Jeff Bridoux: Why Libya will not be a second Iraq
[Jeff Bridoux is the author of American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction, published by Routledge in 2011, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in ‘Politico-Economies of Democratisation’, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University.]
The spectre of another Iraq-like quagmire looms large over the Libyan battlefield. A recent poll shows that seven out of ten Britons fear that the coalition’s air intervention constitutes the premises of another Iraq-like conflict, extending over many years. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan voices similar concerns and warns that a prolonged conflict and a foreign ground intervention will inevitably lead to another Afghanistan or a second Iraq, where ‘a million have died and a civilisation has as good as collapsed’.
President Obama and PM Cameron attempted to calm these fears recently. Cameron declared that there will be no forced regime changein Libya because the UN resolution does not cover a foreign occupation of Libya.President Obama insisted that the US could not afford to go down the regime change road again, like in Iraq, where it ‘took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars’ to achieve some sort of result. Both leaders insist that the Western intervention and the enforcement of a no-fly zone is designed to protect civilians, as formulated by UN Resolution 1973: ‘to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory’.
Interestingly, the UN Resolution does not specify who the attackers might be. The target of the resolution being the Gaddafi regime, one expects that his forces are the legitimate targets of airstrikes. However, what would happen if rebel forces would attack a town which population is loyal to Gaddafi and hence potentially inflict civilian casualties in the process. Surely, the coalition would have to bomb the rebels to protect civilian lives.
The problem with the UN Resolution and the actions taken by Western governments to protect civilian lives is that they are anything but neutral. As Obama argues, the US will support the aspirations of the Libyan people, has intervened to stop a massacre, and will work with its allies and partners to maintain the safety of civilians. The US will also deny the regime arms, cut off its supplies of cash, assist the opposition, and work with other nations to hasten the day when Qaddafi leaves power. US secretary of State Hilary Clinton and British foreign secretary William Hague added on 30 March that arming the Libyan rebels could be an option if airstrikes cannot dislodge Gaddafi from power. If this is not regime change, what is regime change? Arming the Libyan rebels could be an option if airstrikes cannot dislodge Gaddafi from power. If this is not regime change, what is regime change?..