Libyan war
Reaction
Since the start of the campaign, there have been allegations of violating the limits imposed upon the intervention by Resolution 1973 and by US law. At the end of May 2011, Western troops were captured on film in Libya, despite Resolution 1973 specifically forbidding "a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory". In the article however, it reports that armed Westerners but not Western troops were on the ground.
On 10 June, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticized some of the NATO member nations for their efforts, or lack thereof, to participate in the intervention in Libya. Gates singled out Germany, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the Netherlands for criticism. He praised Canada, Norway and Denmark, saying that although those three countries had only provided twelve percent of the aircraft to the operation, their aircraft had conducted one-third of the strikes.
On August 9, the head of UNESCO, Irina Bokova deplored a NATO strike on Libyan State TV, Al-Jamahiriya, that killed 3 journalists and wounded others. Bokova declared that media outlets should not be the target of military activities.
On August 11, after the August 9 NATO airstrike on Majer that allegedly killed 85 civilians, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all sides to do as much as possible to avoid killing innocent people.
Responsibility to protect
The military intervention in Libya has been cited by the Council on Foreign Relations as an example of the responsibility to protect policy adopted by the UN at the 2005 World Summit. According to Gareth Evans, "[t]he international military intervention (SMH) in Libya is not about bombing for democracy or Muammar Gaddafi's head. Legally, morally, politically, and militarily it has only one justification: protecting the country's people." However, the Council also noted that the policy had been used only in Libya, and not in countries such as the Ivory Coast, undergoing a political crisis at the time, or in response to protests in Yemen. A CFR expert, Stewert Patrick, said that "There is bound to be selectivity and inconsistency in the application of the responsibility to protect norm given the complexity of national interests at stake in [...] the calculations of other major powers involved in these situations."
NATO has been accused of being responsible for the deaths of far more civilians than if it had not intervened. In the past, NATO has been criticized for a number of human rights violations, including indiscriminate bombardment of heavily-populated cities. In January 2012, independent human rights groups published a report describing these human rights violations and accusing NATO of war crimes.
Costs
On 22 March 2011, BBC News presented a breakdown of the likely costs to the UK of the mission. Journalist Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Analysis, estimated that:
Flying a Tornado GR4 would cost about £35,000 an hour, so the cost of patrolling one sector of Libyan airspace would be £2M –£3M per day.
Conventional airborne missiles would cost £800,000 each and Tomahawk cruise missiles £750,000 each. Professor Malcolm Charmers of the Royal United Services Institute similarly suggested that a single cruise missile would cost about £500,000.
While a single Tornado sortie would cost about £30,000 in fuel alone.
If a Tornado was downed the replacement cost would be upwards of £50m.
By 22 March the US and UK had already fired more than 110 cruise missiles.
UK Chancellor George Osborne had said that the MoD estimate of the operation cost was "tens rather than hundreds of millions". On 4 April Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton said that the RAF was planning to continue operations over Libya for at least six months.
Funds spent by Foreign Powers on War in Libya.
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Country
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Funds Spent
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By
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Canada
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$50 million CAD
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mid-October 2011
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France
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$413 million USD
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October 2011
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Italy
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$940 million USD
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June 2011
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United Kingdom
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$333 million USD (£212 million)
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31 October 2011
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United States
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$1.1 billion USD
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September 2011
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