The War Goes On

Fighting continues in Libya. I'll have to give the edge to rebels in Libya over the Khaddafi loyalists for now. They rebels have actually advanced west from their stonghold, taking one defended objective--Ras Lanouf--already, and made the Khaddafi Sirte region the frontline.

The loyalists may yet take Misrata and Zawiyah and tilt the momentum back to their side, since the rebel defenders don't seem to have access to resupply, but the Khaddafi side hasn't done that yet.

Air power has yet to appear to be a decisive weapon on the loyalist side although the morale impact of having air power when the rebels don't is likely favorable. On the other hand, despite cries that a Western no-fly zone is needed to protect civilians from being bombed, Khaddafi's air power seems--other than some incidents at the beginning of the revolt--to be focused on armed targets and military objectives. I don't think Khaddafi has provided a reasonable pretext to act. [Let me clarify: a number of advocates for a no-fly zone have said that it is needed to stop Khaddafi's air force from killing civilians. It just doesn't appear that the air force is being used against noncombatants the last couple weeks. It would certainly be morally justified to topple Khaddafi. I'm just saying that if you are looking at his use of air power as a trigger, it isn't a slam dunk.]

And there was an apparent mini-revolt inside Tripoli if a couple hours of fighting at a loyalist base can't be explained otherwise.

Some of the rebel success could be from Egyptian special forces that are giving the rebels help (in civilian clothing). I mentioned early that the rebels could use this kind of help, although I thought a military contractor might be just the right people to advise units on the ground, organize logistics, plan military operations, and fix weapons and vehicles in captured armories. I doubt the small force of Egyptian commandos is doing this full service mission. The rebels need this kind of help. British special forces are inside Libya, mostly scouting it seems. Strategypage assumes US special forces are there, too.

Unless rebel success snowballs and causes a collapse of loyalist morale to end the war with a rebel victory, Khaddafi will likely be able to recover somewhat from the desertion or defection of "most" of his army and losses in his security apparatus personnel. Khaddafi is hiring thosuands of Tuareg nomads from southwest Libya and regions across the border down there. If this influx of reliable fighters can finally provide the loyalists with enough stiffening to take Zawiyah and Misrata, Khaddafi can commit more forces to the Sirte region to battle the rebels and try to push them east. See the Strategypage report here.

My advice would be to organize Western humanitarian relief overland through Egypt to the eastern rebel territory. Send humanitarian aid to Tunisia to help refugees there. Use Western naval and air power to send aid to Benghazi, Tobruk, and points south. Sea- and land-based combat and support aircraft should back up these forces, effectively limiting where Khaddafi will use his air power out of fear of tangling with Western planes and ship-based air defenses roaming around eastern Libya. Send in special forces (as long as the ball got rolling already) and a reliable private military company friendly to the US (arrange to have rebels buy their services) organize rebel military forces--including putting war material in working order--and write up a plan to use the rebel forces (with company and special forces operators as advisers in rebel units) to defeat Khaddafi's forces before this can drag on for months and then years.

Basically, don't assume Khaddafi will roll over and run, saving us from the effort to help topple him. Public assumptions that Khaddafi was doomed have faded. Assumptions that the rebels will win could fade, too. We can help short of direct military intervention. And if the West wants to go all in for the rebels, three decent Western brigades drawn from Italy, France, Spain, and Germany--with supporting forces--could land outside Tripoli and defeat the loyalist forces there. If President Obama feels the need to join that, send in a paratrooper battalion task force or a Marine Expeditionary Unit to support the European-dominated land effort. We can be more generous with our air power, too. Our NATO allies in the region have enough naval power to mean we really shouldn't need more than what we have on hand now (a command ship plus a couple destroyers and a couple amphibious warfare ships), although I bet we'll dispatch a carrier task force (probably the George H. W. Bush and company) from the east coast of the US within the next couple weeks.

The war will go on, it seems.

UPDATE: Rebels retreated from Bin Jawad, which they had captured after their victory at Ras Lanouf, when loyalist bombardment got to be too much. I assume loyalists reoccupied the place. The article says that the loyalists may have 20,000 fighters in Sirte. It also says there is a loyal "battalion" with four "brigades" in it--which makes no sense, since 2 or more battalions would be part of a brigade and not the reverse. But there is at least an organized military unit there to bolster the rest.