The Civil War in Libya

I guess the diplomat really wanted to get in touch with the opposition to get something organized. Of course he had his security detail with him, as is standart practice.
I think the rebels then had just no clue how such stuff actually works and exspected an unarmed person with a gift but were angry about the soldiers, thinking it was a move to infringe on their sovereignty and got pissed.
I hope someone will be able to tell them fast. Otherwise it would indeed become very difficult to offer any more meaningfull help to them.

A skynews report sais helicopter gunships are now firing at rebels advancing along the cost towards Tripoli. I guess someone's getting really desperate there. But it might also be the best way for the revolution. Trying to force a decission soon and press on to Gaddafi's stronghold of Sirt and Tripoli to force an outcome.



Libya: Gaddafi Warplanes Fire On Rebels
12:27pm UK, Sunday March 06, 2011 - Nicola Boden, Sky News Online

Libyan helicopter gunships have fired on rebels advancing along the coast towards the capital Tripoli.

Forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi were also engaged in fierce ground battles with the insurgents. The rebels are attempting to cut a path west towards the capital, the main stronghold for the leader. They secured control of oil ports Brega and Ras Lanouf and were advancing when the warplanes swooped. Fierce battles are now raging on the front line between Ras Lanouf and Bin Jawad, which are about 30miles apart. ...

Those SAS men have been released by the rebels:


I'm interested in whether or not Zawiyah, isolated in the west, has held out. I've heard and read that there has been serious fighting there. Apparently the loyal Libyan Army units, under the command of Qaddafi's son Khamis, have assaulted the city 4 times and been beaten back by the rebels, in a series of attacks and counterattacks. The rebels there have a few tanks and Self propelled guns and APCs, and I have seen TV reports which say they've been using them. I've heard that government troops and officers were captured in Zawiyah, but also that the government has overrun most of the city. It's impossible to say whether the city has really fallen or not based on current reports. I'd reckon that the rebels are still holding out but the city is certainly divided. There are lots of images of T-72s and other heavy stuff lining up to assault the city, and some images of T-72s that had been captured by the rebels. I'll go out on a limb and make a prediction that Zawiyah will not fall to the government.

I'm interested in Zawiyah because the offensive there is Qaddafi's first big move against a strong rebel concentration. If he can't succeed he's done sooner rather than later.

In central Libya, government forces attacked Misrata, and were soundly defeated. Lots of images of captured equipment and celebrating rebels.

Much further to the east, on the coast road in Central Libya, the front is somewhere between the towns of Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad. There the fighting resembles something that might be familiar to Rommel and Montgomery; large columns of rebel vehicles strung out on the coast highway, pushing their line of control westward, closer to Tripoli. They've been stopped, by all accounts, outside of Bin Jawad, a small outpost on the highway. The government has massed enough firepower there to stop the rebels. Once you're facing enemies dug in with heavy MGs, RPGs, mortars, maybe tanks artillery and rockets, charging across open ground in a pickup truck isn't going to do it anymore.

To break through, the rebels will need to mass as much firepower as possible. They need to bring up rocket launchers, artillery, mortars and tanks. They need to launch a coordinated assault. This will be tough because they have no leadership. And, as they concentrate, they make better targets for airstrikes and artillery, although the Libyan air force has proved to be pretty ineffectual throughout (perhaps at least some of the pilots are missing on purpose?). Even if they break through, they'll face the city of Sirte, the most loyal to Qaddafi in all of Libya.

On the other hand, the rebels might not need to take offensive action just yet. I'll bet Qaddafi is preparing for a counterattack to the east. He's probably massing his forces around Bin Jawad for just that reason (there's reports of lots of Chadian mercenaries flowing into the area). Maybe the rebels should dig in and sit tight, and let Qaddafi's goons, mercenaries and conscripts try to advance across open ground into fire. Let the enemy dig his own grave and then take the offensive once government morale has been broken by a failed offensive. In any case, the rebels need to start concentrating their heavier firepower.

All in all, the picture that I get is this: Qaddafi has slowed rebel momentum for the moment because he's taken the offensive. But his offensives are faltering; his men have not taken Zawiyah and Misrata, which are both isolated and weak compared to the main rebel force that formed up in Eastern Libya and is currently out in the desert around Ras Lanouf. People will realize this and defections will begin again unless he can score a meaningful success.

The revolution is more of a spurred on movement than a well-planned, organised and executed one, the Facebook revolution worked on Tunisia and Egypt can't work in this case. In this case, the government forces is still loyal to the leader, structurally intact, overall organised, manned by professional soldiers and mercenaries, and process the full arsenal of a modern army; the rebel on the other hand, other than some defected army, largely a bunch of minuteman with mostly a few pieces of heavy equipments, but the worst of all is the lack of unified command structure and that'd mean every stronghold, every city held by the rebels are on their own.

Historically proven that as long as the government forces make not that many blunders, coupled with time they'd eventually crush the rebellion, especially when the rebels refused foreign aid! Without an airforce of their own, no long range strike capabilities of their own, stalemate is but an unfortunate choice for the rebels. And in a spurred on revolution, time will erode their morale, then fracture amongst their own camp, and ultimately crushed from the pressures within and without.

In other words, if the rebels wants to make a quick victory against a modernly armed regime, one that ain't shy away from shotting their own citizens to maintain its throne, they first need to organise into a unified front with a clear command structure, then seeks foreign aid to at least deny Gaddafi of its air power, best if they can remove him with a precision strike.

The rebels may want to keep this a pure Libyan revolution and they've a good reason to do so, but if they really want to win, rely on people power like in Tunisia and Egypt only going to get them killed. Time is their enemy as much as the government forces itself, morale and supplies will dwindle over time. Give or take a few months at most, this rebellion will be crushed.

But on a footnote, this rebellion have caused the oil price shot up beyond the USD 100 line, just how long would the West have enough and intervene?

You know Finn there is something very, very fishy about this SAS business. As others have pointed out, that with a RN Warship in Benghazi, all a UK diplomatic mission had to do to make contact with the rebel leadership was walk down the gangplank and hail a cab!

Why the HM Govt send a SF team into Libya in this way? Why did the rebels react the way that they did?

There has been long a suspicion in my mind, that despite all the public hubris expressed by our leaders, that the real policy on this issue centres on one obvious but totally unreported fact; namely that Colonel Gadaffi is someone that they can do business with (because they are doing business with him already) while they have no such certainties from the rebels!

It would be interesting to know where the Libyan army's main weapons and ammo stockpiles are kept. The rebels have capture some large weapons dumps, but the Libyan air force has also been bombing them, while the rebels seem to have no means to take out government ammo and weapons caches. On this one factor alone, it looks pretty grim for the rebels unless they can keep making significant gains.

The main limiting factors for the government forces so far, apart from the defections and desertions, is that the commanders are not sure how reliable or capable their soldiers are. Where government attacks have been stopped, its more often a case of the government soldiers not having the stomach to shooting civilians than a strict case of being outfought.

However, as the rebels get better organised and armed, that may become less of an issue, since a soldier who does not want to shoot unarmed civilians might not have such reservations if those civilians are armed and shooting at him. In addition, the soldiers most unwilling to fight either turn sides, run away or are punished, so what's left will increasingly be more willing/able to follow orders.

The treatment of captured government soldiers could also come back to bite the rebels on the butt. So far, no-one knows what's happened to any of them. The fact that the rebels sometimes does not even want foreign press to record that they have taken prisoners is not a good sign, especially given the extremely high emotions and what has happened in similar circumstances elsewhere in the past.

If Qaddaffi or any of his commanders have any sense, they will be emphasizing that to their soldiers to make them fear the worst if they are captured by the rebels. Again, the rebels' lack of organization is going to hurt them here, because if there is even a single confirmed case where prisoners have been mistreated or executed (and I would be amazed if such things have not happened), then that could seriously hurt their cause and give the government soldiers a reason to stand and fight.

What the rebels should, and needs to do is set up some prisoner camps and have foreign media show pictures of captured government soldiers well and smiling telling their buddies nothing bad is going to happen to them if they surrender to the rebels.

I have a feeling that time is on Qaddaffi's side. The longer this conflict rages on without outside intervention, the greater the chance he will emerge victorious.

The biggest limiting factor for Qaddaffi will be the numbers of loyal men he has available. If he has enough, he can afford to counterattack on all fronts. If not, he can send a small portion to fight a holding action on one front, while focusing his strong to clear out one stronghold after another.

As with any military campaign, the most organized side will have a critical advantage, and so far the rebels are anything but organized, even amongst a single force. There have been examples whereby the trained soldiers in the rebel force has secured an objective, and planned to build up their strength before moving onto the next, but the civies just barreled on ahead, forcing the soldiers to follow and support them. The battle did not end well for the rebels.

Maybe the rebels will get better organized out of necessity if government forces start making gains, and as the smaller, less organized bands start to get picked off/apart and the scattered survivors are absorbed into larger, better organized groups. But then we are into all out civil war territory.

If this conflict is to end soon, the rebels need to take Tripoli and get Qaddaffi. Otherwise, its going to become a long meat grinder bloodbath, and Libya will be destroyed no matter who emerge victorious at the end of it.

It is remarkable how both the Dutch and British Prime Minister ordered in a helicopter with armed personnel to paces in Libya.
The dutch crew is still being held and the people they were sent to pick up left Libya in a quite ordinary way. The British diplomatic mission left easily but apparently without doing anything useful. Is this the ordinary incompetence of two new Prime Ministers?
I just read in the Daily Telegraph, that the SAS soldiers were carrying weapons and explosives. How are they supposed to protect the diplomat/MI6 officer using explosives?

Explosives and even mines (claymores for example) are often part of the standard operational gear of a SpecOp team. Never know when you might need to blow a hole in a door or wall to gain entry/exit for example.

I thought the Dutch crew were just the flight crew of a helo. They might have had some small arms for self protection, but that's pretty much standard on all military helos entering a potentially hostile zone.

But this special operation was to take a diplomat/MI6 officer to bring succour to insurgents in eastern Libya. They were going to knock on the door, not going to blow in the door. At least that is the story. They could have walk over the gangway of a British destroyer in the port nearby or go by car from Egypt. I now read they actually parachuted in, told the armed men they met that they were unarmed and when they were proven to have lied no-one trusted them anymore. But then they were just send to the destroyer.

Well if you see 8 young men and a few old men coming off a British warship or driving in in a van when everyone else is heading the other way as fast as they can, it wouldn't take a genius to figure what they were.

The main reason to air drop the team instead of walking or driving in would be to try and keep the mission a secret. Probably so Britain can kiss up to Qaddaffi later and deny any direct involvement if he does somehow win.

As for explosives, well, as I said, its going to be part of their standard operational gear. The SAS team would have been there primarily for security, but would also act as back up to extract the diplomats if something went horribly wrong.

It all looks like a massive screw up tbh. How they can wonder up and expect to not be searched when they said they were unarmed is beyond me. What more, I would have expected maybe a couple of the SAS guys to go in with the diplomats as close security while the rest of the team should have been sitting back observing and ready to move in to provide covering fire and extraction if needed.

Unless they were supremely unlucky and parachuted on top of a rebel unit (which in itself is poor planning), then this looks like a massive black eye for the SAS. For one of the best special forces teams in the world to have been nabbed by civilians with guns is frankly inexcusable.

One thing that is on my mind is that whatever they do I hope Libya doesn't turn into Somali #2. God knows we have enough problems with destabilized Africans willing to take a gamble at making it big.