Muammar Gaddafi today, complaining of “unbearable” violence and adding political momentum to a revolt against the leader’s long rule.

The move by National Oil Corp head Shokri Ghanem, who is also a former prime minister, came two days after the defections of eight army officers including five generals and those in earlier weeks of senior diplomats and other former ministers.

“I left the country and decided also to leave my job and to join the choice of Libyan youth to create a modern constitutional state respecting human rights and building a better future for all Libyans,” he said.

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Surprise turn against Gaddafi is Russia’s latest westward step

Max Fisher writes:

Russia, a quasi-democracy and an imperial power that never quite gave up all of its colonial holdings, has dedicated much of its post-Soviet foreign policy to resisting everything that the NATO intervention in Libya stands for. It shrugs at human rights violators, abhors military intervention, enshrines the sovereign right of states to do whatever they want internally without fear of outside meddling, and above all objects to the West imposing its ideology on others. NATO itself, after all, is a military alliance constructed in opposition to the Soviet Union. But Russian President Dmitri Medvedev took a surprising break from Russian foreign policy precedent on Friday when, in the middle of a G8 summit in France, he declared that Libyan leader Muammar “Qaddafi has forfeited legitimacy” and that Russia plans “to help him go.”

For Libya, Russia’s call for Qaddafi to go is more than just symbolic. Russia abstained from the original UN Security Council resolution authorizing the no-fly zone, but was reportedly upset that NATO states stretched the resolution to launch an extended bombing campaign. Russia’s angry reaction, it was widely assumed, meant it might outright veto any future Security Council measures on Libya. But Medvedev’s recent statement makes clear that his government supports the implicit goal of the air strikes — regime change in Libya — and would not block further action toward that end. If Qaddafi had hoped that he might outlast the Security Council’s will to fight, he is clearly nowhere close. The window for him to leave the country peacefully remains open, but is clearly closing quickly.

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Gaddafi snatch squads took hundreds of men and boys from Misrata

The Independent reports:

The lifting of the siege of the embattled Libyan city of Misrata has revealed the disappearance of hundreds of people with many of them suspected victims of snatch squads loyal to the Gaddafi regime, relatives and rights workers said yesterday.

A desperate search has begun for “the disappeared”, many of whom were reported to have been taken away to regime prisons or killed during some of the fiercest fighting of a three-month rebel uprising that has reduced parts of the city to rubble.

Witness accounts gathered by The Independent and rights groups indicate that there was a systematic attempt to kidnap men from parts of the city.

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Hundreds of women report rapes by Gaddafi forces

The Associated Press reports:

At first, the responses to the questionnaire about the trauma of the war in Libya were predictable, if tragic: 10,000 people suffering post-traumatic stress, 4,000 children with psychological problems. Then came the unexpected: 259 women said they had been raped by militiamen loyal to Moammar Gadhafi.

Dr. Seham Sergewa had been working with children traumatized by the fighting in Libya but soon found herself being approached by troubled mothers who felt they could trust her with their dark secret.

The first victim came forward two months ago, followed by two more. All were mothers of children the London-trained child psychologist was treating, and all described how they were raped by militiamen fighting to keep Gadhafi in power.

Sergewa decided to add a question about rape to the survey she was distributing to Libyans living in refugee camps after being driven from their homes. The main purpose was to try to determine how children were faring in the war; she suspected many were suffering from PTSD.

To her surprise, 259 women came forward with accounts of rape. They all said the same thing.

“I was really surprised when I started visiting these areas, first by the number of people suffering from PTSD, including the large number of children among them, and then by the number of women who had been raped from both the east and west of the country,” Sergewa said in an interview with The Associated Press.

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Remember Srebrenica? The west’s intervention in Libya is a no-brainer

Peter Preston at The Guardian writes:

It’s fashionable already to cluck apprehensively over Libya. Another botched adventure, another unwanted war. Look how much it’s costing – at this rate, more or less your standard Ministry of Defence project overrun before 2011’s out. Why isn’t it over long since? Why, for all his soaring rhetoric, has Barack Obama decided to rest on his oars? David Cameron broods over sending in four Apache helicopters while the BBC lugubriously reminds us that helicopters can get shot down. If you want to confect a stew of gloom, then any old ingredients will do.

But mix a pinch of foresight with your hindsight, and sprinkle lightly with added realism. Libya isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq. It isn’t even a proper war, more a series of skirmishes strung out along a long coastal strip. Oh! TV reporters talk excitedly as though this was some mighty contest between opposing armies, but they don’t even seem to look at their own pictures. In fact, it’s rag-tag stuff on both sides. There are casualties, of course; but the numbers involved seem relatively small. The colonel’s mercenary regiments are brutal, but militarily feeble. Take away air cover and they’re going nowhere. Will four British Apaches – count them again, yes just four! – make a big difference this week? Merely posing the question helps define this mini-conflict. Its costs and its risks aren’t worth so much rumbling angst.

Recent history tells us Muammar Gaddafi is a menace (especially if you’re in a jumbo jet over Scotland). When he vowed to take revenge on the insurgents, these were no idle threats. His first reaction when the citizens of his second city marched for change was to shoot them down. The chief prosecutor in The Hague already thinks that, just like Ratko Mladic, Gaddafi has a case to answer. On 18 March, as the allies finally prepared to move, his troops were driving into the outer suburbs of Benghazi. No hindsight necessary: it was five minutes to midnight. And no shucking off our own leaders’ responsibility, either.

After Tunisia, after Egypt, the word was the same from Obama to Nicolas Sarkozy to Cameron. The US Senate, the European parliament, the Arab League and the UN security council all knew what had to be done. So did Gaddafi’s man at the UN. There was massacre pending. All the usual recourses had been duly employed: sanctions, seizing overseas assets and the rest. But it wasn’t enough. Hundreds – probably thousands – of Libyan protesters we’d directly encouraged were about to get shot. Do nothing? Then or now, with or without hindsight, it’s a no-brainer.

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