Libya's revolutionary fighters stepped up a siege of Moammar Gadhafi's hometown on Sunday, hoping to wear down loyalist forces a day after an offensive failed to dislodge die-hard loyalists of the fugitive leader.
Anti-Gadhafi fighters set up new checkpoints and posted snipers in strategic areas on the outskirts of Sirte. But they said they were not planning another assault immediately after facing fierce resistance on Saturday that left seven of their comrades dead and more than 150 wounded.
Unless Khaddafi and his lieutenants have access to money to organize a relief force from either Algeria or Chad, resistance will ultimately fail. Are the loyalists just looking for a better deal to fold? Or are the true believers the ones who fell back to Sirte to stand and die?
Still, the ill-organized alliance forces can't take their victory for granted:
Many revolutionary fighters are abandoning one of the main fronts in the battle to rout Moammar Gadhafi's loyalists, saying they're not afraid of dying in the face of heavy resistance but are tired of the disorganization and lack of ammunition among their own ranks.
Bani Walid has proven impenetrable in part because of its daunting natural defenses — the town of 100,000 is strung along mountain ravines where loyalists hold the high ground. But the nearly month-old assault has only underscored the disarray in the forces of Libya's new rulers, which include both a relatively organized military and brigades of untrained volunteers.
The rebels have made progress in the deep south, are focused on Sirte, but lack the troops to do anything but hold at Bani Walid for now.
While I can't see any outside force helping the loyalists stage a comeback, if you give an enemy time, who knows what can happen? When the Taliban won their civil war and drove the Northern Alliance into a small enclave in the northeast back in the late 1990s, who could have seen American special forces, cash, and smart bombs turning the tide so decisively in favor of the "defeated" faction after 9/11?
