When the Arab Awakening challenged his autocratic regime, Moammar Gadhafi threatened to “sanitize Libya an inch at a time, a home at a time, a house at a time, an alley at a time” until dissent was crushed. He and his cronies reviled democracy activists as stray dogs, rats and filth. Then they reached for their guns.
They turned helicopter gunships, armoured cars, anti-aircraft guns and other weapons on unarmed crowds and on rebellious towns. They used clubs, swords, acid and electroshock on activists. They mercilessly hunted down the injured in hospital beds.
That’s the grisly gist of the International Criminal Court’s case for issuing arrest warrants on Monday for Gadhafi, his son Seif and his intelligence chief. Whatever effect this may have on the Gadhafi regime, it invites critics of the United Nations-sanctioned military action to think again before denouncing it as unwarranted, or as an oil grab. The UN Security Council had ample reason to authorize Canada and its allies to “take all necessary measures to protect civilians.” If Gadhafi’s war machine had not been blunted, there’s no telling how many he would have slaughtered in the past 100 days.
The arrest warrants confirm what Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird found on his brief fact-finding trip to Benghazi this week to see how Canada can help the Libyan people build a better future. Gadhafi has forfeited all political and moral legitimacy, and should have no part to play going forward. The warrants should also stiffen spines in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The United States, Britain, France and Canada are carrying a disproportionate load.
Hopefully, the court action will embolden anti-Gadhafi groups in Tripoli and encourage further defections by his cronies.
While Gadhafi and some around him may be tempted to dig in their heels rather than face a UN court, they have more to fear from their countrymen. The UN system has no death penalty.
Having rightly recognized the opposition National Transitional Council, and pledged our forces for three more months, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is stepping up diplomatic contacts to see how the council intends to govern, and to hold free elections. Our long-term support depends on the right answers. As well, Harper should use our leverage to press Libya’s reformers to step up contacts of their own with Gadhafi’s crumbling regime, with a view to ending this war. As Baird rightly noted, Ottawa “would welcome a political settlement.” Council leaders say they won’t “negotiate with war criminals.” But Gadhafi’s departure may well have to be negotiated, and they will have to make peace with elements of the old regime. Reconciliation, too, must be on the agenda.
— An editorial from the Toronto Star.