ICC warrant against Gaddafi
Stalemate deepens in Libya
The warrants of arrest issued against Col. Muammar Gaddafi, his son and his intelligence chief by the International Criminal Court raise two very important concerns. In the first place, how does the ICC follow through on its move since the Libyan leader is yet in charge in Tripoli and predictably will not give himself up? In the second, the ICC warrant creates a condition from which there is now a point of no return, either for Gaddafi or his pursuers. The stalemate which has lately seized Libya will now be prolonged, with a desperate regime ferociously trying to cling to power.
There is little question that Gaddafi and his associates are guilty of presiding over the widespread violence that has claimed the lives of thousands of Libyans in these past few months. Gaddafi, whose loyalists have been defecting in droves, ought to have followed the course taken by Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. He did not. That complicated the situation, which was then made worse by NATO's move to bomb Libya in support of anti-Gaddafi forces. In a sense, both Gaddafi's desperation and NATO's increasing involvement in Libya have created a civil war-like situation, if not exactly a civil war. Sorties by NATO jets have left unarmed civilians dead. At the same time, with the rebels in control of Benghazi and Gaddafi forces holding on to Tripoli, it is in effect a fractured Libya the world faces today. Nothing could be worse for a people whose simple demand is for a decent change in politics.
The question now is whether the ICC can carry out the job of actually arresting Gaddafi. Its previous warrant against Sudan's Omar el Bashir failed to nab Khartoum's dictator. Given the new situation vis-à-vis Libya, one wonders if the African Union, in the formation of which the Libyan leader played a prominent part, can now have a role in defusing the crisis by persuading Gaddafi to relinquish power. Obviously, Gaddafi's refusal to go will leave his country battered beyond imagination. The regional as also global repercussions of the situation can easily be surmised.
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