What Happens After Gadhafi?

Whether Gadhafi ends up in The Hague or in a grave, tough questions abound over who will replace him.

The International Criminal Court indicted Moammar Gadhafi and his inner circle on charges of war crimes, only the second time the court has done so against an active head of state. The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom welcomes the charges, but wonders why the ICC is so selective over who it chooses to pursue. “Only losers and outsiders are called to account,” says Walkom. That's why Gadhafi, shunned by the world, has been charged, but Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who's committed just as many sins, hasn't, because western powers still hope that he can bring reform to his country. Nor, as Walkom points out, has the court gone after India or Pakistan over violence in Kashmir, or Russia for its misdeeds in Chechnya, or NATO for launching a war without UN authorization in the Balkans in the 1990s. The court will eventually have to reach for more than just the low-hanging fruit if it wants to solidify its credibility.

George Grant argues in The Telegraph for the post-Gadhafi era to maintain as much of his regime's infrastructure as possible, so as to avoid a repeat of the chaos that followed the removal of Hussein's Ba'athists in Iraq. “This troubled country simply cannot afford revenge and retribution,” says Grant. “[TNC leader Mustafa] Jalil and others within the TNC need to have the courage to extend the olive branch, both publicly and through private channels.” This is why the best possible outcome, according to Grant, is for those within Gadhafi's regime to hatch a coup d'état against their boss, as it would motivate reconciliation between the rebel factions and the state apparatus that will be integral to rebuilding the war-torn country.

Further to that, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird's eagerness to build ties with Libya's rebel-led Transitional National Council should be tempered with a dose of reality, the National Post's editorialists contend. “Ottawa is playing with fire by throwing its lot in with an ill-defined organization held together largely by a shared eagerness to see the back of Col. Gaddafi,” they write. Look at what happened during the Iran-Iraq war, when the U.S. put its weight behind Saddam Hussein, or during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the U.S.' allies-du-jour, the mujahadeen, quickly morphed into the Taliban once the Russians left. “Both decisions came back to haunt Washington and cost lives,” the editorialists note. If the TNC sours on liberal democracy once Gadhafi is gone, then Canada will have played no small part in that role.