The following day, 22 February, Cameron is in his hotel room in Doha, Qatar, watching the television screen. He is captivated and excited by the images of the protestors in Libya, who had taken to the streets of Benghazi within days of the fall of Mubarak. Gaddafi has ordered the Libyan army to crack down hard, and already a hundred protestors have been killed.3 Cameron feels a deep sense of Schadenfreude at the plight of Gaddafi. By his side stands John Casson, Tom Fletcher’s successor. Cameron is fortunate in his foreign affairs private secretaries. Fletcher had given him insight into the issues and personalities gleaned from two years serving Brown. As focus switches to the Arab world, enter Casson, an Arabist who has recently been overseeing North Africa and the Middle East in the Foreign Office. Since taking over in November 2010, he has been coaxing Cameron towards a vision for the whole African continent, and for reform and democratisation in the Arab world.
That evening, Cameron has a long dinner with Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, prime minister of Qatar. For the next two years, ‘HBJ’, as he is known, will be the foreign leader Cameron speaks to most in the region. They sit down at a small round table, an army of attendants anxiously watching on. He launches into a tirade, telling Cameron that Gaddafi is mad and finished and that other Arab leaders needed to say so. What’s more, the Russians have to realise this fact, he tells the PM. The Qatari prime minister touches a raw nerve in Cameron, who has a visceral dislike of the Libyan leader. The murder of the young policewoman Yvonne Fletcher by a Libyan outside their embassy in St James’s Square, London, in April 1984 happened when he was still at Eton – a formative time for him. Four years later came the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 270 people, mostly British and American citizens. When the bomb was proven to have been planted by a Libyan, Cameron became still more angry. He was repulsed by Tony Blair’s decision in his final term to rehabilitate Gaddafi, which is why he argued strongly in 2009 against the Scottish government’s return of the bomber al-Megrahi on grounds of illness to Libya. Gordon Brown claimed that it was the Scottish government who had taken the decision. Cameron did not believe him, and once inside Number 10, asked Gus O’Donnell to conduct a review into the episode. It concluded that the previous government ‘did all it could to facilitate’ the release of al-Megrahi, and that lobbying by BP over its commercial interests in Libya ‘played a part’ in its decision to release Libyan prisoners.4 In the autumn of 2010, Cameron came under diplomatic pressure to attend a summit that Gaddafi was hosting. He declined forthrightly. Gaddafi felt slighted. Cameron said he would go nowhere near him. It is a very personal animosity. A timely release of the report into the al-Megrahi affair took place in early February 2011.5 ‘Let’s make a joint public statement saying that war crimes have been committed,’ Cameron now says to HBJ over the table. The Qatari prime minister agrees, expressing his exasperation at Gaddafi’s corrupt behaviour and betrayal. ‘Well, I have no love for Gaddafi!’ Cameron replies. He tells HBJ about his revulsion over Yvonne Fletcher and Lockerbie.
The next day, 23 February, Cameron and his party fly on to see the sultan of Oman. The day before, Gaddafi makes a televised speech vowing to catch the demonstrators like ‘rats’. If the protestors do not surrender, he will ‘slaughter’ them.6 He will never give up power, he says, and would rather die a martyr. Cameron is tired. It is half-term week, and the trip has been emotionally and physically exhausting. He would like to be back home relaxing with his children. But the sultan has been anticipating his visit eagerly and has laid on a very long and very splendid meal. A note is brought in which is intercepted by Casson: ‘Call London’, it says. Casson asks the sultan’s permission to leave the table and goes outside. ‘British expats are in danger in Libya,’ he is told down the line. The day before, Cameron had spoken out strongly in support of the protestors in Libya. As war breaks out, British civilians are in imminent danger. The Foreign Office is not having its most glorious hour. It has chartered a plane to evacuate some of the 500 British citizens estimated still to be in Libya, but it has broken down at Gatwick and ten hours are lost while it is repaired. The media goes to town on the government’s prevarication, contrasting it to the French, German and Brazilian governments who have chartered planes and ships immediately to bring out their own nationals. Cameron rarely loses his temper, but he does so now. He is furious that the wheels of government have ground to a halt.
The Coulson and phone-hacking sagas have changed the entire mood music in the UK. Cameron is under fire from the press for being on a trip when he should be dealing with the crisis at home. Hypocrisy is another charge: why is he accepting hospitality from undemocratic sheikhs when he is encouraging democracy elsewhere in the Arab world? As soon as he can politely extract himself from the sultan’s sumptuous table, he makes a conference call to William Hague and Liam Fox. They debate the pros and cons of sending in military aircraft to Libya. Cameron hears too much equivocation. ‘Just send the RAF in and do it now,’ he instructs them. A C130 transport plane is promptly dispatched from the south of England to collect the oil workers from the desert. It comes under small-arms fire from a Gaddafi loyalist on the ground. Had the plane come down, it would have been one of the biggest crises of the premiership. The incident is hushed up, but the Foreign Office blames Number 10 for briefing against it over the handling of the evacuation. An ugly moment is exacerbated a week later on 4 March when six SAS soldiers dropped into Libya are arrested and sent home.7 Cameron has already apologised for the bungle over the evacuation, and on 7 March, Hague takes responsibility for the failed military operation. Not a good start.
The SAS adventure is a harbinger of a new and far more serious turn of events in Libya. So far, Cameron has not crossed the Rubicon. Anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya come under intense pressure over the next few days and on 26 February, a UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) freezes Gaddafi’s assets and imposes an arms embargo on the country. Two days later, Cameron proposes to fellow leaders a ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya to deter Gaddafi’s use of jet fighters against the rebels. ‘Go now,’ Cameron urges Gaddafi. On 2 March, he tells the House of Commons that the international community are considering his suggestion of a no-fly zone. He is becoming increasingly convinced that a military response may be needed, and instructs the MoD to draw up plans. Gaddafi’s reply is to intensify his assault against rebels in Misrata to the east of Tripoli. Cameron is speaking regularly to Nicolas Sarkozy in France: they want to act militarily, but do not want to do so without US support. Obama is sitting on the fence and does not want to play ball.8 Cameron’s support for a no-fly zone is melting away.
Cameron is working particularly closely with Llewellyn, who draws on his experience as an adviser to Paddy Ashdown, when he was high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 2000s. David Richards, newly promoted to chief of the defence staff, believes that Llewellyn is egging on Cameron. They have a model of the Balkans in their heads, Richards surmises, notably the massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995.9 By acting now, they think they can prevent another Srebrenica unfolding in Benghazi. Cameron knows of Richards’ scepticism, and