if the dramatic advances in recent days that have taken opponents of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi towards—then into–Tripoli have thus far elicited only the most careful responses from tight-lipped Western leaders, there’s a good chance those officials are showing more emotion over the conflict apparently nearing an end in private.
For as long as such relief and glee lasts, anyway. Because if the fall of the Gaddafi regime will mute rising criticism about the wisdom of the NATO-led intervention into Libya’s grinding civil war, the transition from Gaddafi’s brutal regime to post-dictatorial government will inevitably raise new questions about how the international community handled the Libyan challenge—and whether the outcome was worth that effort.
By mid-day Monday, it seemed clear the rapid progress of Libyan rebels that took them deep into Tripoli Sunday had all but closed out the 42-year, iron-fisted Gaddafi regime. News reports Monday said triumphant opposition fighters controlled all but 10% to 15% of the capital, and had taken two of the dictator’s sons into custody.
That stunning advance after months of standoff in the Libyan civil war led French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to ramp up earlier appeals to Gaddafi to give up his seemingly futile struggle, and spare Libya further bloodshed.
Similarly, U.S. President Barack Obama warned that “Muammar Gaddafi and his regime need to recognize that their rule has come to an end”.
Late Monday morning, French Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppé held a press conference to convene Western officials and representatives of Libya’s opposition leadership to Paris next week to discuss an orderly transition and reconstruction process under United Nations coordination. And as new reports flowed in that rebel fighters had closed in on the Tripoli compound in which Gaddafi is thought to be holed up, Juppé urged the Libyan dictator to recognize that “It’s finished. It’s over.
The fighting must stop now.”
Given the confusion and chaos of events in Libya, it remains difficult to fully explain why rebels had managed to transform their previous stalemate with Gaddafi loyalists into the stunning—and apparently victorious—final offensive so quickly. According to reports in the New York Times, advances over the past couple of weeks coincided with ncreased coordination and planning between NATO airpower and Libyan rebels. If accurate, that more integrated operation between Libyan militants and NATO surveillance and bomber aircraft marked another step by Western capitals towards active, openly partisan involvement in the military drive against Gaddafi.
Previously France and the UK sent military advisers to assist and train anti-Gaddafi forces, with Paris later acknowledging it had even supplied them with arms. Recent decisions by Washington and London to follow Paris’ earlier recognition of Libya’s opposition as the legitimate representative of the country, meanwhile, had started sending billions of dollars in frozen Gaddafi assets abroad towards the rebel capital of Benghazi for use in the fight.
In the end, all that apparently added up as the very time Western leaders were getting anxious for a horizon to appear.
“This sudden advance by rebels was a sign that better training, financing, and arms had really begun to pay off, but it also reflects a clear political decision in Western capitals had been taken to get this thing over quickly,” says Karim Emile Bitar, a Middle East specialist at the Institution of International and Strategic Relations in Paris. “The war had already started to pose serious political problems for (UK premier David) Cameron, as well as Sarkozy as he prepares for is re-election next spring. Even Obama is facing serious legal questions on his move to avoid consulting Congress on Libya under the War Powers Resolution. So this final break-through is a result of real progress and improvement among rebel fighters, as well as the political decision by Western leaders that they couldn’t afford to let their intervention in the conflict drag on past six months.”
