THERE ARE signs that Muammar Gadafy's days may be numbered. In his frenzied and bloody lashing out against his people, there are the desperate flailings of a drowning man; in his rambling, incoherent speeches, the incipient dementia of a man who has lost contact with reality – " Quem Jupiter vult perdere, dementat prius". Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
He is increasingly encircled, hemmed in to Tripoli and its hinterland, dependent on his dwindling but well-armed praetorian guard and the mercenaries he has brought from abroad, surviving still by simple terror. Still well capable, however, of making his people pay a very heavy price for their impudence, well capable of prolonging the agony further.
The east of the country, and cities to the east and west of Tripoli have fallen, like Benghazi – Zuara and Misurata, where there are reports of heavy troop defections and that rebels have acquired heavy weapons. Tens of thousands in eastern towns held rallies yesterday to support the first Tripoli protests in days.There are reports of heavy fighting in al-Zawiya. And in the capital, militias loyal to Gadafy again opened fire on protesters streaming out of mosques and marching across the city. Witnesses reported at least four killed. At the Slatnah Mosque in the Shargia district of Janzour protesters echoed their eastern brothers’ solidarity with the chants “With our souls, with our blood we protect Benghazi!”
As the evacuations of foreign nationals continue with mixed success the international community is at last beginning to feel freer to talk of its contribution to tightening the noose on erstwhile ally Gadafy. Welcome sanctions were on the table last night at the UN Security Council, proposed by among others the EU – economic, arms, travel restrictions on the Gadafy entourage, and calls for war crimes tribunal indictments. The Swiss have already moved to seize ill-gotten assets associated with Gadafy – others will follow.
But the security council needs to go beyond external sanctions to help stem the vicious bloodletting of the regime. There are now well-established precedents for different forms of UN military intervention, specifically the declaration and enforcement of a no-fly zone over Tripoli. The “responsibility to protect” principle of humanitarian intervention, elaborated and widely accepted since the Rwandan genocide, trumps traditional national sovereignty objections.
A no-fly zone was successfully imposed in Kurdistan in 1991 to protect Kurds from Saddam Hussein, and such a measure could seriously inhibit Gadafy’s use of air power against civilians. It could also complicate his ability to move troops or key personnel. The EU should initiate discussions with permanent security council members Russia and China to secure their support.
The international community could also help by providing material, humanitarian aid and intelligence support to opposition forces on the ground and aid to both Tunisia and Egypt to cope with the influx of refugees from Libya.