Troops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi shelled an oil town in eastern Libya on Sunday, pounding pockets of resistance during their swift advance on the country's poorly equipped and loosely organized rebels.
Rebel officials in their stronghold of Benghazi told The Associated Press that Brega, the site of a major oil terminal, came under heavy shelling Sunday. Libyan state television reported that government troops had retaken the town, but the report could not immediately be verified.
I'd guess that claims the town has fallen are premature. But the way things have been going for the rebels, that could just be a timing issue.
If the Libyans take Brega, their next stop is Ajdabiya. And taking that city that opens up the front with loyalist options and creates major problems for the rebels.
It gets worse. Zawiyah held out a long time despite being isolated in the west, but that was when momentum seemed to be with the rebels. Hold out a little longer, the rebels could believe, and the cavalry will arrive. Misrata, which is also isolated from rebel help, is under attack as well and the rebel defenders there might develop a morale problem as the loyalists advance in the east. Morale has been the only thing allowing the lightly armed rebels to even try to match the heavily armed and better organized loyalists on the battlefield.
The rebels had best be putting captured heavy weapons into service and organizing available manpower. I hope they've gotten outside help to do this. I'd like to say the rebels should counter-attack if they've lost Brega. But I don't know if they are even capable of that in the face of organized units whose morale is no longer at the tipping point.
At the very least, the rebels need to stand or die at Ajdabiya, which is the gateway to the eastern core rebel zone. If they can stand there, they might be able to survive long enough to make this a long civil war. Maybe then negotiations could turn this from a civil war over control of Libya into a war of secession of the east.
But if the rebels die at Ajdabiya, even if the rebels can hold out in cities along the coast like Benghazi because the armed people will make house-to-house fighting too expensive for the loyalists to endure, the loyalists can lay siege to the cities and turn this back into a revolt that the loyalists can grind down in a war of attrition far from Tripoli.
Western discussions about what to do will be moot. Which may be the whole point of the talking, I admit.
UPDATE: A more recent report says Brega has fallen and explains the rebel situation accurately:
Libya's flat desert terrain means the government's air supremacy and big advantage in tanks outweighs the rebels' enthusiasm and light weaponry. Only towns and cities provide some cover for the insurgents and partially even the odds.
"He's out of Brega. He's on the way, maybe in half an hour his rockets will reach us here," said rebel fighter, Masoud Bwisir, at the western gate of Ajdabiyah.
Ajdabiya has a population of 175,000, it seems (2004 reference). So it could be large enough to swallow attacking troops if enough people are willing to fight. And if they have anti-tank weapons. And if there are enough trained and organized soldiers. And if they have heavy weapons to counter the loyalist bombardments. [UPDATE: Brega, by contrast, had but 7,000 people--not much to hold; Ras Lanouf had only 12,500.]
And I know news is saying the Arab League decision to ask the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone is uncharacteristically bold, but I still say they punted. "Bold" would have taken responsibility for directly asking America to lead a no-fly zone. Not that a no-fly zone would work, but what they did is only bold in the diplomatic sense.
The West, of course, continues to debate a pointless no-fly zone. If Ajdabiyah falls, Western ground troops will be necessary to stop Khaddafi. Either a reinforced ground division (of West European troops, I say) lands and captures Tripoli to end Khaddafi's rule or Western troops land in the eastern cities to defend the rebel enclaves from total defeat.
Heck, at this point we may need Western special forces calling in air strikes on the loyalists just for the rebels to hold at Ajdabiyah.
Oh, and if we allow Khaddafi to win this civil war, I think it should go without saying that the Bush/Blair "flip" of Libya is completely undone. The Axis of Evil will have brought up a minor league player to the majors (sorry Hugo!).
But at least the rebels will have remained "untainted" by Western help and they'll "own" their revolt. That's going to count for a lot when they are sitting in a Libyan prison being tortured for information--or just dead--right?
