IN recent weeks, NATO has upped its bombing ante in Libya, killing or wounding much of the population of the North African country, especially around the capital Tripoli.
The North Atlantic Alliance has been waging an increasingly desperate — not to mention illegal — war with aerial bombardment to obliterate one specific target — Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In the process, it has destroyed thousands of lives and also much of the civilian and public services infrastructure.
NATO bombs have killed dozens of children, including babies, since the start of its invasion from the air. Western TV channels, reporting on the war, often claimed street protesters were demonstrators celebrating the attack on Gaddafi’s forces although the images clearly showed them clad in green and waving green flags, denoting unmistakably that they are Libyan government supporters.
The latest bombing that killed civilians occurred in Tripoli on Monday. Fifteen people reportedly perished, including two babies, with another 18 injured. While independent verification is not possible, foreign correspondents at the site saw two bodies being pulled out of the rubble as rescuers worked alongside the emergency services to locate more bodies among the bombed out mangled masonry.
Newsmen taken to a Tripoli hospital reported seeing the bodies of two men, a woman and two babies, said to have been killed in the strike.
The carnage came hard on the heels of NATO’s expression of regrets over “any possible loss of life” from an accidental air strike on a rebel column near the oil refinery town of Brega. It is widely claimed that sorties mounted by the alliance are often without reliable intelligence.
NATO’s mission to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians, using “all necessary measures” short of a ground invasion, began in March in response to Gaddafi’s crackdown of a popular uprising. However, most developed countries, including those making up the foreign NATO war coalition, have their own satellites capable of tracing any movement anywhere on Earth at any time. And yet none of them had been able to show the world any image that proved Libya was massacring its population.
Since early this year, the Libyan government has repeatedly requested the UN to send a fact-finding mission to the country to ascertain whether or not any massacres had taken place but the UN has failed or refused to respond, lending greater credence to global perception that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is nothing more than a puppet pandering to the interests of the powers that gave him his second term.
Opposition forces, reportedly controlling up to a third of the country with the help of NATO bombs, are staring at empty coffers. Lately, senior officials from the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) made an urgent appeal for foreign financial aid.
And despite having been promised assistance by their western and Arab supporters, they said they have yet to receive any of the over $US3 billion needed to cover salaries and other needs over the next six months.
The conflict has gone on for much longer than many people imagined it would. Led by France, Britain and the US, the intervention carries a UN mandate which expired at the end of March when NATO took over. Having initially been given 90 days – which will have run out on June 27 — the mission has been extended a further 90 days. Apparently, the Gaddafi regime has proven more resilient than foretold.
NATO has claimed its air operations are premised explicitly on supporting UN Security Council resolution 1973, aimed at protecting the civilian population. But if civilian casualties start to mount from the bombings, the alliance will not only lose credibility as the protector of civilians but may also see zeal diminishing among its ranks for prolonging the mission.
Because it practises double standards, NATO’s role in the conflict is increasingly being seen as highly hypocritical. While vowing to protect civilians, the alliance has itself been killing civilians with bombs, drones and missiles. This is the undeniable dichotomy.
As one distraught mother, who lost her baby in a NATO strike, said: “They killed civilians and apologised afterwards.”
Such is the alliance’s way of absolving itself of blame for killing civilians.
But a mere apology falls way short of undoing the untold harm caused to a civilian population by the bombs of a military mission which has vowed to protect them in the first place.