Bloodbath in Libya offers no easy options for the West

LIBYA, it appears, is in the midst of a full-on civil war. Colonel Gaddafi, unlike his Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts, isn’t giving up without a fight. Indeed, he seems prepared to do pretty much anything to stay in power.

The people of Libya have shown that nothing is truly permanent. They have exposed the utter isolation of his psychotic regime.

Many political leaders had previously treated Gaddafi’s domination of Libya as a given. Almost unbelievably, he has ruled uninterrupted for 42 years, making him the longest-serving Arab and African dictator. European, especially British and Italian, overtures during the course of the last 10 years to rejoin the respectable international fold marked him out as a guarantor of regional stability, even potential long-term ally.

How wrong could they have been? Gaddafi has always had his followers in the West, of course, and not just the IRA who, presumably, saw him as a useful idiot prepared to arm their sectarian murder squads.

The more ludicrous and vile the regime, the more dedicated and active would be its fellow travellers. Che Guevara is a style icon still. This was no less true of the Arab world. Encouraged by the notion that all Western scholarship was trapped in a narrative of colonialism and Western superiority, Arab mass murderers were imbued in many “progressive” circles with all kinds of qualities of wisdom which they singularly did not possess.

Gaddafi was the most absurd example with his harem of virgin bodyguards, crazed sons and sponsorship of countless acts of terrorism. To some fools he was a hero. The intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the Western activists and scholars who embraced these tyrants is matched today in the same fatuous calls for dialogue and empathy with Islamic fundamentalism in its many guises. Some people’s credulity knows no bounds.

Still, coaxing Gaddafi to relinquish whatever nuclear weapons programmes he was working on was rational and sensible — and certainly preferable to an invasion with countless dead and al-Qaida tittering in the wings, ready to step in.

It is fine to pay off or strong-arm a lunatic like Gaddafi if it accomplishes the desired ends. Where Blair, Berlusconi et al went wrong was to become best buddies with the monster, or take holidays with him, as former Northern Secretary Peter Mandelson did. Enjoying a grouse shoot with Gaddafi’s ludicrous son, Saif al-Islam, back in 2009 must count as one of Mandelson’s worst errors of judgment to date. Saif’s scarier brother, Hannibal, has been arrested several times in Europe, variously for beating his girlfriend and beating servants. One arrest in Switzerland led to Gaddafi Senior demanding that the UN dissolve Switzerland.

Certainly, the Arab uprisings have stepped up another gear. When even Libya, a relatively stable dictatorship, can be swamped by an outwardly democratic-looking horde demanding liberty and human rights, there’s no telling where this political clamour will end.

As in Egypt, even recipients of Gaddafi’s regime’s largesse have abandoned it, while Gaddafi’s use of foreign mercenaries to attack demonstrators suggests he is struggling to deploy Libya’s own police or army to keep control. Instead, he is forced to outsource authority for the maintenance of his regime.

The risk that we could soon see the literal carpet bombing of civilians is very real. Unlike, say a Mubarak, Gaddafi will not be restrained by any of the normal rules of engagement. This is a leader prepared to commit the ultimate crime of setting foreign mercenaries loose on his own people.

Reports suggest Gaddafi still commands about 50 active fighting aircraft, which could wreak carnage on Libyan civilian populations in opposition-controlled areas. This poses a serious challenge for the international community. Gaddafi’s last stand could be long and bloody.

In an ideal world, the United Nations would move to impose a no-fly zone on Libya. But this is unlikely to happen. Russia and China, for obvious reasons, want to uphold the principle of non-interference in another state’s affairs even if that state is brutally repressing its own people.

Even those analysts who believe Gaddafi’s rule is not sustainable say any possible, loosely-worded resolution could be months away. Some say this puts the ball in Nato’s court as the largest military alliance of liberal democracies there is.

A warning from Nato, now foreign nationals have been evacuated, that any Libyan aircraft involved in actions against civilians would be shot down might have a significant deterrent effect. Would pilots be as keen to carry out bombing raids if they knew that if they did so they were liable to be shot down?

And Western aerial involvement in Libya would, of course, be nothing new. One hundred years ago precisely in the run-up to the First World War, Italy declared war on the Turks in Libya. Then two provinces, Tripolitania in the west and Cyrenaica in the east, Italy’s victory was swift.

In the space of just over a year, Libya became Italian territory, Italy having been the first nation on Earth to use aeroplanes to lob bombs. The Americans are freer to act now that they have evacuated their citizens but they would be likely to want deep European involvement as well as cover from the Arab League and the African Union at a minimum.

Obama seems to be wavering. If this gathering storm has exposed the fragility of the Arab strongmen, then the agonising over how to intervene has also confirmed the precariousness of America’s position.

The obvious danger, of course, is that even a no-fly zone might allow Gaddafi to portray the conflict as one of Western powers seeking to retake control of Libya.

The debacle of the British SAS team arrested and kicked out of the country by the Libyan rebels they assumed would welcome their expert advice did not bode well. Does Nato have the moral right to intervene to help suffering people who don’t appear to want their help?

Few in the Arab world today, unlike in Kosovo, for example, harbour many illusions about Western assistance. As for suggestions that the West somehow arm the rebels, isn’t that what happened with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and which led to Taliban rule in the first place?

If the Libyan conflict drags on as other lower-profile African wars have done – which seems possible given the apparent absence of a decisive dynamic behind either side — the pressure for the West to do something will increase. There will be reminders about what happened to brave Czechoslovakia in 1938. It will be pointed out that the Libyan coastline is almost within spitting distance of the EU’s borders.

But the most striking thing about the current discussion of Libya is the absence of historical span. Indeed, far from being historicised, the Libyan crisis is psychologised instead: Gaddafi’s bonkers so let’s whack him. But until the EU and Nato decide what the sought-after endgame is in Libya beyond bringing down Gaddafi, perhaps the safest bet is not to rush into this particular cauldron.

The alternative could well be more protracted and far bloodier still.