Will Sirte be the new Benghazi?
Issandr El AmraniOne of the greatest ironies of the Libya war may soon unfold before our eyes — or hopefully not.
The Libyan civil began because of an uprising in Benghazi, and the NATO intervention (supposed to be limited to a no-fly zone) was justified by the prospects of an aerial bombardment of the city. Now, as (with Sebha) the last urban bastion of Qadhadi loyalists, it is the key next target of the rebels. In the WSJ:
BRUSSELS—North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said Tuesday their main focus has shifted to preventing a bloody battle for control of the north-central Libyan town of Sirte, where troops loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi have taken refuge.
The town of 75,000, 245 miles east of Tripoli and Col. Gadhafi's hometown, seems to be shaping up as one of the final stands by Gadhafi loyalists. "It is the last bastion," said NATO Col. Roland Lavoie.
The looming battle between rebels and loyalists poses a tricky question for the coalition: What to do if rebels start killing civilians inside Sirte?
NATO's mission, as mandated by the United Nations, is to protect Libyan civilians. Until now, that's meant taking on Col. Gadhafi's army, a morally clear and unambiguous task.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who leads the rebel National Transitional Council, said Tuesday he would give loyalists in Sirte until Saturday to surrender. Then, he said, rebels would storm the city, according to wire reports.
"We can't wait more than that," he said. "We seek and support any efforts to enter these places peacefully. At the end, it might be decided militarily. I hope it will not be the case."
NATO officials declined to speculate but seemed to indicate they would be ready to shoot to protect civilians, even supporters of Col. Gadhafi. "I will not speculate about how we will react to a given situation," said Col. Lavoie, speaking at NATO's weekly Tuesday afternoon briefing. "But I can assure you that our mission is to protect the civilian population, and we will do that with great care."
A few days ago Craig Murray (the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who was fired after he protested about his government's connivance in human rights abuses) blogged this alarming post:
There is no cause to doubt that, for whatever reason, the support of the people of Sirte for Gadaffi is genuine. That this means they deserve to be pounded into submission is less obvious to me. The disconnect between the UN mandate to protect civilians while facilitating negotiation, and NATO’s actual actions as the anti-Gadaffi forces’ air force and special forces, is startling.
There is something so shocking in the Orwellian doublespeak of NATO on this point that I am severely dismayed. I suffer from that old springing eternal of hope, and am therefore always in a state of disappointment. I had hoped that the general population in Europe is so educated now that obvious outright lies would be rejected. I even hoped some journalists would seek to expose lies.
I was wrong, wrong, wrong.
The “rebels” are actively hitting Sirte with heavy artillery and Stalin’s organs; they are transporting tanks openly to attack Sirte. Yet any movement of tanks or artillery by the population of Sirte brings immediate death from NATO air strike.
I have not seen any reports that the rebels are bombarding Sirte using artillery (which is what Qadhafi did to Benghazi when his planes were interdited), but perhaps I missed them. There has been fighting on the outskirts of Sirte but if the WSJ story is accurate, the rebels are holding off from a major assault for now and talks are underway. But they are moving in the direction of Sirte with NATO air support, according to the FT:
Libyan rebel forces on Tuesday continued their advance on Muammer Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte, the last major stronghold of support for the ousted leader who has not been seen since the capital Tripoli fell last week.
Backed by an escalating Nato bombing campaign, the rebels have advanced past the village of Bin Jawad, east of Sirte, securing the Nawfaliya junction. In the desert to the south, Gaddafi loyalists were also holding out, notably in the city of Sabha.
Reuters also reports NATO bombing on Sirte, although it does not specify the targets:
NATO warplanes struck at Sirte, on the Mediterranean coast, for a third day on Sunday, a NATO spokesman said in Brussels. Britain said its aircraft also attacked artillery fired by Gaddafi forces near Sidra, west of the oil town of Ras Lanuf.
Al-Jazeera suggests that the Qadhafi loyalists may not surrender and are telling locals to "fight to the death":
Rebel fighters were organising units advance towards Sirte from both Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad in the east and from Tripoli and Misrata to the west.
"We will move further, but we will not enter Sirte now because it is not secured so far - there are ongoing
negotiations between tribe elders in Sirte and rebel leaders and we are receiving orders from our field
commanders and we are waiting for their commands," rebel fighter Taleb al-Karaty told the Reuters news agency.Senior rebel commanders said they had 4,000 fighters on the western front with Sirte and that they estimated that they would come up against about 1,000 pro-Gaddafi soldiers if negotiations for the town's surrender fail.
In Sirte, forces loyal to Gaddafi urged people to fight or be killed, complicating efforts to arrange a peaceful surrender of the city, according to NTC officials.
"We have difficulty with the regime people from Tripoli," said Hassan Droy, the NTC representative for Sirte, who is based in the eastern city of Benghazi.
"They're trying to tell the people that the battle is no longer for Gaddafi but to protect themselves," he told Reuters.
Three days ago a message from Gaddafi was broadcast in Sirte, urging people to fight to save themselves, he said.
While the deposed leader's whereabouts are still unknown, the city is a strategic and symbolic prize for Libya's rebel government as it tightens its grip on the vast North African country.
Sirte is where the NATO mandate, already stretched way beyond its internationally approved mission, will be most tested, and where the narrative of just war of liberal interventionism could fall apart. Realistically, the new government in Libya cannot allow Sirte (or other cities) to remain under separate leadership. But having rejected negotiations throughout the civil war (and likewise Qadhafi also rejecting negotiations towards his stepping down), it may not have much desire to negotiate now when it is on the ascendant and the forces the TNC supposedly controls have large degrees of indepedence from the leadership (and could have revanchiste aims). NATO, for its part, could find itself in a position where it has to fire on rebels to fulfil its mission, which would greatly complicate the remainder of TNC-NATO relations. Either that, or decide not to do anything in Sirte if war crimes are committed in the name of bringing the civil war to an end. What a pickle.
For if Sirte becomes the new Benghazi, in the sense that Benghazi faced a massacre last February, the Libyan civil war will have ended with the triumph of a dictator's fall and the shame of having acted just as he did when the tables where turned.
Reader Comments (10)
Let's assume the peaceful surrender of Sirte has failed, the rebels are ready to storm the city and it is highly probable that war crimes will be committed.
If NATO stopped the rebels by force it would be in accordance with Res. 1973 but politically most devastating. In the eyes of the TNC, NATO is suddenly supporting Qadhafi's troops. European politicians will start sweating trying to figure out an explanation on their next visit to (free) Tripolis.
If NATO stood idly by, while the rebels take revenge on soldiers and civilians, NATO would be so clearly in violation of Res. 1973, that even the staunchest supporter of the active support for the rebels would have to admit to the breaking of international law. Consequences for R2P might be equally tough.
As for the rebels... they need to get their troops under control. With war crimes in Sirte, they would give the anti-revolutionary forces in the Arab world the chance they just had been waiting for to discredit all freedom movements in the region.
Notice how there is no info from Sirte itself. No cameras. Nothing.
Hence, as far as we know the attack has commenced and the cameras will only show the aftermath. Reports are likely to say something in the lines of "Gaddafi troops ran off". The city surrendered peacefully. In a few months/years, we may come to know the truth.
We all know Gaddafi had a lot of support in Tripoli and other "liberated" cities. Do you hear them now? Of course not. The armed rebels are threatening any supporter of Gaddafi.
Did you see the "liberation" of Zliten? No. You did, however, hear loud and clear that the city's tribal leaders had rejected rebel entry. They entered anyway. By force. No reports from there yet though.
I'm having trouble with this the views expressed on this issue. There is a context involved in every situation, the underlying approach that is at the base of that situation. What is the exact goal that is pursued, what major actions are taken, and on what major aspects are focused. And the underlying context of pre-Arab Spring Libya was dictatorship by a very egotistical, self-centered quite oppressive murderous dictator. So the idea that there are reasonable people in Sirte, or any other Libyan town, genuinely interested in freedom, human rights, peace, co-existence, etc., but still supporting Gadhafi are virtually zero. We are talking about either crazy people, or people who are so tribal they can't think straight. After all, anyone there can leave if he or she wishes. So thinking of the residents of Sirte, holding out after offers of peace, being the same civilians that the no fly zone was protecting, is about as close to apples not being oranges as you can get.
I suggest the appropriate analogy is a town of Gestapo torturers refusing to surrender to the Allies, after those Gestapo people know that Hitler had surrendered. I realize my analogy is a bit excessive, but not by much from my perspective.
Warren — it's disturbing to think that your argument would mean that all civilians who supported the Qadhafi regime (genuinely, or because they were scared, or because their tribe might be endangered now) are legitimate targets. To use your analogy: were ordinary German civilians in WW2 legitimate targets? Not according to international law, even if Dresden and other carpet-bombing operations claimed their lives (and even if you want argue the necessity of doing so to end the war). The law is the law, and NATO's mandate is supposed to be regulated by that law — even if it's already been flouted.
so this means that if murders take hostages, we should kill all the police? :P
In America when one person produces a weapon, and menaces another person for the sole 'purpose' of taking that person's wealth, property, freedom we call that a crime. United Nations Resolution 1973, just happens to satisfy the definition of a criminal enterprise, and even a vote in the security council shall not wash the blood! of non-combatant loyalist in Libya from the hands of NATO,and their UN pimp. However sad, as well sanguine a lesson, the 'NATO/UN' axis of evil has taught to regimes in Syria, Iran, Myanmar either they can choose the path of North Korea & Pakistan?,by developing Nuclear Weapons!, or maybe become Iraq & Libya??, humiliated invaded victims!
Issandr, so what do you suggest. Creating a blockade and starving them all to death? The country needs to be pacified and all of it united under a central government, so they can begin to put the pieces together. And a military assault is a way of doing that. I don't favor military action myself. But if you look at the story on your links today about Gadhafi's famed female guard troops, and watch that picture of the Ethiopian nanny of one of his sons, you realize Gadhafi was an evil man, and created an evil regime. And now that the rebels have taken the country, it is literally impossible for me to accept that reasonable people are supporting his memory. And when you are dealing with unreasonable people, casualties are unavoidable.
Further, I was in the military, and we were trained in urban assault. I object to the idea the only way the military can take a town is Gadhafi's troop's indiscriminate bombing. So there may well be civilian casualties, but they need to be perceived differently than the civilian slaughter Gadhafi did.
"What a pickle". There's no pickle. Your argument is sophistry since you choose to ignore the essential phrase "by all means necessary". Face it - NATO did exactly what was necessary and no more to protect civilians from their own tyrant. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts in history.
OUR IGNORANCE OF HISTORY CAUSES US TO SLANDER OUR OWN TIMES. (FLAUBERT)
So perhaps you know that your freedom was purchased for you by the generations that preceded us. And yet you would deny that same to the people of Libya. Not very generous.
Orwell would had loved to be here today, really, when the very same world who was moved by the need of «saving» Benghazi from falling down seems now deaf and dumb to the dramatic appeal from inside a truly besieged city, without electricity or water, a city whose ifamilies have been turned back by those who surround it (including women and children!!!) , a city that keeps being bombed day and night by NATO, while surrounded by extreme hostile forces on the ground threatening the population with a dramatic «surrender or face liberation by force» .Rebel forces say Sirte will fall within days and the very same world that a couple of months ago trembled and cheered the «Salvation» army to be sent to save Benghazi civilians, is now , 5 month afterwards, not giving a damn shit about the drama of Sirte population, on the contrary, is frantic looking for all the possible excuses, even the most inhuman, just to give green light to the full massacre of all those who dare to resist what is now already shown to be nothing else than a foreign occupation.
I would like to know. Is electradiffusa correct in that anyone who wants to leave Sirte is being turned back, until the entire city surrenders? If that is the case, Libya has a very very sorry future ahead.