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China: Coalition strikes against Libya open “Pandora’s Box” of chaos

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English.news.cn 2011-03-27 15:45:43 FeedbackPrintRSS

BEIJING, March 27 (Xinhua) — The ongoing multinational intervention in Libya has not only increased the risk of civilian casualties in the North African country but also added more uncertainties and destabilizing factors to an already volatile situation in the Middle East.

Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said Thursday that nearly 100 civilians had been killed in the Western-led air strikes, which have been described by many as “opening a Pandora’s Box” of chaos.

But Western military officials denied any civilians had been killed.

As the air strikes, launched by major Western powers including France, Britain, the United States, Denmark and Italy, entered their ninth day on Sunday, questions and doubts are beginning to surface about the goal and purpose of the mission.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa has criticized the international coalition force’s bombing, saying the assaults went beyond the UN resolution that endorsed a no-fly zone over Libya.

“What has happened in Libya differs from the goal of imposing a no-fly zone and what we want is the protection of civilians and not bombing civilians,” Moussa said.

Top Republicans in the U.S. Congress have also questioned the purpose and goals of U.S. military intervention in Libya and complained that lawmakers were not consulted before President Barack Obama decided that America would join the mission.

Worried that U.S. forces might be mired in a long and costly operation lacking defined goals, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner has said in a statement: “The administration has a responsibility to define for the American people, the Congress and our troops, what the mission in Libya is.”

Boehner’s concern was echoed by Republican Representative Howard McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who said: “I am concerned that the use of military force in the absence of clear political objectives for our country risks entrenching the United States in a humanitarian mission whose scope and duration are not known.”

Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has severely criticized the U.S. role in the military operation against Libya.

“The use of force against other countries became a steady trend in U.S. policy,” Putin noted, adding this trend was “disturbing.”

The UN resolution “is, surely, flawed and lame …as it allows intervention in a sovereign country,” he said.

Last Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov renewed in the Algerian capital Algiers his country’s condemnation of the “use of force” in Libya.

“We have a common position with Algeria regarding respect for fundamental rights to human life. And, thus, we condemn any use of force” in all the countries, Lavrov said.

The chief of the African Union (AU) on Thursday also reaffirmed his reservations about the multinational intervention in Libya and questioned the participants’ coordination.

Although three African countries, namely South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon, voted for the UN resolution endorsing a no-fly zone over Libya, the AU still disapproves of foreign military intervention, said Jean Ping, chairperson of the AU Commission.

“We will not oppose a decision by the international community,” but “we marked our reserves” by abstaining from the Paris meeting, held shortly before France sent its warplanes to bomb Libyan targets, the AU chief said.

Earlier in the day, when giving a lecture at a university in Paris, the veteran African diplomat raised doubts about what would follow after a no-fly zone was “roughly” established.

“What’s the next step? Do you have a roadmap? I don’t see them at all,” he said.


Libya, the UN and the R2P debate | Ian Williams

Posted by Ian Williams

Yes, the US should step aside soon from a leading military role, but the UN is justly discharging its ‘responsibility to protect’

It is doubtless of some comfort to the citizenry of Benghazi or Misurata that if Gaddafi “exterminated” them without hindrance, it would advance the cause of national sovereignty and that their sacrifice would somehow constitute a blow against western imperialism. But generally, they wisely seem to prefer to stay alive, despite the Manichean principles of some protesters.

The American left and right are united in isolation. On the right, there is un-Samaritan disdain for the fate of a crowd of Arabs in a faraway country. On the left, some have espoused a concern for national sovereignty that owes more to the Treaty of Westphalia than the slogan “Workers of the World Unite”, which motivated the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish civil war.

It is true that the UN security council could and should be involved in Bahrain, Yemen and, indeed, Palestine. But that is no excuse for inaction when there is an actual opportunity to save lives in Libya. Those who, with some justice, accused Blair and Bush of war crimes for attacking Iraq without a UN mandate, disregard as a mere technicality the security council resolution 1973 (SCR 1973) that authorised – in fact, called for – this operation.

While Moscow and Beijing might now be trying to cover their tracks, just in case Gaddafi survives, they could have vetoed or amended SCR 1973; but they did not. The other abstainers had a more principled position – although one could think for some time about India’s entirely justifiable intervention in Pakistan, which gave birth to Bangladesh, and wonder how it squares with such rigid principles.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov still smarts from his time at the UN during the first Iraq war when the US and UK stretched the resolutions far beyond the intent or tolerance of the other members of the council. Moscow could have, and should have, put a time limit on the operation, and insisted on a share in command and control – maybe even reviving the UN’s long-moribund military staff joint committee. They accepted the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) in principle, but have consistently fought it in practice.

David Hillstrom points out the flaws in the procedures for R2P, but the international commission that framed the proposal for the “responsibility to protect” was well aware of the dangers that surrounded it. Indeed, the very title was intended to avoid the use of “humanitarian intervention”, which had been so blighted by Tony Blair’s abuse of it in Iraq. When the French reinvented humanitarian intervention in response to Saddam’s massacres of the Kurds, the UN legal department confessed with some embarrassment that the only precedent they could find was Hitler’s invocation of it to “protect” the Sudeten Germans by annexing Czechoslovakia.

Aware of the pitfalls, the commission very firmly stated: “Military intervention for human protection purposes must be regarded as an exceptional and extraordinary measure,” only justified to halt or avert “large-scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not, which is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act.”

It established precautionary principles: “The primary purpose of the intervention must be to halt or avert human suffering,” preferably with “collective or multilateral operations”, “clearly supported by regional opinion and the victims concerned”. It added: “Every non-military option for the prevention or peaceful resolution of the crisis [must be] explored; and further: “The scale, duration and intensity of the planned military intervention should be the minimum necessary to secure the humanitarian objective,” and “There must be a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering which has justified the intervention.” It concluded: “There is no better or more appropriate body than the United Nations security council to authorise military intervention for human protection purposes.”

Under those principles, as Brian Whitaker demonstrates, the Libyan operation emerges with great credibility. Gaddafi had been repeatedly warned to stop killing his own people, but carried on using heavier and heavier weapons to cover his lack of committed forces. Regional opinion, in the form of the Arab League, supported intervention (as did the Tunisian trade unions!) and so did the population in the cities most directly threatened, not to mention the numerous defectors from the Libyan government itself.

The immediate effect of the French interdiction of Libyan military columns was, indeed, to save Benghazi from the dire fate that Gaddafi had threatened. The other operations should now be making such forces as have remained loyal to Gaddafi pause to think whether they might not want to reconsider their commitment.

One can understand caution about the Pentagon’s involvement. There is, of course, a history. It is always worrying when the US is involved in any operation. Equally, US force protection doctrine probably mandated far more bombs and bangs than necessary to disarm Libya’s rudimentary defences. But surely one can be circumspect about reports of civilian casualties from a regime that has punctuated successive ceasefire declarations with artillery assaults on rebel-held cities.

With justifiable worries about Washington’s methods and motivations, it is in everybody’s interest to get the US out of involvement as soon as possible. But that would be better served if others with less of a history stepped up to the plate for what is necessary.

Ian Williams


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The consensus on intervention in Libya has shattered | Simon Tisdall

Posted by Simon Tisdall

Russia and China have called for a ceasefire in Libya. Now South Africa and India have joined in the outrage over the scale of the attacks

Britain and France are facing a rising torrent of international criticism over military intervention in Libya, with Russia and China leading calls for an immediate ceasefire. Just as a majority of Britons distrusts their government’s motives, according to a new YouGov poll, many, if not most, countries around the world also view the action as risky, self-interested, and duplicitous.

The fragile consensus on intervention achieved last week, when the UN security council approved “all measures necessary” to protect Libyan civilians against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, has shattered in the wake of large-scale US, British and French ground and air attacks. The attacks were widely seen internationally as disproportionate, careless of civilian lives, and extending beyond the agreed plan to impose a defensive no-fly zone.

The criticism is coming not only from leaders with a traditionally anti-western outlook, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who accused the allies of launching a new “crusade” against the Arab world. Leading developing countries such as India have deplored the escalation in fighting as likely to make matters worse, while a growing number of African leaders are highly critical of perceived western disregard for national sovereignty.

The international uproar will form the backdrop to a UN security council meeting in New York on Thursday which is due to review implementation of UN resolution 1973. Last week’s decision cannot be reversed without another full vote. But Russia, China and non-permanent council members including South Africa and Brazil – from the so-called Brics bloc of countries – are expected to express strong reservations about how the UN mandate has been interpreted and executed.

While none of the opposing countries has so far expressed more than diplomatic disapproval of the government’s actions in Libya, analysts suggest the row could have a potentially negative impact on Britain’s political, trade and commercial relations with some of the world’s most powerful emerging economies. The longer the war continues, the more damage it could do to its main western protagonists.

Chinese criticism, largely expressed through state-controlled media, has been particularly virulent, possibly reflecting second thoughts in Beijing about its unexpected decision to abstain in last week’s vote, rather then use its veto.

“The air attacks are an announcement that the west still wants to dominate the world. [It] still believes down to its very bones that it’s the leader of the world,” said the online Global Times. “Iraq was attacked because of oil, and Libya is also being attacked for its oil,” the People’s Daily claimed. And while it was clear that Beijing’s anger stemmed from unease that the western doctrine of “liberal humanitarian intervention” might one day be applied to China, it also reflected genuine unease about increased instability in the Middle East region, its major oil supplier.

However much they may dislike Gaddafi, African leaders have been stung into action by the spectre of dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles and state-of-the-art military technology raining down on a fellow African country. Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, voted in favour of UN resolution 1973 after he was personally lobbied by Barack Obama. But he has quickly changed his tune.

Speaking this week, Zuma called for an immediate ceasefire, expressing concern about civilian casualties. South Africa, he said, “rejected any foreign intervention, whatever its form”. The air strikes, he suggested, were more to do with regime change than humanitarian assistance.

Zuma was part of an African Union delegation that was about to travel to Libya to help mediate an end to the conflict when the bombing started. The mission was cancelled. Now the AU, generously funded by Gaddafi in the past and smarting from another galling example of western insouciance, has called for an end to military intervention, too.

Other major African and Asian countries, notably Nigeria and India, have joined the campaign demanding Britain and France back off. “The measures adopted should mitigate and not exacerbate an already difficult situation,” the Indian external affairs ministry said.

Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, added hypocrisy to the Anglo-French charge sheet. “In Libya they are very eager to impose a no-fly zone. In Bahrain and other areas where there are pro-western regimes, they turn a blind eye to the very same conditions or even worse conditions,” he wrote in the New Vision newspaper.

The seven-country east African security and development organisation, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), warned meanwhile that the intervention was an open invitation to terrorists. “Our fear is that what is happening now in Libya may motivate terrorist groups in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq to regroup on African soil,” it said.

Britain and France may try to shrug off this tidal wave of global criticism, in the way western powers historically always have. But some very influential countries, with an increasing capacity to make life uncomfortable, are now ranged against them. Ignoring them will be harder to do the longer the war continues, and the more people are killed.

While the Libyan intervention remains far from resolved, it has already notched up one remarkable achievement. It has given Zimbabwe’s ostracised president, Robert Mugabe, a chance to speak out on behalf of the majority of world opinion. As usual, the war was all about oil, Mugabe said this week. Western countries were “bloody vampires”.

Simon Tisdall


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China Steps Up Denunciations of Bombing Campaign Against Libyan Military

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BEIJING — China escalated its opposition to American-led airstrikes on Libya on Tuesday, calling for an immediate ceasefire and warning of “a humanitarian disaster” caused by the three-day-old aerial assault.
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In regular news briefing on Tuesday, Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, urged both sides in the conflict to end military operations and engage in negotiations. “We’ve seen reports that the use of armed force is causing civilian casualties, and we oppose the wanton use of armed force leading to more civilian casualties,” she said.

Ms. Jiang was referring to Libyan government statements that coalition missiles have killed or wounded scores of civilians, a claim that until now has been refuted by American military officials and foreign journalists on the ground.

China, long an opponent of foreign military intervention, was one of five countries to abstain from the United Nations resolution that authorized the allied airstrikes against the forces of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, which have been seeking to violently crush a rebellion against his 41-year-old rule. Libya. Russia, Brazil, India and Germany also abstained.

In its decision to abstain rather than block the resolution through its veto power, China said it was heeding the wishes of the Arab League and the African Union, which supported the imposition of the no-fly zone.

The Chinese media has been more vociferous in expressing opposition to the military campaign against the Libyan government, with articles and commentaries depicting the American-led assault as an attempt to grab that country’s oil resources and expand American influence in the region.

A front page article in People’s Daily on Tuesday said the United Nations resolution characterizing the Libyan army’s attack on civilians as a possible “crime against humanity” was simply cover for what it called the West’s hegemonic intentions. “Historical experience has shown that humanitarian intervention is only an excuse for military intervention into other countries domestic affairs,” wrote the author, Tang Zhichao, a scholar at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. “They claim to be motivated by morality but in fact they are driven by narrow political and economic interests.”

An editorial in Global Times, a tabloid owned by People’s Daily, was more forceful, saying that Western nations should be penalized for “abusing” the United Nations’ Security Council resolution that paved the way for the attack. “Just let them agonize there in Libya,” the paper said, referring to the United States and its partners. “No matter what happens to Qaddafi, a chaotic Libya will become an unshakable burden for the West forever.”

Zhang Jing contributed research.


China intensifies condemnation of Libya air strikes

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By Chris Buckley

BEIJING | Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:52am EDT

The Middle East is an important source of oil for China. On the weekend, Saudi Arabia’s Aramco announced its latest proposal to supply crude to a refinery in the southwest of China, where Beijing is building an oil pipeline that slices through Myanmar.

About half of China’s crude imports last year came from the Middle East and North Africa. China wants to diversify supplies, but Arab countries and Iran hold so much of global reserves that they are sure to remain major suppliers.

“China’s influence in the Middle East has grown steadily, reflecting its economic growth, and that will oblige China to speak out more about regional affairs,” said Guo Xian’gang, vice president of the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing.

On Saturday, Libya’s top oil official said Tripoli was considering offering oil block contracts directly to China, India and other nations it sees as friends in its month-long conflict with rebels.

Yet Beijing has had relatively limited diplomatic sway in the Middle East, and no major military role. It has tended to bow, sometimes begrudgingly, to Western demands, while pursuing its commercial and energy interests.

China’s handling of Libya reflects that awkward balance: both accommodating and criticizing Western demands.

In abstaining on the Security Council resolution, it cited calls of Arab countries for prompt U.N. action.

Beijing has rarely used its veto as a permanent Security Council member to block resolutions, but has sought to dilute Western proposals by using the threat of veto. It abstained from the resolution that preceded the 1991 Gulf War.

Russia, which also abstained on the resolution, called on Britain, France and the United States at the weekend to stop the air strikes, describing them as “non-selective use of force” against non-military targets.

(Additional reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Ken Wills and Ron Popeski)


China critical of airstrikes against Libya

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Students burn a makeshift U.S. flag to condemn the bombings against Libya by U.S. forces during a protest along a busy street in Manila, Philippines, Monday. The U.S. and Britain, who along with France, Italy and Canada have joined operation Odyssey Dawn, pressed ahead on Sunday with a campaign of air attacks in Libya, promising more strikes despite criticism by the Arab League. Romeo Ranoco/Reuters

China’s most important political newspaper has ratcheted up the country’s criticism of Western airstrikes against Libya, comparing them to the U.S.-led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, The People’s Daily, said that the United States and its allies are violating international rules. In a commentary Monday, the paper said that in places like Iraq “the unspeakable suffering of its people are a mirror and a warning.”

A day earlier, the Chinese government expressed “regret” at the air assault launched over the weekend by U.S. and European forces to enforce a UN no-fly zone.

China was one of five countries that abstained from Thursday’s UN vote that effectively authorized the attacks.

Pentagon officials said a U.S.-led coalition succeeded in scattering and isolating Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s forces after a weekend of punishing air attacks. American military authorities are moving to hand control of the operation to other countries.

Gadhafi is not a target of the campaign, according to a senior military official, but he said the Libyan leader’s safety could not be guaranteed.

Inside Gadhafi’s huge Tripoli compound, an administration building was hit and badly damaged late Sunday. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said half of the three-storey building was knocked down, smoke was rising from it, and pieces of a cruise missile were scattered around the scene.

Gadhafi and his residence are not on a list of targets to be hit by coalition aircraft, said U.S. Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney. But he said Gadhafi won’t be safe “if he happens to be at a place, if he is inspecting a surface-to-air missile site and we don’t have any idea that he’s there or not.”

A defiant Gadhafi has predicted a “long war” against Libyan rebels and the coalition of countries now helping them.

Libyan state television has reported that 48 people were killed and 150 injured, but the number have not been confirmed.

French and U.S officials have said they are not aware of any civilian casualties.

Gortney told a Pentagon news conference no allied planes have been lost and all pilots have returned safely from missions that used stealth B-2 bombers, jet fighters, more than 120 Tomahawk cruise missiles and other high-tech weapons.

“We judge these strikes to have been very effective in significantly degrading the regime’s air defence capability,” Gortney said. “We believe [Gadhafi's] forces are under significant stress and suffering from both isolation and a good deal of confusion.”

Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. expects to turn control of the mission over to a coalition — probably headed either by the French and British or by NATO — “in a matter of days.”

Late Sunday, however, NATO’s top decision-making body failed to agree on a plan to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya, although it did approve a military plan to implement a UN arms embargo.

Earlier Sunday, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the goals of the operation are to protect civilians from further violence by pro-Gadhafi forces, while enabling the flow of humanitarian relief supplies. It is unclear how long the military effort would continue or on what scale.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/03/21/libya-attacks-continue.html