The New York Times and international NGO Human Rights Watch both confirm that forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi shelled the city of Misratah with cluster bombs, munitions banned by much of the international community. Times reporter C.J. Chivers, currently in Misratah, no stranger to warzones and author of a recent book on the history of …
U.K.
NATO Members Feud While Gaddafi Forces Batter Misratah
It’s increasingly looking like the only factor capable of resolving the international community’s dilemma in Libya is also the one element to that will never cooperate in finding a solution: Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi himself. Because as the meetings, summits, and declarations of coalition partners come and go, it becomes …
Hugh Grant’s Finest Acting Role: As a Journalist
The actor’s name is associated with many things—English charm (Hugh Grant can “twinkle for Britain,” the screenwriter and director Richard Curtis told me as I researched this piece about Grant’s on- and off-screen rival Colin Firth); a weakness for beautiful women including Elizabeth Hurley and Jemima Khan; and a weakness for less …
NATO Confronts a Crisis in Libya: Its Air War Has Not Dislodged Gaddafi
The split in NATO over its Libya operation ought to come as no surprise: it’s precisely because of the differences within the alliance over the terms and goals of the mission, and the inevitably limiting effect of the alliance’s consensus-based decisionmaking, that France had been reluctant to cede command to NATO in the first place. But …
Washington Seizes Up and Suddenly Coalitions Don’t Look So Bad
On May 5, Britons are invited to vote in a referendum about voting. They will decide whether to abandon the U.K.’s current first-past-the-post elections (FPTP) in favor of an Alternative Vote (AV) system, which isn’t really much different from FPTP except that voters rank candidates in order of preference, and as candidates are …
U.S. Faces a Libya Stalemate, What are its Options?
That which has been obvious for some time now is finally being officially acknowledged: Libya’s power struggle is stalemated, and is likely to remain that way on the basis of the current level of NATO commitment. That was the grim assessment in congressional testimony Thursday by General Carter Ham, the U.S. commander who led the initial …
In Gaddafi’s Tripoli, Visions of Doomsday and an Endgame
Such is the hothouse atmosphere of the Rixos Hotel, where the Tripoli press corps remains imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime, that any new source of information, be it a shopkeeper in a bazaar who manages to slip out a disparaging word about Libya’s leader or a rumor of the man himself out in the streets, sends reporters into a frenzied …
Is Gaddafi’s Regime Seeking an Exit Strategy?
If the end game is afoot in the Libya conflict, it has little to do with the provision of armaments, CIA mentoring or air cover to the rebel forces. The counteroffensive by loyalist troops that has driven the rebels all the way back to Ajdabiya, the last town before their Benghazi stronghold, has put paid to hopes of the rebels storming …
What’s at Stake at the London Meeting on Libya?
The following is a guest post by TIME‘s Vivienne Walt, who is attending the meeting in London over the future of Libya.
Ten days after French and U.S. jets launched Operation Odyssey Dawn in an effort to halt Muammar Gaddafi’s advance on Libyan rebels, the 37 countries involved in the sprawling military coalition converged in London …
Cold Case: How Libya’s Revolution Might Solve a 1984 Murder
One April evening in 1984, an after-work drink took a surreal turn. On the way to a bar, we skirted a police cordon at the entrance to St James’s Square in central London; we had barely lifted our pints before armed officers clattered into our midst and informed us that the cordon had been extended. We were not to leave. The Libyan …
Gaddafi Resilience Poses Challenges for the West’s Libya Mission
Never mind who will command the Libya air war; the far larger problem lies in determining its purpose, terms and limits, and in honing a realistic strategy in terms of the limited commitment – both by measure of time and scale – of most of its authors.
By all accounts, Libya’s air force and its air defenses have been taken out of the …
With the Fate of Libya in the Balance, Coalition Leaders Start to Squabble
Just days ago, the U.N. Security Council passed a landmark resolution mandating intervention in Libya, backed by what seemed like tacit international consensus on the intolerable behavior of the Gaddafi regime. U.S., French and British aircraft commenced strikes on Libyan military positions, reversing the advance of pro-government forces …
Better Late than Never? British MPs Vote for Libya No-Fly Zone
Here’s an example of democracy in action, a privilege Western politicians are keen to extend as widely as possible. Today, members of Britain’s House of Commons discussed the wisdom of enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. At 10.17 pm, almost seven hours after the start of their debate and more than three days after the establishment of …