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Geopolitics

Military Intervention In Libya: Here Are The Options

From simply jamming radar systems to a direct strike on Muammar Gaddafi’s bunker, UN-backed military intervention to protect civilians could take many forms.

French air force bomber (Mashley Morgan)
French air force bomber (Mashley Morgan)
Isabelle Lasserre

PARIS - France, Britain, the United States and its Arab allies will have to choose between several scenarios for their military operations in Libya, following the UN Security Council's vote in favor of a no-fly zone and air strikes against Gaddafi's forces.

(On Friday, the Libyan government announced an immediate ceasefire and a halt to all military operations against rebels following the UN resolution. The move was widely seen as an attempt by Gaddafi's regime to buy time as Western military leaders prepared to act.)

The no-fly zone element of the resolution -- suggested by diplomats -- seemed designed to avoid a Russian or Chinese veto, masking in language acceptable to everyone the reality of military intervention.

When a no-fly zone was imposed in Bosnia in the early 1990s to stop the Serbs from shelling civilians, it did not prevent the Srebrenica massacre. A no-fly zone implemented over Iraq for 12 years did nothing to influence Saddam Hussein. By the time the no-fly zone is put in place over Libya, Gaddafi's troops could have regained control of the last rebel-controlled areas.

Instead, because Thursday evening's UN Security Council's draft resolution promises to protect civilians "by all means', the Allies could decide almost immediately to launch targeted strikes against strategic objectives in Libya, such as its air defense, command centers and airports, in a bid to ground its air force.

Rommel's route

At the same time, electronic warfare could be employed to neutralize Libyan radar systems. Under that scenario, France could participate with planes stationed at the Solenzara airbase on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. It could also send its AWACS radar planes. Such military action would send a strong signal. Some hope it could have a strong psychological impact on Gaddafi's entourage, prompting it to abandon the colonel.

If the goal of the intervention is to bring down the regime, as some diplomats have suggested, the allies could also decide to attack Gaddafi's tanks and infantry, striking in the desert, along the road once travelled by the British Eighth Army and the German General Erwin Rommel. This would be "a particularly intense act, both politically and militarily," warns one high-ranking French military source, who has doubts that it would suffice in unseating the regime.

Faced with the threat of air strikes, Gaddafi will not fail to disperse his forces on the ground, as Saddam Hussein did in March 2003. It will then be difficult to avoid collateral damage on civilian populations. Another military source underlines that air power alone can never win a war. "To destroy an army, you need to go the whole way," he says. The draft resolution, however, excludes the use of ground troops.

Although weakened, Gaddafi can still count on the loyalty of 10,000 to 12,000 soldiers and additional African mercenaries, as well as surface-to-air missiles and significant numbers of tanks and artillery also still under his control.

The last option would be to directly attack the regime's center of gravity, Gaddafi himself, by striking his bunker, or other shelters where he is known to take refuge. In 1986, U.S. air strikes launched by President Ronald Reagan against Gaddafi's residence narrowly missed him.

Since then, military satellite technology and strike systems have become much more sophisticated, which should make such an operation easier. But w should remember that in March 2003, the very first air strike on Baghdad was aimed at eliminating Saddam Hussein. It missed its target.

Read the original version in French

Photo Credit - (Mashley Morgan)

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Society

Brazil's Evangelical Surge Threatens Survival Of Native Afro-Brazilian Faith

Followers of the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion in four traditional communities in the country’s northeast are resisting pressure to convert to evangelical Christianity.

image of Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Agencia Publica
Géssica Amorim

Among a host of images of saints and Afro-Brazilian divinities known as orixás, Abel José, 42, an Umbanda priest, lights some candles, picks up his protective beads and adjusts the straw hat that sits atop his head. He is preparing to treat four people from neighboring villages who have come to his house in search of spiritual help and treatment for health ailments.

The meeting takes place discreetly, in a small room that has been built in the back of the garage of his house. Abel lives in the quilombo of Sítio Bredos, home to 135 families. The community, located in the municipality of Betânia of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco, is one of the municipality’s four remaining communities that have been certified as quilombos, the word used to refer to communities formed in the colonial era by enslaved Africans and/or their descendents.

In these villages there are almost no residents who still follow traditional Afro-Brazilian religions. Abel, Seu Joaquim Firmo and Dona Maura Maria da Silva are the sole remaining followers of Umbanda in the communities in which they live. A wave of evangelical missionary activity has taken hold of Betânia’s quilombos ever since the first evangelical church belonging to the Assembleia de Deus group was built in the quilombo of Bredos around 20 years ago. Since then, other evangelical, pentecostal, and neo-pentecostal churches and congregations have established themselves in the area. Today there are now nine temples spread among the four communities, home to roughly 900 families.

The temples belong to the Assembleia de Deus, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the World Church of God's Power, the latter of which has over 6,000 temples spread across Brazil and was founded by the apostle and televangelist Valdemiro Santiago, who became infamous during the pandemic for trying to sell beans that he had blessed as a Covid-19 cure. Assembleia de Deus alone, who are the largest pentecostal denomination in the world, have built five churches in Betânia’s quilombos.


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