Frustration grows in Western capitals over Libyan stalemate - Washington Post

Under the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, which on March 17 authorized Western air operations over Libya, NATO aircraft are bombing to protect civilian lives. But according to increasingly explicit statements from European leaders, they are also deployed to help an armed rebellion defend its positions and pressure Moammar Gaddafi and his sons to give up power in Tripoli.

The equivocation, according to observers inside and outside the alliance, has fostered frustration in European capitals at what seems increasingly to be a stalemated ground war along the sandy expanses of Libya's Mediterranean shore. Moreover, it has strained the cohesion of NATO's 28 member countries, some of which insist on sticking strictly to the civilian protection mission while others say the only way to protect Libya's population is to get rid of Gaddafi.

President Obama's reluctance to stay fully involved has been perceived by some European officials as a fraying of NATO's solidarity principle. In a joint declaration last week, Obama joined French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron in declaring that Gaddafi must go, a gesture toward their expansive war goals. But, Europeans complained, he remained unwilling to fully commit U.S. resources to help make that happen.

Perhaps the most debilitating development since March 31, when the United States transferred command of the Libyan operation to NATO, has been the absence of U.S. military leadership. This has left the Naples-based multinational NATO command for Operation Unified Protection without a naturally dominant voice.

The frustration has been particularly visible in France and Britain, the two countries whose leaders pushed hardest for Western intervention and who have been at the forefront in seeking a victory for the rebels. By their yardstick — helping rebel forces topple Gaddafi — the bombing campaign has fallen short.

"According to the logic of what they say, it can't be over until Gaddafi is out of there," said Robert Danin, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. He noted that "questions, contradictions and ambiguities" have plagued the operation from its outset.

Gaddafi has survived five weeks of punishing airstrikes, and his military has not yet betrayed him, as officials in Paris and London were hoping. In a notable display of candor, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe suggested this week that alliance leaders — including his boss, Sarkozy — may have underestimated Gaddafi's staying power in deciding to go to war.

"When the decision to take action was taken, there was a feeling that, in the wake of what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, this would be relatively quick," Danin recalled. "Instead, it is turning out to be a protracted civil war on the ground."

Rebel forces in eastern Libya have proved unable to maintain advances from their Benghazi headquarters and forward positions at the crossroads town of Ajdabiya. Their major prize in western Libya, Misurata, has come under relentless barrages from Libyan army artillery and rocket launchers, leading the town council to plead for intervention by foreign ground troops.

Measured by the situation in Misurata, NATO bombing has also fallen short in protecting civilians during the most recent combat. Asked Tuesday about the humanitarian crisis there, Brig. Gen Mark van Uhm, a Dutch national who is NATO's chief of operations, noted that air power alone cannot guarantee protection for civilians in Misurata. Bombers are limited in what they can do, he said at a briefing here, because of a need to avoid collateral casualties in what has become close-quarters urban warfare.

In response to a growing impression that the rebellion has bogged down, Cameron on Tuesday dispatched a dozen British military advisers to help rebel leaders in Benghazi better organize their forces. France and Italy followed up the next day with separate announcements that they, too, will send in military advisers — on a national basis beyond NATO's purview — to work in tandem with the British.

"We will help you," Sarkozy said Wednesday in a meeting with the senior rebel leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, according to a Sarkozy aide.

Despite their goals, Cameron and Sarkozy have disavowed any plans to send in ground troops to fight alongside the rebels. "That's not what we want, that's not what the Libyans want, that's not what the world wants," Cameron told a BBC interviewer Thursday.

But the commitment of military advisory teams, inching together toward deeper involvement, was taken as a measure of impatience with the way the conflict is playing out.

The decision to act outside the NATO umbrella suggested the three countries thought they could not get a consensus within the alliance for sending military advisers, since that seems to go beyond the authorizing U.N. resolution. In that light, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet suggested that another, broader resolution may be necessary before the conflict is over.

Other NATO countries have proved less enthusiastic. Germany, a key ally, has refused to participate at all in the Libyan operation, saying military intervention is not the solution to the country's problems. Italy, another NATO ally with a strong military, has offered air bases but refused NATO entreaties to participate in the bombing, citing its colonial past in Libya.