Gaddafi's Speech.

Yesterday, February 22nd, Libyan leader, Colonel Qaddafi made his first major speech since serious unrest has started to grip the country. At a little over an hour long this was a short and concise speech by Gaddafi's standards. Apart from re-assuring the people that rumours about him having fled the country were false the main aim of the speech was to bring peace back to the country and if you look at what's going on in the country you can see why everyone thinks it's important for peace to return.

With the exception of some small, staged photo-opportunities all pre-text of political protest or a popular uprising has disappeared and been replaced with pro and anti-Gaddafi armed militia's engaging in street battles and destroying buildings. So far this sort of urban warfare is estimated to have killed 1000 people. The only positive about the situation is that the next few days could well be the peak of the violence because, in Tripoli at least, the anti-Qaddafi protesters seem to be shrinking in number and fragmenting while Qaddafi's supporters seem to be mobilising and organising to take their country back.

If that is the case it still leaves the problem that the unrest has caused Libya to become geographically split with government forces in control of the west of the country around the city of Tripoli while rebel forces are at their strongest in the east of the country around the city of Benghazi. It is this sort of geographic split that causes civil wars and leads to countries breaking apart. Therefore Britain is frantically lobbying the United Nations (UN) to step in an keep the peace although they have yet to call for a full military intervention. Even in a limited role I think this is the last thing the UN wants to do at the moment because intervening now would serve to formalise and strengthen a division that is currently fluid and subject to change. At best partitioning Libya in this way would lead to a Korean style stand-off and a refugee crisis. At worst it will give both sides time to re-group, re-arm and draw up proper battle plans before launching into a full on war. Sadly I think this might be exactly what Britain wants because it's talk of using military aircraft to force their way into Libya to rescue British nationals and it's choice to station a Royal Navy warship, HMS Cumberland, just outside Libyan waters while harassing the Libyan government with repeated requests to allow it to dock in Benghazi is surely the definition of gunboat diplomacy.

The only other interesting thing to come out of the Libya situation in recent days is that the Egyptians are reporting the Libyan government forces have abandoned their posts on the border between the two countries leaving that border open. This could be evidence that the Libyan government has all but lost control of the east of the country. Alternatively it could be evidence that they still have quite a lot of control in the area and have opened the border to allow Libyans to flee into Egypt to escape the fighting and allow journalists in from Egypt to investigate the atrocities that are rumoured to be going on in the area. At the moment any journalists attempting the journey have been turned back by rebel militias. To me that sounds odd because surely it can only help the rebels cause if they were able to show the world what they claim Gaddafi is doing to them.