Operation Oil Theft: Week 4 Day 5

With the rebels refusing to sign up to a ceasefire events in Libya have continued in their usual pattern. Rebel and government forces have continued to exchange fire around Ajdibiya and Misurata with both sides reporting casualties but neither side making any progress. Foreign aircraft continue to bomb government forces on the ground but here something of a two tier operation has begun to emerge. British, French and Qatari aircraft are really the only ones continuing to attack ground targets while the other members of the NATO commanded coalition are content to sit back and enforce the no-fly zone by patrolling the skies above Libya. This has led to Britain accusing the other NATO allies of not pulling their weight and Britain's David Cameron and France's Nicholas Sarkozy are to have dinner together tonight (13/4/11) in Paris to discuss the matter.

Elsewhere the first meeting of the Libyan contact group that was set up at the London conference of March 29th has today taken place in Doha, Qatar. This should be viewed as one of the first steps of a long process. So rather then attempting to gain agreement on a concrete set of proposals it was more designed to formalise Free Libya's Transitional National Council (TNC) and build it into something that can operate in international diplomatic circles while sending out the message to Qaddafi that the world is uniting behind and alternative government of Libya.

That said the meeting did agree to allow the Qataris to set up a sort of trust fund to hold the revenues from rebel oil exports and possibly Libyan assets that have been frozen overseas. This is convenient way of getting around the legally difficult question of whether foreign countries are allowed to arm the rebels. Instead they simply enable the rebels to buy their own weapons. Amid all the talk of oil for guns deals the meeting was warned that unless the conflict ends soon upwards of 3.5 million Libyan civilians will require what is referred to as "first need aid" such as food and water. I hate to be so cold and calculating but given that the population of Benghazi is only around 1 million if this is the fate that faces the Libyan people then it would have been more humane to allow the massacre to happen if there ever was going to be a massacre.

That sobering thought aside the other interesting aspect of the Doha meeting was the unveiling of former Libyan Foreign Minister, Moussa Koussa as Britain's envoy to the Libyan rebels. This was a wonderfully theatrical exercise in diplomatic deception designed to send out a variety of messages to a variety of people.

In the first it was designed to encourage further defections from the Libyan government by sending out the message that no matter what they'd done if they defect to Britain they'll be allowed to walk away both free and rich.

Secondly it was designed to create an illusion of distance between Britain and the Libyan rebels. Although the Libyan rebellion, and in the case of the Libyan Youth Movement literally, was born and raised in Britain appointing an envoy to reach out the rebels gives the impression that Britain has much less influence over the rebels then it really does.

Thirdly Koussa's appointment helps to create the impression that Britain does not intend to turn Libya into a Somalia style failed state because Koussa specifically warned about that in his first public appearance after defecting. However with no clear end point in sight Britain's plan for Libya seems to be to keeping bombing it until the money runs out which is a clear recipe for a Somalia style failed state. In fact it's how Britain helped turn Somalia into it's current state.



Edited to change title because the month doesn't come up until next week.