NATO Watch News Brief, 21 March 2011
Britain's defence minister Liam Fox yesterday said he hoped the command of the military operation in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone and protect civilians would be taken over by NATO “within the next few days”. NATO members were meeting in Brussels to discuss whether the Alliance should take a formal role in the campaign and the logistics of the operation, which was approved by the United Nations last week (see NATO Watch News Brief, 19 March 2011).
“I hope that we will now fold into NATO command and control, but it's not a NATO mission”, Fox told the BBC. “It is still a UN coalition of the willing nations who want to defend the Libyan people, but we will co-ordinate it hopefully through the command and control structures that NATO already has”.
Fox described the bombing raids so far over Libya as “very successful” - and dismissed as a “propaganda exercise” reports that 48 civilians were killed. “All our targeting is done to absolutely minimize, as far as is humanly possible, casualties”, he added.
US, French and British forces began attacking Libyan targets on Saturday following an emergency summit in Paris. US officials say nearly two dozen targets were struck. They also insisted that it was only a limited operation and that the US would hand over leadership within days to Britain and France. US admiral and NATO commander Samuel Locklear coordinated the initial air and naval strikes, but the US is now keen to take a back seat and focus on jamming Gaddafi's communications and helping with air-to-air refuelling.
Fox said he hoped that within a couple of days, one or more Arab states would be participating in the military action. “To have active Arab participation in the no-fly zone makes it very clear on the Arab street that this is not about attacking the Arab world, this is to defend the Libyan people against a vicious and brutal dictatorship”, he said. But so far only Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have responded with a clear commitment to provide military aircraft.
Fox refused to speculate how long the no-fly zone may remain in force, but suggested it would be less than the decade-long one that was implemented over parts of Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War.
Fox did not rule out the possibility of allied forces treating Gaddafi himself as a legitimate target for air strikes, but cautioned that this would depend on whether it was possible to hit him without endangering civilian lives. “There is a difference between someone being a legitimate target and whether we go ahead and target him”, he said. “You would have to take into account what would happen to civilians in the area, what might happen in terms of collateral damage”.
But US vice-admiral Bill Gortney rejected the idea that Gaddafi is a target. "We are not going after Gaddafi", he told a press conference.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has proposed using a NATO base at the southern city of Naples as the command centre for coordinating the military intervention and said Italy's military might also participate at a later stage. Several other NATO member states have made similar pledges of support. The Czech Republic, for example, has offered a specialised chemical warfare unit and also backed the mission being coordinated through NATO, while the Netherlands and Greece have also said it was willing to get involved if asked.
However, NATO remains divided over the no-fly zone. Turkey, Germany and Poland are the most reluctant member states and seem unwilling to see the mission transferred to NATO command. Indeed, Turkey is reported to have blocked NATO from reaching agreement to take over responsibility for the no-fly zone, and diplomats said it would be Tuesday at the earliest before this could be achieved, if at all. The Alliance did, however, approve a military plan to implement the UN arms embargo on Libya.
France also poses an obstacle to a NATO role in enforcing the no-fly zone - as it argues that the Alliance has a bad reputation in the Arab world and risks antagonising public opinion if it took too prominent a role. But there were further disagreements over the prominent role taken by France. Turkish Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul told reporters today "It seems impossible for us to understand France being so prominent in this process. We are having difficulty in understanding it being like the enforcer of United Nations decisions".
The tension between the responsibility to protect civilians and regime change is likely to intensify in the coming days. As one UK editorial argues, “How does a responsibility to protect civilian life work in the circumstances where Gaddafi loyalists are defending their patch and the rebels are standing outside at the gates? The rationale of the resolution would then be to enforce a ceasefire, but that would mean keeping Gaddafi in power”. The editorial also suggests that “No partner in this coalition wants to assume the leadership of fighting this campaign. The Americans are hiding behind the Europeans, and both are using the Arab League as cover. But whether they like it or not, each country involved will bear responsibility for how this ends. It may not be pretty”. With NATO already bogged down in another ugly conflict not of its initial choosing, the reluctance of some member states to sanction the Alliance taking command of the Libya mission is understandable.
For more background on the Libya crisis, see: NATO Watch Briefing Paper No.18, 8 March 2011