Coalition mistakes in Libya

The Atlantic Alliance acknowledges having committed two tragic errors in Libya: one against a column of insurgents on Thursday in Brega, and another on Sunday during a bombing raid on Tripoli.

This is not the first time that coalition aircraft have mistakenly attacked militia forces opposed to the Gaddafi regime- a fact that gives some idea of the difficulty of clearly discerning what is happening on the ground. The war has lasted three months so far, and the military equation in which the Alliance is a factor remains unsolvable: the sum of the insurgents' and the international coalition's efforts cannot get the upper hand over Gaddafi's forces.

Incidents of friendly fire often happen when armies are fighting. On this occasion, however, errors made by combatants may give rise to political consequences for the Alliance.

However much their action favors the insurgents' military objectives, the coalition forces are nevertheless a foreign army intervening in a civil war. The continuing situation of stalemate on the battlefield, and mistakes such as that of Brega, may bring about a shift in Libyan public opinion, and in that of other countries of the region which have so far given their support to the international intervention.

With far greater reason such an adverse reaction might result from carnage such as that of the bomb raid on Tripoli, where the victims were not even combatants, but civilians. The intervention of the Alliance loses all its reason for being if, instead of protecting the population as the terms of the United Nations resolution require, it becomes an additional danger to the people of Libya. The coalition command has apologized for the mistake. This apology was a necessary gesture but in no way a sufficient one, if the convenient concept of "collateral victims" is not to be regarded as an acceptable explanation in the context of the intervention.

The investigation of the bombing of Tripoli ought to be exhaustive and, depending on its conclusions, there will have to be sanctions for the persons responsible. Not to proceed in this manner would be as much as to endorse- though only by omission- actions that have been condemned as irresponsible and sanguinary when committed by the enemy.

The Alliance asserts that the end of Gaddafi is in sight. This may be so, but so far there are no conclusive indications that the rebels are advancing, nor that the colonel's regime is on its last legs. The Security Council ought to draw up a balance of the three months of intervention, equipping the coalition with further means of action against Gaddafi if the present ones are found to be insufficient for the purpose.