Leader: Gaddafi’s revenge

Not even a month ago, it looked as though Colonel Gaddafi was going the way of Mubarak and Ben Ali — a bloodier process, certainly, but a seemingly irreversible one.

Gaddafi’s revenge

Not even a month ago, it looked as though Colonel Gaddafi was going the way of Mubarak and Ben Ali — a bloodier process, certainly, but a seemingly irreversible one. His generals mutinied, and pilots sent to bomb Libyan rebels flew to Malta. His ambassadors resigned. There was talk of imposing a no-fly zone, to help the Libyan rebels in the same way the Kurds were assisted in 1991. But then Gaddafi realised that the only opposition he faced from the outside world was verbal. Now, steadily, he is taking back Libya.

The unthinkable seems to be happening. It now looks possible that Gaddafi’s four decades of tyranny are not over. However tenuously, he may yet cling on to power — and start a slow, murderous revenge on the tribes that defied him. This fits a theme, which should surprise no one outside of the London School of Economics. Arming the IRA, murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher and bombing of Pan Am flight 103 may be the acts which this country most vividly remembers. But across the world — not least in Africa — countless thousands recall his unpredictable bloodlust.

For these and many other reasons, the day of Gaddafi’s demise should not merely have been hoped for — it should have been helped along. But weeks into the crisis, the response of the United Nations and other transnational institutions remains hopeless. Bare-minimum policy though it is, the UN can still not even agree on establishing the no-fly zone which David Cameron rightly discussed. Turkish protests made Nato agreement impossible.