Text Fwd: The Libyan War of 2011 and Crisis in Yemen

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The Libyan War of 2011 and Crisis in Yemen
March 21, 2011 by Kyle Kajihiro

After obtaining a United Nations Security Council resolution establishing a “no fly zone” and authorizing “all necessary measures” to stop Libyaʻs military assault on rebel forces, the U.S. and European began their attack on Libya. The AP wrote:

The U.S. claimed initial success two days into an assault on Libya that included some of the heaviest firepower in the American arsenal — long-range bombers designed for the Cold War — but American officials on Sunday said it was too early to define the international military campaign’s end game.

The New York Times reported:

American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Saturday, unleashing warplanes and missiles in a military intervention on a scale not seen in the Arab world since the Iraq war.

The mission to impose a United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone and keep Colonel Qaddafi from using air power against beleaguered rebel forces was portrayed by Pentagon and NATO officials as under French and British leadership.

But the Pentagon said that American forces were mounting an initial campaign to knock out Libya’s air defense systems, firing volley after volley of Tomahawk missiles from nearby ships against missile, radar and communications centers around Tripoli, the capital, and the western cities of Misurata and Surt.

And while the Pentagon is reporting that the initial missile and bombardment campaign was successful, the U.S. strategy is unclear. Another AP articlereports that the western campaign in Libya could last “a while”:

The U.S. military, for now at the lead of the international campaign, is trying to walk a fine line over the end game of the assault. It is avoiding for now any appearance that it aims to take out Gadhafi or help the rebels oust him, instead limiting its stated goals to protecting civilians.

Britain also is treading carefully. Foreign Secretary William Hague refused Monday to say if Gadhafi would or could be assassinated, insisting he would not “get drawn into details about what or whom may be targeted.”

“I’m not going to speculate on the targets,” Hague said in a heated interview with BBC radio. “That depends on the circumstances at the time.”

So, the legal and moral justification for the military intervention is “humanitarian”, to protect civilians. But the real objective is regime change. As Global Research reports, the Security Council resolution was not unanimous; Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India abstained from the vote. A Russian commentator also remarked that the “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia was the precedent for the latest U.S. attack on Libya and that Libya was the fourth country in twelve years to be directly attacked by the west. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the UN Security Council resolution authorizing military attacks against Libya:

“The Security Council resolution is deficient and flawed; it allows everything and is reminiscent of a medieval call for a crusade,” Putin told workers at a ballistic missile factory in the Urals region. “It effectively allows intervention in a sovereign state.”

Analysis from Stratfor suggests that while the immediate objective is regime change, the long term strategy in Libya is unclear:

The Libyan war has now begun. It pits a coalition of European powers plus the United States, a handful of Arab states and rebels in Libya against the Libyan government. The long-term goal, unspoken but well understood, is regime change — displacing the government of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and replacing it with a new regime built around the rebels.

The mission is clearer than the strategy, and that strategy can’t be figured out from the first moves. The strategy might be the imposition of a no-fly zone, the imposition of a no-fly zone and attacks against Libya’s command-and-control centers, or these two plus direct ground attacks on Gadhafi’s forces. These could also be combined with an invasion and occupation of Libya.

The question, therefore, is not the mission but the strategy to be pursued. How far is the coalition, or at least some of its members, prepared to go to effect regime change and manage the consequences following regime change? How many resources are they prepared to provide and how long are they prepared to fight? It should be remembered that in Iraq and Afghanistan the occupation became the heart of the war, and regime change was merely the opening act. It is possible that the coalition partners haven’t decided on the strategy yet, or may not be in agreement. Let’s therefore consider the first phases of the war, regardless of how far they are prepared to go in pursuit of the mission.

Read more: The Libyan War of 2011 STRATFOR

Rick Rozoff points out in Global Research that the war on Libya is NATOʻs first direct African conflict as well as the first war for the newly created U.S. African Command (AFRICOM). He also points out that the humanitarian war justification for the attack on Libya has not been applied consistently the current wave of protest in the Arab world:

The slaying of unarmed civilian protesters in Yemen and Bahrain has not evoked a comparable outcry and has not produced analogous military actions from Western military powers.
Meanwhile the crisis in Yemen is heating up with government troops firing on and killing 46 protesters and a top military commander defecting to the side of the protesters. Stratfor writes:
A crisis in Yemen is rapidly escalating. A standoff centered on the presidential palace is taking place between security forces in the capital city of Sanaa while embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh continues to resist stepping down, claiming that the “majority of Yemeni people” support him. While a Western-led military intervention in Libya is dominating the headlines, the crisis in Yemen and its implications for Persian Gulf stability is of greater strategic consequence. Saudi Arabia is already facing the threat of an Iranian destabilization campaign in eastern Arabia and has deployed forces to Bahrain in an effort to prevent Shiite unrest from spreading. With a second front now threatening the Saudi underbelly, the situation in Yemen is becoming one that the Saudis can no longer leave on the backburner.

The turning point in Yemen occurred March 18 after Friday prayers, when tens of thousands of protesters in the streets calling for Saleh’s ouster came under a heavy crackdown that reportedly left some 46 people dead and hundreds wounded. It is unclear whether the shootings were ordered by Saleh himself, orchestrated by a member of the Yemeni defense establishment to facilitate Saleh’s political exit or simply provoked by tensions in the streets, but it does not really matter. Scores of defections from the ruling party, the prominent Hashid tribe in the north and military old guard followed the March 18 events, both putting Saleh at risk of being removed in a coup and putting the already deeply fractious country at risk of a civil war.

Read more: Yemen in Crisis: A Special Report STRATFOR

The U.S. has conducted secret military operations in Yemen to hunt Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Last year it was reported Yemenʻs President Saleh and General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command held closed door meetings during which arrangements were made for the U.S. to establish a military base on the Yemeni island of Socotra.