Carnage in Libya - How can Gaddafi be removed?

EVEN among the long, sad litany of betrayals thrown up by World War II, the calculated abandonment of the Polish resistance after they began the Warsaw uprising in August 1944 stands out.

Encouraged by an advancing Soviet army and reassured by a call from Moscow radio to begin their revolt, they — armed citizens rather than trained soldiers — rose against their German occupiers.

Once the revolt began, Stalin ordered his advancing armies to stop within sight of Warsaw. For the next 63 days the Poles, apart from some British airlifts, were left on their own. They suffered a diabolical fate. Stalin had contrived to allow his enemy destroy those he would subjugate.

The exact number of casualties is unknown but over 200,000 people lost their lives, most of them civilians who died in mass murders carried out by German troops. When the Soviet army entered Warsaw in January 1945 it was more or less razed.

We may not be close to that point in Libya just yet but the parallels are becoming ominous for those Libyans who thought they might replace their corrupt leaders as easily as some of their neighbours have in recent weeks and months.

As the rest of the world prevaricates about establishing and maintaining a no-fly zone over Libya, Gaddafi’s air force and tanks launch unimpeded attacks on the rebels. This may be the only advantage he needs to extend his four decades of tyranny and there is little enough the people of Libya, left on their own, can do about it.

The unhinged dictator has escalated his ferocious campaign, forcing rebels onto the defensive on three fronts. For the first time since the revolt began last month, Libya’s key oil infrastructure — a considerable portion of it in rebel hands — came under aerial attack.

As we all know to our cost, the revolt, and the speculation it has provoked, has had a huge impact on oil prices pushing petrol to a record high at the fuel pumps. Prices are likely to go even higher as the crisis escalates. However, our difficulties are irrelevant in comparison to the future faced by those who are fighting Gaddafi, should the revolt be crushed.

Though Gaddafi’s violence against his citizens resonates in an ugly way with Saddam Hussein’s repression of the Kurds or the Marsh Arabs, or Slobodan Milosevic’s pogroms against the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, the West is still bruised by the interventions needed to topple those dictators.

There is a realisation too, expressed clearly by the Libyan revolt leaders, that an intervention by the West would not be welcome.

Gaddafi, in as far as he can reach any coherent conclusion, can bet with a degree of confidence that the West will not impose the no-fly zone or blockade that would end his tyranny, unless he inflicts casualties on a spectacular scale on the people of Libya.

What a monster our love of oil has created. And what a price the people of Libya might pay because we are almost powerless to stop him.