The changing endgame in Libya — Part II

The TNC will become more inclined to take orders with regard to Libya’s oil companies in exchange for Western support.

Nobody at the Libyan Contact Group meeting in Doha on April 13, seemed to recognise the manifest contradiction between wanting a political solution and the refusal to negotiate with Qaddafi who, whatever the methods employed, continues to hold on to significant levers of power in Tripoli and perhaps much of western Libya. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said at the Doha conference that “the writing is on the wall for the Qaddafi regime”. But if the regime has its back to the wall, it has little incentive to read the writing on the wall or to act on it. Western nations may suggest that they are taking this position to support what the Transitional National Council (TNC) wants but it was notable that, in rejecting the African Union’s proposals for a negotiated settlement, the TNC first emphasised that Qaddafi continued to attack the rebels while these peace overtures were being made and only secondarily mentioned that negotiations with Qaddafi were not possible.

I don’t think that if the Nato countries or the Arab League were to favour a negotiated settlement with Qaddafi, entailing safe passage out of Libya for him and his family, the TNC would object. After all, the TNC and all of Libya’s well-wishers want the carnage to end, want the daily exodus to be stopped and want to ensure that more than half the Libyan population does not become dependent on humanitarian assistance. Qaddafi would not be the first to be offered such terms. After all, Idi Amin of Uganda was allowed to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia even though his crimes against humanity dwarfed those of Qaddafi.

Such a negotiation is important also from another perspective. What happened in Doha suggests that the TNC will be allowed to draw upon Libya’s frozen assets to buy not only humanitarian supplies but also weapons for their ragtag army, the command of which is being disputed between Younis, Qaddafi’s erstwhile interior minister and Hiftar, a former Qaddafi colleague who defected 24 years ago and having lived in the United States has now come back with CIA blessings, some say, to assume command. The TNC will become more and more dependent on western support in the civil war that is now being waged and more and more inclined, therefore, to take orders with regard to Libya’s resources based primarily in eastern Libya from the West and, perhaps, its oil companies.

This is not what the Libyan uprising was about. This is not what the Arab League wanted when it provided the crucial support that allowed passage of UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973. It is time for the Arab League to say that a negotiated exit for Qaddafi be found along the lines that the Gulf Cooperation Council is trying to negotiate in Yemen for President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s exit. This is a duty they owe to the Libyan people.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th,  2011.