Cameron’s frustration is rising by the week. With the economy showing no sign of recovery, continuing fallout from the Coulson affair, and no progress in Libya, he comes under mounting pressure. He wants action, and believes the MoD and the Whitehall machine are too sluggish. Without his personal drive, constant probing, and regular chairing of NSC meetings, he thinks there will be no co-ordinated effort from London. Large chunks of each day are spent on the telephone as he tries to fire up partners in the international coalition. Cabinet colleagues start to complain he is too preoccupied on what looks increasingly like a personal obsession.
The long shadow of Iraq becomes ever darker. Failure to prepare after the original combat operation had been one of the principal failings of the entire unhappy saga. Cameron asks International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell to identify the ‘lessons learnt’ from Iraq. He puts together a team from the MoD, Foreign and Cabinet Offices to work on post-fighting stabilisation.23 And yet, there are frustrations that there is no similar process to the one led by Nigel Sheinwald after the Iraq invasion looking into a post-war solution. ‘The prime minister simply didn’t have faith in the system and bypassed it,’ says one senior figure.
Ricketts places Whitehall on a war footing, and what Hague dubs the ‘anaconda strategy’, squeezing Gaddafi to the death, is launched. Officials joke that Whitehall is coming to resemble The West Wing, the US television series.24 Libya is the fist big war test for the NSC apparatus, and for Ricketts personally. Cameron comes to admire him for his understanding of NATO, the MoD and the Foreign Office, and for his command of the complex detail. Ricketts is part of the close Number 10 team till his departure in January 2012 to become ambassador in Paris. Now Hugh Powell – son of Thatcher’s foreign policy adviser Charles Powell, and nephew of Blair’s right-hand man Jonathan – comes to the fore. One of Ricketts’ two deputies, and a hawk, he has wide-ranging responsibility for gripping Libya. Powell argues that they should be denying oil to forces loyal to Gaddafi, taking out fuel lines, depots and oil facilities, and thus stopping them in their tracks. Cameron agrees. The military reply is that this is a NATO-led campaign, and NATO lawyers argue that these actions are inconsistent with the UNSCR. Cameron is all in favour of cutting loose from NATO and taking action unilaterally, so frustrated is he. Some argue that Powell’s influence at this time ‘positively set back the effort’. French special forces working with Libyan rebels sever the pipeline to the main Libyan refinery at Zawiya,25 and the British broker a secret deal to keep the rebels supplied with oil: without it, Benghazi may well have fallen.
Blair telephones Number 10 to say he’s been contacted by a key individual close to Gaddafi, and that the Libyan leader wants to cut a deal with the British. Blair is a respected voice in the building and his suggestion is examined seriously. Number 10 decide, though, not to follow it up: they want to avoid doing anything which might be seen to be giving Gaddafi succour. But in parallel, and with Cameron’s knowledge, Powell is secretly exploring backchannel deals to see if Gaddafi can leave Libya with a degree of honour. Nothing comes of this either, nor indeed of Gaddafi’s own proposal that he should become a ‘monarch figure without real power’.
The capture of Misrata by the rebels on 15 May, after a long battle, brings temporary relief, but stalemate soon returns. Summer arrives, and there is still no resolution. Gaddafi is very much alive, and rebel forces are failing to make headway against the Libyan forces. Cameron maintains relentless pressure on Whitehall to produce imaginative solutions: sanctions are one possibility, as are finding fresh ways of helping the rebel forces to become more effective. Some feel the opportunity for an international presence on the ground working with the militias while a political settlement is pushed through has long since passed. And in any case, the idea was never seriously advocated. ‘There was no security presence on the ground. That was a huge failure. That was a failing of the system. No one was thinking that through clearly,’ says one who was part of the discussions. Richards’ complaints do not let up: he feels Cameron and the NSC are interfering with the military operation and being involved even down to the most tactical level. ‘We had really frequent meetings where the prime minister felt that the system wasn’t really committed, or trying its hardest to make this work,’ recalls one official. ‘He wanted to keep checking up on all the details.’ The army chiefs say that if there’s still stalemate after six months, which means by August, Britain’s capacity to continue operations will be exhausted. Number 10 feels the military are reserving their position, gearing themselves up to say ‘we told you so’.
Cameron’s frustration results in occasional outbursts. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he explodes, when Dominic Grieve counters his suggestion to airlift 200 million Libyan banknotes printed in Britain from a Kent airfield to the rebels. ‘Why cannot I just order they are going to go, and I’ll provide a waiver and indemnity on the legalities?’ Grieve points out that the UN freeze covers all Libyan assets, including money that could be used to help the rebels.26
There is little sign of a breakthrough in June, despite the rebels concentrating their fire on the West around Tripoli. These are some dark days in Number 10. Gove acts as principal cheerleader in Cabinet, buoying up any ministers who are beginning to have doubts. Cameron is aware that they are making it up as they are going along – one senior aide describes policy as ‘a halfway house between Bosnia, where we did nothing, and Iraq, where we sent troops in on the ground. At no point did we ever consider that. We were always clear it was up to the Libyans to sort it out.’
July is yet another worrying month in Number 10. Qatari weapons and trainers appear to be making some impact, the fruit of Cameron’s productive relationship with HBJ. But everyone in Number 10 is planning to leave for holidays at the end of July with no obvious conclusion in sight. One option being mooted is to host a big international conference in the style of the US Dayton Accords over Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. Another is for Number 10 to accept that it may have to talk to Gaddafi, for all Cameron’s revulsion at the very prospect.
Sarkozy has become equally frustrated, though has a more amenable military chief than Richards, and is able thus to drive forward harder. The president sets up a secret operational headquarters outside Paris, separate to NATO, to inject energy into the campaign. This is referred to for security reasons by the nickname ‘the four amigos’ (beside France are Britain, Qatar and the UAE). ‘David, we are not schoolboys in short trousers. We are men,’ Sarkozy utters to Cameron to contrast their resolve with that of the fickle Americans. He is constantly egging Cameron on to take bolder positions – on this occasion it is his desire to outflank the Obama administration on the entire Middle East Peace Process. The four powers agree on a new strategy to help tip the balance against Gaddafi’s forces. It includes switching support away from the formal opposition, which is bogged down in the east of the country, to new rebel groups in the west. Military assistance will be provided, and this new strategy will take place outside the straightjacket of NATO.
On 20 July, members of the rebels’ forces based in Misrata in the west of Libya fly on a secret mission to see Sarkozy in Paris. They are planning a bold attack on Tripoli. The following weeks see French, British and Qatari assistance in Libya providing the rebels with weapons, fuel and food, as well as giving them access to satellite imagery of enemy positions. Fighter planes step up their aerial bombing campaign to facilitate the rebels’ advance towards Tripoli.27 On 20 August, the rebels enter Tripoli, reaching Green Square in the centre of the city. On 23 August, they capture Gaddafi’s compound, and three days later, the final areas of the city collapse. Fighting continues for several more weeks, as Gaddafi’s strongholds elsewhere in the country continue to hold out. On 20 October,