After Libya, the question: To protect or depose?

Πηγή: Latimes

By Philippe Bolopion
August 25, 2011

NATO has gone beyond the United Nations mandate to protect the Libyan people, and now some U.N. member states are reluctant to act on Syria.

NATO's military intervention in Libya was initiated under the principle of the "responsibility to protect," a concept born from the ashes of the Rwandan genocide: that the world should not stand by while mass atrocities go on within a sovereign state.

Though morally self-evident, this concept was slow to gain acceptance in the international community, particularly among developing countries, many of which saw it as a ploy by Western powers to meddle in the internal affairs of weaker countries.
After much lobbying, the principle was finally enshrined by the 2005 World Summit and successfully used to resolve dangerous crises in Kenya and Guinea. But never, until Libya, had its most controversial aspect — the use of force as a last resort — been put to the test.

In the eyes of many countries, NATO has failed that test.

In March, as Moammar Kadafi prepared to crush the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, the U.N. Security Council authorized military action in Libya. But it made clear that the point of the action was to protect the Libyan people.

Many countries that opposed the Security Council's action, and even at least one that supported it, now believe the Western operation has gone far beyond merely protecting Libyans, and it is now widely seen as an action intended from the start to get rid of the Libyan ruler.

However unpopular Kadafi might be, the idea that NATO's warplanes were trying to kill him has struck a nerve among countries allergic to regime change and already suspicious of the responsibility-to-protect concept, known in diplomatic circles as R2P.

"Libya has given R2P a bad name," India's U.N. ambassador, Hardeep Singh Puri, said recently. Diplomats from South Africa, which unlike India supported U.N. Resolution 1973, have expressed similar concerns, saying they feel used and are indignant that the West ignored calls by the African Union for a cease-fire.

One could argue that when a leader is bent on committing mass atrocities against his population, the only effective way to protect civilians is to bring down the tyrant. Yet no NATO state has made this case openly; instead its members have gone to great lengths to assert their neutrality.

The Libya operation has strengthened the case of those questioning the concept that the world has a responsibility to protect citizens from their rulers, and the backlash is already contributing to tragic consequences.

In Syria, where security forces have killed more than 2,000 protesters and arbitrarily arrested and tortured thousands, including children, people are clearly in need of protection. If the Security Council were to take its responsibility to protect seriously, it would have long ago used the many nonmilitary tools at its disposal to put pressure on Bashar Assad's regime. It could have passed a resolution demanding an end to the violence, the creation of a commission of inquiry, an arms embargo or an array of sanctions targeting the leadership of the government or the oil sector.

There are many reasons for this disturbing failure to act: the opposition of veto-wielding Russia and China, the silence of the Arab League, the presence in the Security Council of Lebanon, which is a virtual hostage of Syria. But a crucial factor against action has been that key votes in the council — India, South Africa and Brazil — are missing. Behind closed doors, their diplomats have explained that they are reluctant to go down the Libya road again. Of course, nothing in a draft resolution initially offered by the Europeans even hinted at military action or regime change. But for India, South Africa and Brazil, it's payback time. The Syrian people are paying the price for what some countries see as NATO's overreaching in Libya.

So here we are, once again, with the Security Council standing virtually idle while mass atrocities are being committed, the very situation the responsibility-to-protect concept was designed to avoid.

We will never know how many civilian lives would have been lost had NATO not intervened in Libya. What we do know is what happens when the international community takes a back seat in the face of mass atrocities. Up to 40,000 civilians, for example, were killed during the final months of war in Sri Lanka, while the best the Security Council could muster was holding an informal hand-wringing session in a U.N. basement, because of Russian and Chinese obstructionism, with too little protest from Western powers.

Countries that waged war in Libya under the banner of the responsibility to protect have a duty to explain themselves and accept a sober and critical look at their actions. They should not be seen as brandishing responsibility-to-protect when it's politically expedient and ignoring it when it's not. They should address the complaints of countries that genuinely supported action to protect civilians but felt alienated by the way military operations were conducted. It's the only way to ensure that Libya's legacy brings us closer to a world that does not tolerate mass atrocities ever again.

(Philippe Bolopion is U.N. director at Human Rights Watch)

The headless corpse, the mass grave and worrying questions about Libya's rebel army

The five corpses floated disfigured and bloating in the murky bottom of the water tank. Wearing green soldiers' uniforms, the men lay belly down, decomposing in the putrid water.

Who the men were and what happened to them, close to the Libyan rebels' western front line town of Al-Qawalish in the Nafusa Mountains, remains unknown Photo: REUTERS

Πηγή: The Telegraph

By Ruth Sherlock, Al-Qawalish
7:00PM BST 20 Jul 2011


The streaks of blood, smeared along the sides of this impromptu mass grave suggested a rushed operation, a hurried attempt to dispose of the victims.

Who the men were and what happened to them, close to the Libyan rebels' western front line town of Al-Qawalish in the Nafusa Mountains, remains unknown.

But the evidence of a brutal end were clear. One of the corpses had been cleanly decapitated, while the trousers of another had been ripped down to his ankles, a way of humiliating a dead enemy.

The green uniforms were the same as those worn by loyalists fighting for Col. Muammer Gaddafi in Libya's civil war. No one from the rebel side claimed the corpses, or declared their loved ones missing.

There was no funeral, or call to the media by the rebels to see the 'atrocities committed by the regime'.

Since the bodies were seen by the Daily Telegraph attempts to discover their identities have been unsuccessful, in part because of obstruction by rebel authorities in the area. Having highlighted the discovery to those authorities the area was subsequently bulldozed and the bodies dissappeared.

The find will add to concerns highlighted in recent days over human rights violations by rebel forces. Human Rights Watch last week said that had looted homes, shops and hospitals and beaten captives as they advanced.

The Daily Telegraph found homes in the village of al-Awaniya ransacked, and shops and schools smashed and looted. The town, now empty, was inhabited by the Mashaashia, a traditionally loyalist tribe that has long been involved in land disputes with surrounding towns.

Human rights groups fear that reprisals may get worse as the rebels advance on towns nearer the capital such as Al-Sabaa and Gheryan which are loyalist strongholds.

The author of the HRW report, Sidney Kwiram, last night called on rebel leaders to investigate the latest find. "It is critical that the authorities investigate what happened to these five men."

The bodies were discovered in a water tank just off the main road between Zintan, the main town in the area, and Al-Qawalish as the rebels consolidated their advance.

At the time, rebel commanders, including former government troops who had defected, claimed that the men were most probably killed by Col Gaddafi forces for trying to defect - a common allegation.

"The day of our first assault on Al Qawalish we found the bodies there, and they were already in bad shape," said Col. Osama Ojweli, the military coordinator for the region.

"This is not unusual in Gaddafi's army. In other battles we have found men, their hands tied behind their backs with dusty wire and executed – we found them shot in the head by the regime."

A colonel, who defected last month and cannot be named, said: "If they think you might leave, they will shoot you." His claim was backed up by loyalists captured and held prisoner in the nearby town of Yafran.

But suspicions have been raised after the rebel authorities disposed of the bodies and bull-dozed the site where they were found.

Drivers also said they had military orders not to take journalists to the site. "If you go there I will ditch you in the desert," the driver of another news organisation reportedly said.

The rebel army is aware that NATO intervention on their side was justified by concern at regime human rights abuses in western capitals.

The Libyan Transitional National Council has now flown officials, including Abdulbaset Abumzirig, deputy minister of justice, to the Nafusa to investigate abuse claims.

"From what I have seen they are treating prisoners very well," he said. "We have promised to hand them back to their families after the war."

But Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both said there were documented cases of extra-judicial killings by rebel forces, including deaths in custody under torture.

In particular, in the early phases of the uprising, loyalists and sub-Saharan Africans accused of being mercenaries were lynched. Since then, men in rebel-held areas suspected of being members of Col Gaddafi's security services have been taken from the homes, and subsequently found dead with their hands tied.

Both organisations say these are not on the scale of the abuses perpetrated by the regime. "We have come across a number of cases of executions of suspected Gaddafi fighters in both the east and the west," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of HRW.

"I does fit a consistent pattern, though I don't think these killings are authorised by the rebel authorities in Benghazi."

Diana Eltahawy, of Amnesty, said members of the Transitional National Council, the rebel government, had admitted to there being a problem with some of their troops but had not done enough to tackle it.

"There is no comparison with the Gaddafi side. But the concern is that there is not sufficient will to address this in the leadership," she said. "It needs to be stopped before it becomes worse."