Dilemmi morali e legali dell'intervento militare umanitario: il caso della Libia- Legal and Moral Dilemmas of Military Humanitarian Intervention: the case of Libya

In the wake of the Jasmine and Nile revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt also Libya, on February 2011 began to be invested by a wave of political protests and streets riots. People asked for radical political reforms and invoked freedom, after 41 years of Colonel Qaddafi’s dictatorship. They formally began in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, after the imprisonment of the human rights activist Fethi Tarbellon 16 February. Since that day, the regime of Colonel Qaddafi exercised a brutal repression against the protesters. The following day, was the sadly known “day of rage”, (that was the anniversary of the 2006 protests over the prophet Muhammad cartoons that turned into violent clashes between security forces and protesters). In that occasion, about ten people were killed by the regime’s militias and almost 40 were wounded. In the following days, tensions considerably increased and the regime responded with air indiscriminate attacks against unarmed civilian protesters. The Repression of rebels and civilians became more and more brutal in all the country and only after 4 days of upheavals, at least 233 people were killed or executed by the Qaddafi Regime, according to the dossier of Human Rights Watch, one of the most important NGO of the world. In this context, turmoils spread all over the country and the situation rapidly degenerated in a real civil war. As Sara Leah Wishton (Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch) remarked, “a potential human rights catastrophe is unfolding in Libya as protesters brave live gunfire…Libya is trying to impose an information blackout, but it can’t hide a massacre. In the same document, Human Rights Watch asked to the African Union, European Union, United States of America, and “all the countries with ties to Libya” to:
1)”Put an end to unlawful use of force against pacific protesters”
2)”Announce that those responsible for serious violations of international human rights law must be held individually accountable and will be subjected to appropriate measures”
3)Impose an embargo on all exports of arms and security to Libya.
As times go by, the situation in Libya became always more complex and dramatic. Many tribal leaders, government officials and also military units joined the protests which became de facto an insurgency. The pacific protests rapidly evolved in an extended rebellion, in a violent and bloody civil war between rebels and pro-Qaddafi forces. From one side, rebels attempted to conquest and control the cities and the most important lines of communications, such as the airport of Tripoli and Sirte, Qaddafi’s hometown. From the other, loyalists repressed brutally these attempts with all the possible means. For example, it is sure that Qaddafi has also hired mercenaries from Chad and Serbia, giving them also more than 10.000 dollars for a day. Every day violent struggles upset the most important cities of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, such as Benghazi, Tripoli, Misrata and the number of civilian casualties increased dramatically more and more. In this context, while some information sources indicated that the Colonel Qaddafi was escaped in Venezuela, he appeared in the national television and with a vehement speech(still now available on the web) showed to the entire world its intentions. It is not possible in this work to entirely report his speech but some statements are sufficient in order to understand the situation. Qaddafi sustained that the riots were determined by little groups of “drug addicted youngs” helped by foreigners ( in particular by Al-Qaeda) and he ordered his troops to eliminate these enemies of the country, to “crush all protesters and clean Libya house by house”. For the Colonel it was time to use force for “wiping out the rebels”, to “exterminate the rats”. He also mentioned the historical events of Tiananmen square for saying that all rebels who caused civil war must be condemned to death. Finally, he also promised to fight to the last and declared that he “would rather die like a martyr than surrender”. In this context, while the struggles became always more cruel and violent, on 26 February a provisional government was formed. It was led by the former Minister of Justice Mustafa Abdul Jalil. This was transformed on 5 March in a “Transitional National Council”, a de facto government that was recognized by a growing number of States, starting with France and Qatar. Some days later also the European Union recognized this Council whereas the Arab League announced its will to cooperate with the new entity in the perspective of a proper form of recognition as the legitimate government of Libya. In that moment a considerable portion of the Libyan territory was under the control of the rebels and of the new “Transnational National Council”, but in the first days of March, pro-Qaddafi forces launched heavy retaliations for retrieving the control of an important part of the territory. On 23 February, after only a week from the beginning of the upheavals, about 10.000 people died and at least 50.000 were wounded, according to the Arab broadcaster Al-Arabiya. Moreover, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances expressed concern for people who “might have been submitted to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments or executed”, denouncing them as crimes against humanity. The humanitarian crisis in Libya was made even more dramatic for the risk tied with the dangerous exodus of millions of people (refugees) towards Europe. In was in this context that United Nations acted, an evident humanitarian crisis determined by a bloody and violent civil war in which civilians were exposed to high risks for their lives, maybe a “potential genocide of the Libyan people” as Ibrahim Dabbashi argued, commenting Qaddafi’s speech on the national television.