There is something sacreligious in describing what is happening in Libya as something resembling a sports competition with each side tallying up its scores. After all, as the Civil War drags on, people die.
Recent events provide a mixed bag.
The major blow to Muammar Qaddafi was the defection of Turkey to the side of the insurgents together with a pledge of $200 million to Qaddafi's opponents. It may be recalled that the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a recipient of the Qaddafi human rights award. At the start of the intervention he was quite cynical about the motivations of the NATO countries who pressed for it. He claimed then that oil rather than humanitarian considerations provided the real motivation.
The reasons for Ankara's shift are not clear. Perhaps Turkey is simply facing the fact that Qaddafi will eventually lose power. Perhaps it is due to having sided with the insurgents in Syria against former ally Bashar Assad. In any case, Turkey is not going to be the spoiler in NATO efforts in Libya, but is completely on board.
France is arming the insurgents and apparently getting away with it despite UN Security Council resolution 1970 that imposed an arms embargo on shipments to all sides in Libya. The French, backed legally by the Americans and the British, who have not followed suit, claim that UN Security Council Resolution 1973, allowing all necessary means to protect Libyan civilians, supersedes resolution 1970 and allows arming insurgents threatened by the regime.
Qaddafi also had his victories. At the Russia-NATO summit at Sochi on the Black Sea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that the disagreement on Libya as well as the dispute over missile defense were two outstanding issues dividing NATO and Russia. It is not known whether the Russians are emphasizing their disagreement on Libya as a bargaining chip in order to secure concessions on missile-defense systems. The West wants to erect them despite Russia's claims that they pose a threat to its deterrence.
Lavrov noted that Russia and NATO agree on the need to move as fast as possible to peace negotiations in Libya. Russia is able to talk to all sides and what makes the Russian peace offensive in Libya more effective is that it has been joined by the African Union. South African President Jacob Zuma ,a critic of the NATO intervention, flew to Russia to add the weight of the union to Russian pressure for a negotiated settlement.
The British Guardian joined the proponents of a negotiated solution that will effectively leave the Qaddafi regime partially in power as the only way out of partition and military stalemate.
"Reversing out of a course of action that demands nothing less than the immediate capitulation of Gaddafi and sons, and the tribes from which they derive their power, is going to be painful for Nato. If Tripoli does not fall, it will have to be done."
The British Guardian is hardly representative of the Cameron government, but is an important mouthpiece of the Western left that was enthusiastic over the democracy demonstrations in the Arab world and therefore supported intervention. As the war drags out the left is defecting.
Seeking to exploit growing criticism in the West, Qaddafi's son Saif al Islam was interviewed on French TF1 television to claim that the regime would acquiesce to talks and agree to elections, but the insurgents were the ones who were blocking such an outcome.
He also managed to get in a few digs at the French government saying that "If you are angry with us because we are not buying the Rafale airplanes, you should talk with us." If the French once believed that the Qaddafi regime was respectable enough a customer for the French to sell combat aircraft, how could they pretend now that the opposite was the case?
Qaddafi can also be encouraged by the decision of the African Union, whose leaders he has long cultivated and some of whom he has financed. The union opposed the arrest warrants against Qaddafi and his son issued by the International Criminal Court and called the court discriminatory since it concentrated on crimes committed in Africa while ignoring Western crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.The ICC also complicated the Union's effort to reach a peaceful solution. Its member states were instructed not to execute the warrant, meaning that Qadafi remains welcome in African capitals.