Recognition

March 10, 2011 By Malcolm Blair-Robinson

France has recognised the anti-Gaddafi forces and their administrative structure as ‘the legitimate government of Libya’. This is premature. There is no certainty that they will prevail, nor even that they have majority support in the wider context of the whole of Libya. Certainly they are in no sense ‘governing’ Libya. It may very well be that they never do. Premature recognition of a rebelling combination in a civil war is rash, even reckless and can impede a just cause to the point where it fails. Clearly the hope of the Benghazi people is that France will now help them militarily. When it does not, which is likely, the sense of let down, even betrayal, will be profound.

Everyone who wants to see a resolution of this crisis must see that only U.N. authorised (properly, not Iraq style), military intervention by non Arab states will have any chance and even that chance is long. The Libyan people have to solve this and find a way of ridding themselves of the Gaddafi family, if that is what they want. The rest of the world can pile in humanitarian aid, freeze assets, impose sanctions and generally make it worthwhile for the Gaddafis to find a way out before it is too late.There are reports they are putting out feelers.

At the moment Gadaffi is winning the military engagements and the rebels are being pushed back. That may not last, once anger at the heavy handedness of his forces and the brutality in his prisons permeates his traumatised country. There is more to happen yet and the West needs, for the moment, to stock up its powder but keep it dry.