UK should have been more decisive in Libya, says ex-army chief

Britain should have taken far more extensive and decisive action in Libya to prevent the country sliding into chaos after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the former chief of the defence staff has said, following the release of a damning report into the UK’s intervention.

Lord Richards, who sat on the national security council when the decision was taken to protect Benghazi from advancing Libyan forces controlled by Gaddafi, said it was debatable whether intervention had been in the UK’s national interest.

“I would have done it much more comprehensively, with forces on the ground. It’s the only way to do it and I would have done it as you know in Syria,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“The result of failing to act can be much more catastrophic for us all than the worry about acting. Acting in a timorous and tentative way is the worst of all ways.”

Richards said the claim by the foreign affairs select committee report that the aim to protect Benghazi had been achieved within 24 hours was “a little bit overoptimistic. We had to stabilise the military situation, so there was always a chance that Gaddafi would buy time and come back into Benghazi”.

“The issue is: was there a strong case for regime change? I think that’s where the issues were,” he said.

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The report, which said the failure was ultimately the responsibility of the then prime minister David Cameron, said what started as a “limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change by military means”.

Richards said he had raised doubts over whether regime change was the desired outcome during national security council meetings, but in practice, there was little that defence or intelligence chiefs could do within the structure at the time to force the prime minister to change his mind.

“I suspect the prime minister will come into the committee having made his mind up broadly what should happen and then we tweak at the edge,” he said. “I think we probably need a more rigorous analysis in committee in order to make sure that initial analysis is right.”

The report was scathing about the extent of the intelligence analysis carried out before the intervention and said the UK had switched its goal from humanitarian intervention to regime change, without committing to help rebuild the country after the fall of Gaddafi.

Libya is currently in a state of near civil war, with little nationwide recognition of the administration in Tripoli. The report argued that it should have been foreseen that militant groups would take advantage of a power vacuum, because many Libyan nationals had joined the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, who chairs the committee, said there was “no proper appreciation of what was going to happen in the event of regime change, no proper understanding of Libya and no proper plan for the consequences”.

Blunt criticised the British government for not taking advantage of connections with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who had studied at the London School of Economics, and Tony Blair’s relationship with Muammar Gaddafi. “No one then said ‘let’s run this, let’s keep this line of communication open’,” he said.

“If there is a possibility of a political strategy to have avoided what turned out to be a calamity, would it have been a sensible idea to have at least tried it?”

The SNP MP Stephen Gethins, a member of the committee, said it was clear that many lessons that should have been learned in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion had not been fully heeded. The UK had a long-term responsibility to stabilise Libya, he added.

“Libya is now a failed state on Europe’s doorstep,” Gethins said. “That has been a catastrophe for the people of that country, who have paid the price for the failure to make long-term plans in the event of an intervention like this. And this has also contributed greatly to the refugee crisis.

“In taking military action, the UK government should have been aware of its consequences. We must now focus our efforts on stabilising the country and investing in its development and the wellbeing of its citizens. The UK must have a long-term responsibility in that.”

The former foreign office minister Alastair Burt said the report was “a very harsh judgment on David Cameron”.

“You had an instant situation to deal with,” he told the BBC. “If you want to look at a situation where a dictator stays in place and is able to conduct war against his people, just look at Syria, still unresolved, with half a million killed, the population displaced.

“The truth is there are no right answers, every option has a bad outcome and what you do is try to mitigate the bad outcome. You can equally say the rise of Isis in Syria arises from the failure to protect the people and there is blame attached to that for not doing something.”