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Libya Asks NATO To Keep Them In Or Out?

Moon of Alabama | October 27, 2011

The Libyan regime is requesting further NATO help. (One wonders who gave it the idea.) But is not clear what the purpose of further NATO support should be.

According to AlJazeera the purpose is to keep Gaddhafi supporters from fleeing to neighbor countries:

NATO should stay involved in Libya until the end of this year to help prevent loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi from leaving the country, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the interim leader, has said.
…
“We look forward to NATO continuing its operations until the end of the year,” Jalil said at a conference in Doha, the Qatari capital, on Wednesday.Stating that stopping the flight of Gaddafi supporters to other countries was a priority, he said: “We seek technical and logistics help from neighbouring and friendly countries.”

According to the New York Times the purpose is to keep Gaddhafi supporters from invading from neighbor countries:

“We have asked NATO to stay until the end of the year, and it certainly has the international legitimacy to remain in Libya to protect the civilians from Qaddafi loyalists,” the interim leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, chairman of the Transitional National Council, said in an interview with the pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera.“Qaddafi still has supporters in neighboring countries, and we fear those loyalists could be launching attacks against us and infiltrating our borders,” he said. “We need technical support and training for our troops on the ground. We also need communications equipment, and we need aerial intelligence to monitor our borders.”

To keep them in or to keep them out? Which is it?

Libya’s desert borders are too long to be controllable by any force. People will always be able to come in or leave the country without anyone noticing. Even if one could control the borders how is one supposed to differentiate between a coming or leaving Gaddhafi supporter versus the coming or leaving anti-Gaddhafi Libyan?

The situation on the ground is, as Tony Karon points out, comparable to Afghanistan in 2002 or maybe even 1992. There is no central power accepted by all parts of the country and the new government has no real power over the various militia.

To put NATO boots on Libyan ground would be the repeat of the NATO adventure in Afghanistan with, ten years later, a likely comparable outcome.

October 27, 2011 - Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering

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