Mohammed Ali, an exile opposition activist, said he had also received reports from residents of scores of bodies in the streets. Inhabitants of the capital of some 2 million people were staying home Tuesday after warnings by Gadhafi loyalists that anybody on the streets would be shot, said Ali, who is based in the Gulf emirate of Dubai.
The week of upheaval in Libya has weakened — if not broken for now — the control of Gadhafi's regime in parts of the east. Protesters in the country's second largest city Benghazi over the weekend overran police stations and security headquarters, taking control of the streets with the help of army units that broke away and sided with them.
Can the Libyans scrape up enough ground units to retake the east?
Can the rebels organize enough forces to advance west?
Instead of a Western no-fly zone over Libya (and remember, our 6th Fleet is a virtual fleet these days), perhaps an Italian-led mission with American help and UN (if we can get it) blessing to send humanitarian supplies to the eastern part of Libya would be in order if a stalemate develops. We could airdrop supplies (with fighter escorts), see if Egypt will allow ground convoys from their country, and send in supply ships and a hospital ship.
If we really feel the need to do something, that might be the way to go.
UPDATE: Interesting. This really could be an east-west civil war:
[The] crackdown so far has been waged chiefly by militias and so-called "revolutionary committees," made up of Libyans and foreign fighters, many hired from other African nations.
Many army units in the east appear to have sided with protesters, and other more institutional parts of his regime have weakened. A string of ambassadors abroad have defected, as has the justice minister.
Protesters claim to control a string of cities, from the Egyptian border in the east — where guards at the crossing fled — to the city of Ajdabiya, about 450 miles further west along the Mediterranean coast, said Tawfiq al-Shahbi, a protest organizer in the eastern city of Tobruk.
Although it seems at least some units in the east have rebelled, it isn't clear that Khaddafi has control of his own military units if he is relying on militias and foreign mercenaries. Indeed, the commander of one of his commando brigades, normally of a higher level of loyalty than regulars, defected:
In a sign of the extent of the breakdown in Gadhafi's regime, one of his closest associates, Abdel Fattah Younis, his interior minister and commander of the powerful Thunderbolt commando brigade, announced in the now protester-held city of Benghazi that he was defecting and other armed forces should join the revolt.
It isn't clear if the unit itself went over with him, although it is implied.
Let's see if Tripoli heats up again, or if Khaddafi tries to move into the east to try and re-establish control.
UPDATE: Khaddafi is calling on his supporters to retake Tripoli:
"You men and women who love Gadhafi ... get out of your homes and fill the streets," he said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs." ...
State TV showed a crowd of Gadhafi supporters in Tripoli's Green Square, raising his portrait and waving flags as they swayed to music after the address. Residents contacted by The Associated Press said no anti-government protesters ventured out of their homes after dark, and gun-toting guards manned checkpoints with occasional bursts of gunfire heard throughout the city.
Are there no loyal security forces to do the job? If Khaddafi doesn't have the horses to secure his own city without essentially mobilizing civilians, could he scrape up enough to advance hundreds of miles to the east to retake the rebel-held territory? And could the rebels organize a defense of their area, let alone manage the logistics of marching west on Tripoli?
If Libya really is splitting, setting the stage for a civil war, it could go on a while since both east and west have access to oil assets (from Stratfor):
Libya’s 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil output can be broken into two categories. The first comes from a basin in the country’s western extreme and is exported from a single major hub just west of Tripoli. The second basin is in the country’s eastern region and is exported from a variety of facilities in eastern cities. At the risk of oversimplifying, Libya’s population is split in half: Leader Moammar Gadhafi’s power base is in Tripoli in the extreme west, the opposition is concentrated in Benghazi in the east, with a 600 kilometer-wide gulf of nearly empty desert in between.
This effectively gives the country two political factions, two energy-producing basins, two oil output infrastructures. Economically at least, the seeds of protracted conflict — regardless of what happens with Gadhafi or any political changes after he departs — have already been sown. If Libya veers towards civil war, each side will have its own source of income to feed on, as well as a similar income source on the other side to target.
Welcome to the Iran-Iraq War in the Desert?
