BY Chukwudi Ohiri
Another ‘Rwandan genocide’ is in the making and the International Community is very busy contemplating on whether to intervene or not. Parliaments across the globe are busy making permutations on the rationality or otherwise of coming to the aid of Libyans while Gaddafi is busy slaughtering his own people, attacking cities and oil facilities with planes, tanks and heavy artillery. Perhaps, the world is waiting to allow the killings get to a particular degree where innumerable souls may have been lost before it can be ‘justifiable’ to intervene.
In 1994, it was the Tutsis versus the Hutus in Rwanda. While an estimated 800,000 people were being decimated in Rwanda, the International community continued to debate on what really constituted ‘genocide’. For about a hundred days, the Hutus massacred the Tutsis while debates were still on. In the end, both the United Nations and the United States had to apologize to the world for not acting fast. In the words of Bill Clinton, the then president of the United States,”… We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe havens for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past. But we can and must do everything in our power to help you build a future without fear, and full of hope ..." This speech became known in political parlance as the "Clinton apology”, but the deed had been done.
On May 7, 1998 in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, the then U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan joined in tendering apology to the Parliament of Rwanda saying "... The world must deeply repent this failure. Rwanda's tragedy was the world's tragedy. All of us who cared about Rwanda, all of us who witnessed its suffering, fervently wish that we could have prevented the genocide. Looking back now, we see the signs which then were not recognized. Now we know that what we did was not nearly enough--not enough to save Rwanda from itself, not enough to honor the ideals for which the United Nations exists. We will not deny that, in their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda ...". It appears now that all these promises have become mere rhetoric. The world is yet to learn its lessons from the past.
At the moment, there appears to be a crack in the wall of the Western powers over what steps to take in arresting not just the Libyan crisis, but the entire revolutions in the Arab world and Cote d’Ivoire. While the crises continue to deepen and even escalate, the international community has been quite slow in taking decisions as events keep unfolding faster than anticipated, some, taking less envisaged dimension.
Initially, it seemed the Libyan rebels were on the verge of rattling Gaddafi by taking over some major cities, but recent development appears to be tilting the victory in favour of the Gaddafi forces that have pushed the rebels back and away from the recently taken Ras, Lanuf and Zawiya.
Some analysts are beginning to suggest that the UN and US government are once more politicizing the crisis while exhibiting what can be described as ambiguous stances. The United Nations and the United States are still dilly dallying, giving room for discordant tunes on a matter as serious as human rights violation and reckless killings. The African Union on its part has restated its rejection of any idea of foreign military intervention in Libya. Instead, they continue to send so called ‘high powered’ delegation to prevail on a man who has vowed to die a “martyr,” rather than give up power in Libya. This is very unfortunate and coming only 17 years after the Rwandan experience.
The Syrian government is vehemently against any foreign intervention in Libya. The Syrian Foreign Ministry was quoted in a statement as saying that foreign intervention "is considered a violation of Libya?s sovereignty, independence and territorial unity (even when Human rights are being fragrantly abused by a dictatorial regime)". For the Turkish government, it has remained opposed to no-fly zones or other military intervention in Libya, putting the regime at odds with many of its NATO allies. Despite the increasing numbers of casualties, Turkish leaders still insist that intervention is “nonsense” and would prove counterproductive. It therefore accused western countries of eying Libya's oil reserves. Of the 27 countries of the European Union, only about 7 seem to have recognized the Libyan rebels while 20 are either non-aligned or have openly condemned any form of external intervention at least, for now. Italy, Germany, Russia as well as U.S. and Canada are less keen on intervention whereas the United Kingdom and France want immediate action. However, UK and France clarified that “any foreign action within Libya, including a no-fly zone, could take place only if it had wide international support”. This position was an aftermath of the meeting of the NATO Defence Ministers in which a no-fly zone that will take effect after a thorough planning was proposed for Libya. On her part, the Arab league has lent its support to the call for a no-fly-zone in Libya, but condemned any form of direct intervention from foreign countries. In spite of the lack of consensus amongst the International Community, many individuals and states have raised their voices in calling for immediate international intervention on the Libyan quagmire.
In a comment he made prior to European Union meetings penultimate week, former South African Archbishop, Desmond Tutu unequivocally called on the international community to 'do all they can to stop the carnage' in Libya. 'When government is unable or unwilling, then the international community should intervene,' he said. The Libyan delegation to the United nations also called upon the international community to come to their aid, not only militarily, but with humanitarian aids to save its citizens from untold hardship.
As the call for intervention hips up, experts have also called for caution to avoid worsening an already bad situation. This is because, Gaddafi is already known to be a brute who would stop at nothing in his fight for Survival. Some analyst believes he is more hardened than Saddam Hussein of Iraq. More so, it is also believed that in the 70s and 80s, Gaddafi had stock-piled lots of sophisticated arms that he might be forced to roll out if pressured or pushed to the wall. These, perhaps, informed the foot dragging now being witnessed among the major western powers. The current interventionist debates in the form of military intervention, which has so far been avoided but which remains an open option may have been influenced by these realizations.
Writing on the implications of a military intervention in Libya, Sami Hermez , a political analyst with a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University opined that “ Military intervention comes in many forms, such as all out invasion, targeted strikes, military and arms support for opposition forces, and an enforcement of a no-fly zone. Indeed, while many have called for a no-fly zone, this would effectively equal military intervention, since its enforcement would entail patrolling the Libyan skies, shooting down planes and otherwise disabling the Libyan air force, a scenario that would surely win Qaddafi many more supporters”. On the other hand, he raised concern over the use of indirect intervention whereby the opposition forces will be aided by supplying them with military capabilities. This, he feared “will only make it easier for Qaddafi and his loyalists to cast these forces as unpatriotic tools of “Western” interests, confirming the regime’s original accusations about the West’s purported role in fomenting the current unrest and intensifying the fighting”.
With diplomatic talks going on across the globe on the rightness or otherwise of an intervention in Libya, the world may not forgive the U.S., United Nations and other international governmental organizations for another pogrom or genocide in Africa. A stitch in time, they say, saves nine.
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