To run short of fuel, as Field-Marshal Rommel discovered in 1942, can be fatal to a military campaign in north Africa. Thanks to NATO’s aerial bombardment, Muammar Qaddafi has few tanks left to seize up but his regime is running on empty. His military forces, now deploying civilian vehicles on the front line in the hope of confusing NATO’s pilots, have priority in using the gasoline and diesel still available to the colonel. But it may soon run out.
A litre of fuel in the capital now sells for more than $8, about 50 times the price in Benghazi, the rebel stronghold in the east. Some lines of cars at Tripoli’s petrol stations now stretch for more than a mile, with drivers taking turns to keep watch over cars left in queues overnight. Thieves scour the capital for vehicles that still have fuel in their tanks.
Limited supplies exist. A trickle of oil from fields in the regime-held south-west feeds the refinery at Zawiya, on the coast near Tripoli. Aerial surveillance shows heat coming from the plant but it is probably operating at no more than 30% of its capacity of 120,000 barrels a day (b/d). On June 12th rebels tried to capture the town but were repulsed by artillery. If Colonel Qaddafi were to lose Zawiya and its refinery, the game would probably be up.
Libya said 15 people including three children were killed in a NATO air strike Monday, although the Western alliance denied responsibility a day after it admitted causing civilian deaths in Tripoli.
The government spokesman accused NATO of a “cowardly terrorist act which cannot be justified” as journalists were shown damaged buildings on the sprawling estate of a veteran comrade of Moamer Kadhafi west of the capital and nine corpses, as well as body parts including one of a child.
But the alliance insisted no aircraft under its command had been operating in the Sorman area, 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Tripoli.
“We strongly deny that this thing in Sorman is us,” a NATO official in Brussels said on condition of anonymity. “We have not been operating there.”
[T]he Qaddafi dictatorship is unusual for its lack of rigor and efficiency. In Libya, at least in the two-thirds of the country not yet lost to the rebels, a dictatorship that has all the standard instruments of suppression and fear seems in some measure to have lost the power to command the fealty of its citizens. This seems true not just in areas controlled by the rebels, and not alone in the areas of Tripoli like Tajura, Souk al-Juma and Feshloom that were fountainheads of the uprising’s early weeks and where an active underground survived the sustained use of live fire against protesters in February and early March. Now it seems broadly true among the population at large.
Over several weeks in Tripoli, it has been commonplace to encounter, at random, Libyans ready to speak openly of their contempt for Colonel Qaddafi, and enthusiastically about NATO’s ability to bomb targets associated with the most sensitive strongholds of the government. To be sure, there were others, in many places, who offered a ritual defense of him, and a loathing of the rebels. But the much more common response — in bookshops and cafes, in hospitals and hotels, and in the mosques and souks that crowd the winding alleyways of the old Ottoman heart of Tripoli down by the city’s ancient port — was to hail the day when the Libyan leader would be consigned to what Trotsky called the dustbin of history.
There was, for example, an educated, English-speaking young man, Muhammad (not his real name, for his own protection), who met this reporter as he sauntered along an alleyway in the Medina, not far from the hole-in-the-wall store where he sells vegetables while hoping for a better job. Smoking a cigarette, he reacted dismissively as a pickup truck packed with pro-Qaddafi demonstrators drove past on one of the few drivable passageways through the district, shouting the Libyan leader’s name, waving placards bearing his image and hoisting automatic rifles in the air. “They pay them 10 dinars a day to do that,” he said. “It means nothing.” Asked what outcome he would favor, he smiled. “Like Martin Luther King, I have a dream, a dream for Libya,” he said. “Victory is coming. With Qaddafi gone, everything will be O.K.”
Libyan officials say a number of civilians have been killed in a NATO air strike in eastern Tripoli in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Reporters were taken by Libyan government officials to a residential area in the city’s Arada neighbourhood and saw a body pulled out of the rubble of a destroyed building.
“There was intentional and deliberate targeting of the civilian houses,” Khaled Kaim, Libya’s deputy foreign minister, said.
“This is another sign of the brutality of the West.”
There were heaps of rubble and chunks of shattered concrete at the scene, which a large crowd of what appeared to be local residents were helping to clear.
Rebels waging a drawn-out war to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have run out of money, their oil chief said on Saturday, and he accused the West of failing to keep its promises of urgent financial aid.
His comments came as cracks were appearing in the NATO alliance over its 3-month bombing campaign against Gaddafi, with some allies showing mission fatigue and the United States accusing some European allies of failing to pull their weight.
The rebels have made several gains in the past few weeks, but remain far from seizing their ultimate prize — Gaddafi’s powerbase of Tripoli and its hinterland — despite air support from the world’s most powerful military alliance.
“We are running out of everything. It’s a complete failure. Either they (Western nations) don’t understand or they don’t care. Nothing has materialized yet. And I really mean nothing,” rebel oil chief Ali Tarhouni said in an interview with Reuters.
President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.
Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.
But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.
Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.
A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, said there had been “a full airing of views within the administration and a robust process” that led Mr. Obama to his view that the Libya campaign was not covered by a provision of the War Powers Resolution that requires presidents to halt unauthorized hostilities after 60 days.
“It should come as no surprise that there would be some disagreements, even within an administration, regarding the application of a statute that is nearly 40 years old to a unique and evolving conflict,” Mr. Schultz said. “Those disagreements are ordinary and healthy.”
Still, the disclosure that key figures on the administration’s legal team disagreed with Mr. Obama’s legal view could fuel restiveness in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties this week strongly criticized the White House’s contention that the president could continue the Libya campaign without their authorization because the campaign was not “hostilities.”
“There’s no outcry in the country to say ‘comply with the War Powers Act,’ outside of academia.” That’s what Senator John McCain told Foreign Policy in an interview a few weeks ago. How quickly things change. With House Speaker John Boehner presenting an ultimatum for administration compliance with the War Powers Act, and Congressional GOP leaders hinting at defunding the campaign, the demand that the Obama administration obtain Congressional authorization for the operation in Libya has suddenly become front page news. A full-scale battle over Presidential authority looms.
The administration should have secured authorization for the Libya campaign early on, to put it on solid legal and bipartisan political footing. Congressional oversight is as important for the Obama administration as it was during the Bush administration — a point which applies to Libya just as it does to drone strikes and global counter-terrorism operations. They probably didn’t do so because they (correctly) expected that a Congressional resolution authorizing the Libya campaign would come to the President’s desk with riders attached repealing health care reform, reinstating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and abolishing Medicare. But politics shouldn’t be allowed to outweigh the importance of effective Congressional oversight and respecting the rule of law.
Beyond the political jockeying, however, the sudden burst of attention to Libya should be an opportunity for the public to take a fresh look at what is actually happening in Libya. This is a good time to realize that the war in Libya was very much worth fighting and that it is moving in a positive direction. A massacre was averted, all the trends favor the rebels, the emerging National Transitional Council is an unusually impressive government in waiting, and a positive endgame is in sight. This is a war of which the administration should be proud, not one to be hidden away from public or Congressional view.
I supported the intervention in Libya reluctantly, in the face of strong evidence of in impending humanitarian catastrophe and an unprecedented, intense Arab public demand for Western action. I believe fully that the NATO intervention prevented a major massacre in Benghazi, which would have guaranteed the survival of the Qaddafi regime. The retaliation campaign which followed the regime’s survival would have been bloodier still. There would have been a chilling effect across the region, encouraging violent repression and demoralizing challengers. And the impact on America’s image in the region of failing to act and allowing the massacre would have been profound. Many of the same people (in the Arab world and in the U.S.) who now lambaste Obama for intervening would have been editorializing about his betrayal of his promises to the Muslims of the world and his indifference to Muslim lives.
A Russian envoy’s trip to the Libyan capital Thursday yielded no major breakthroughs amid escalating international efforts to end the four-month-long crisis in Libya.
Both Mikhail Margelov, Russia’s special envoy to Africa, and Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Ali Mahmudi said the major issue — the future of Moammar Kadafi — remained unresolved.
Kadafi “is not prepared to go,” Margelov said he was told by Libyan officials, according to the Russian Interfax news agency.
Later, Mahmudi repeatedly made the same point — that Kadafi has no intention of leaving Libya — during an almost two-hour news conference with foreign journalists. He labeled attempts to force Kadafi’s departure a “red line” that cannot be crossed.
Muammar Gaddafi is losing friends in Africa, the continent where his largesse once bought him the title “King of Kings” but which is now turning to other foreign allies to help shape its future.
Moves by countries including Senegal, Mauritania, Liberia, Chad and Gambia to distance themselves from Gaddafi are partly a gamble that NATO-backed rebels will finally succeed in ending his four decades of authoritarian and quixotic rule.
But they also show Gaddafi’s waning role in a region where foreign investor appetite, trade ties with Asia and a domestic yearning for democracy are all eclipsing the lure of Libyan petrodollars and weakening the old-boy networks they propped up.
“The rest of the continent has passed him by. The favors he can call in are few and far between,” said Tara O’Connor of London-based Africa Risk Consulting.
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is willing to hold elections and step aside if he lost, his son said, an offer quickly dismissed Thursday by rebels and the United States.
Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera: “They (elections) could be held within three months. At the maximum by the end of the year, and the guarantee of transparency could be the presence of international observers.”
He said his father would be ready to step aside if he lost the election, though he would not go into exile.
Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi later appeared to put the potential concession in question, telling reporters: “I would like to correct (that) and say that the leader of the revolution is not concerned by any referendum.”
He added that there was no reason for the Libyan leader to step down in any case, because he had not held any formal political or administrative post since 1977.
No one was paying much attention to the time, but it was probably a few minutes before 11 a.m. on Tuesday of last week when the action began in Tripoli, clearly visible from the windows of the Rixos hotel.
The morning hours are usually calm in Tripoli, and this too was a quiet, clear morning. Behind the tall trees in the adjacent park lies Bab al-Aziziya, the fortress-like headquarters of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The compound is as large as an entire city neighborhood and is surrounded by a massive wall, machine gun nests, barriers and watchtowers. It’s a short walk from the hotel to Bab al-Aziziya.
Suddenly the first jet came screaming through the sky, but the noise it made was different this time: higher, shriller and much louder. Then the sound of loud explosions punctuated the air. The walls shook and the bombing continued unabated.
NATO jets were attacking Tripoli at low altitude for the first time. They came in waves separated by a few minutes. Then, around 2 p.m., they came a second time. They dropped 60 to 80 large bombs. Giant brown and black clouds of smoke rose into the sky on the other side of the park.
The bombing represents a new phase in the war over Libya, say NATO officials, who are trying to increase pressure on Gadhafi. They know that time is short, now that the Libyan leader appears to have his back against the wall. In Tripoli, it feels as if the NATO forces were now directly targeting the dictator, a man responsible for the deaths of so many people. In theory, however, Gadhafi can not be made into a target, because the United Nations resolution on Libya only permits the Western forces to engage in actions intended to protect civilians.
Meanwhile, a group of reporters from around the world are holed up in the five-star luxury of the Rixos, watching the hunt at close range — in an atmosphere that couldn’t be more bizarre, at room prices of €300 ($435) a night and dinner at $50 a person.
Some would call it perverse, the idea that journalists are spooning the foam from their cappuccinos in the hotel’s outdoor bar while precision bombs rip apart bunkers and probably soldiers just beyond the nearby trees. But life at the Rixos and at Bab al-Aziziya follows its own rules. Gadhafi’s people escort the reporters to the hotel, and guards are posted in the driveway to prevent them from setting out on their own. Anyone who wants to investigate the situation outside the hotel must do so in the company of a friendly government “minder.” Of course, this makes it impossible to speak with rebels in the city.
As Washington urged African countries to reject the government of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, rebels reported progress Monday against government forces in western mountain cities.
After a siege of nearly two months, rebels have freed the city of Al-Rayyana, northeast of Zintan, said Talha Al-Jiwali, a rebel fighter. Nine rebels were killed, and 35 were wounded, he said.
Al-Jiwali said forces entering Al-Rayyana found that more than 20 residents had been killed, a number of the women had been raped, and the town’s electricity and water had been cut.
In nearby Zawiet al-Baqool, just east of Zintan, 500 to 600 government forces retained control, but the fighting was ongoing, he said.
One of the greatest abandoned cities of the Ancient World is at risk of destruction after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces took over the ruins of Leptis Magna as a base for operations, rebel leaders claimed yesterday .
Rebel commanders in the city of Misrata said that Libyan government troops had moved Grad rockets and munitions into the World Heritage Site, on the coast between Misrata and Tripoli, to avoid NATO bombing.
“We received information yesterday that Gaddafi’s forces are hiding inside Leptis Magna,” said Abu Mohammad, the overall commander of rebel forces for the nearby town of Zlitan.
The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) is likely to add rape to the war crimes charges against Muammar Gaddafi on the back of mounting evidence that sexual attacks on women are being used as a weapon in the Libyan conflict.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters at the UN in New York last night there were strong indications that hundreds of women had been raped in the Libyan government clampdown on the popular uprising and that Gaddafi had ordered the violations as a form of punishment.
The prosecutor said there was even evidence that the government had been handing out doses of Viagra to soldiers to encourage sexual attacks. Moreno-Ocampo said rape was a new tactic for the Libyan regime. “That’s why we had doubts at the beginning, but now we are more convinced. Apparently, [Gaddafi] decided to punish, using rape.”
The move came as Gaddafi’s forces responded to Nato’s intensified aerial bombardment of Tripoli on Tuesday by launching a heavy attack on rebel positions outside the liberated city of Misrata, unleashing a barrage of Grad rockets and mortars against rebel positions to the east, west and south of Misrata early on Wednesday morning, and followed up with an infantry assault. The Hikma hospital reported at least 10 rebel fighters died and 26 were wounded.
“We are all happy when NATO bombs like that,” the taxi driver said on Wednesday, the morning after the heaviest Western air strikes on the Libyan capital.
“Everyone here has rebel flags at home, just waiting for the day when the rebels finally reach the outskirts of the city, when we will pour out into the streets.”
Muammar Gaddafi remains in firm control of Tripoli after crushing protests in February.
But NATO bombardment, fuel shortages, defections of top officials and slow but important rebel advances on the battlefield are tightening the noose around the Libyan leader.
Alone in their shops and cars, out of earshot of the feared secret police and their informants, Tripoli residents are about as likely to express support for the government as opposition.
Supporters are passionate, even in private. But it is the opponents who speak with more confidence about the future.
Dissent is still mostly furtive. In the Ben Ashour district, one man said police had interrogated every employee at a shopping center after activists planted a small rebel flag on top of it.
Pro-Gaddafi graffiti is sprayed throughout the city. But nearly as common, especially in outlying districts, are blotches where government supporters have painted over anti-government messages scrawled at night.
Pro-government graffiti is sometimes defaced, with the leader’s name scribbled out in the common slogan “God, Muammar, Libya and that’s all!”
To get an idea of who might wield influence in post-civil war Libya, take a look at the flags flying in the rebel-held east of the country.
Outside the courthouse in Benghazi — rebel headquarters and symbolic heart of the uprising against the 41-year rule of leader Muammar Gaddafi — fly the flags of France, Great Britain, the United States, the European Union, NATO. There’s one other flag, too: Qatar’s.
“Qatar, really, it’s time to convey our gratitude to them,” Abdulla Shamia, rebel economy chief, told Reuters. “They really helped us a lot. It’s a channel for transportation, for help, for everything.”
It has a population of just 1.7 million people, but the wealthy Gulf monarchy has long sought a major voice in political affairs in the region. It has brokered peace talks in Sudan and Lebanon, owns the influential pan-Arab news network Al Jazeera, and recently won the right to host the 2022 soccer World Cup. Now the gas-rich nation has placed a big geopolitical bet in Libya, splashing out hundreds of millions of dollars on fuel, food and cash transfers for the rebels.
A representative from the Emir’s palace declined to comment on what products Qatar has delivered to Libya, and on the ruling family’s motivations behind its Libyan engagement.
It’s certainly a gamble. If the rebels win, Qatar is likely to pick up energy deals and new influence in North Africa. But if they lose, Qatar’s ambitions may further alienate it among its neighbours.
“I guess ever since the late 1990s, Qatar has been trying to break the Saudi-dominated status quo and carve out a niche position,” said Saket Vemprala from the London-based Business Monitor International consultancy.
“At the moment I think it’s more geopolitical, they want to broaden their (influence in the) region and become a more significant player … And it certainly makes it easy for them to portray themselves as being on the right side of history,” he said.
That sentiment is on display on a huge billboard in front of the courthouse. Over a picture of Qatari ruler Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani reads the promise: “Qatar, history will always remember your support for our cause.”
Tension between Libyan rebels and Nato commanders is growing over the military tactics being used to put pressure on Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.
Rebel leaders in Misrata say they are being urged not to launch further pushes against regime troops to the east of the city, and claim they have been told not to cross certain “red lines”, even though they feel prepared for battle.
The frustration on the ground has been heightened by their belief that Gaddafi’s troops are demoralised and depleted after nearly three months of conflict.
While coalition officials insist they have not issued any direct orders not to attack, they concede they are worried about civilians being caught up in further chaotic fighting, and do not want rebel troops being accidentally hit in bombing raids by Nato warplanes. These continued on Monday and Tuesday, when Tripoli experienced what were perhaps the heaviest daylight bombardments by Nato since the air strikes began in March.
Waves of NATO aircraft hit Tripoli on Tuesday in the most sustained bombardment of the Libyan capital since Western forces began air strikes in March.
By Tuesday afternoon, war planes were striking different parts of the city several times an hour, hour after hour, rattling windows and sending clouds of grey smoke into the sky, a Reuters correspondent in the center of the city said.
The Libyan government attributed earlier blasts to NATO air strikes on military compounds in the capital, a day after rebels drove Muammar Gaddafi’s forces out of a western town.
Bombs have been striking the city every few hours since Monday, at a steadily increasing pace. On Tuesday they began before 11 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) and were continuing five hours later.
Air strikes were previously rarer and usually at night.
The nightly propaganda tour to NATO bombing sites around the Libyan capital — the main component of every foreign reporter’s routine in a city controlled by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — led to a rustic backyard in the predawn hours of Monday where a family with several small, frightened children, said to have been dining outside late into the night, had supposedly endured a narrow escape from a NATO missile.
But a NATO missile with Cyrillic script on its components? With that discovery from the wreckage, the official briefing about 50 journalists paused in his fulminations against NATO, but only to recalibrate his account. Yes, he said, it was a Russian missile, part of Libya’s armory, but it had reached the backyard by what foreign reporters familiar with arcade games quickly dubbed the “bank shot” or “pinball” method.
In that sequence, a NATO bomb or missile first hits a Libyan arsenal somewhere out in the dark, igniting the Russian missile and sending it blasting off into the night. The effect, the handler said, was the same, regardless of the missile’s provenance. NATO had nearly killed innocent Libyan civilians.
“It is an aggression,” he said. “It is evil.”
The Libyan government has a growing record of improbable statements and carefully manipulated news events, but four months into the conflict here, it is showing signs of desperation and disorganization. The loyalist locker seems increasingly bare.
The small note in curly handwriting was quietly passed by a medic to a foreign reporter in a Tripoli hospital.
Its hastily scrawled contents suggested that Libyan officials were lying when they said a baby girl was wounded in a NATO attack. Government officials had bused reporters to the Tripoli Central Hospital to see the baby, whom they identified as Haneen.
She lay on a stark hospital cot, with colorful tubes attached to her body. Her foot was bandaged.
“This is a case of road traffic accident,” the medic’s note read.
“This is the trouth,” said the last line, the word misspelled.
That small scrap of paper underlines the absurdity confronting reporters who try to cover Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.
It appears that officials exaggerate the scope of and casualties from two months of NATO airstrikes that have targeted sites critical to Gadhafi. Regime officials try to prove that alliance strikes, instead of protecting Libyan civilians, is doing them harm.
Those thundering NATO strikes do sometimes kill and wound civilians. They do cause damage to homes, hospitals and roads.
But some government officials appear determined, understandably, to exagerate the damage done and casualties caused.
As NATO airplanes and attack helicopters struck fresh targets in Tripoli and the oil port of Brega on Sunday, senior British and American officials said there was no way of knowing how long it might take for the rebellion against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — already in its fourth month, and the third month of NATO airstrikes — to drive him from power.
But Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, returning from a brief visit to the rebel headquarters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, hinted at concern in Western capitals about what might come after the toppling of Colonel Qaddafi. Mr. Hague said he had pressed the rebel leaders to make early progress on a more detailed plan for a post-Qaddafi government that would include sharing power with some of Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists.
In particular, Mr. Hague said, the rebels should learn from Iraq’s experience, in which a mass purge of former Saddam Hussein loyalists occurred under the American-backed program of “de-Baathification,” and shun any similar undertaking. The reference was to a policy that many analysts believe helped to propel years of insurgency in Iraq by stripping tens of thousands of officials of jobs.
According to news agency reports, crowds in Benghazi’s streets greeted Mr. Hague and Britain’s overseas aid minister, Andrew Mitchell, with shouts of “Libya free!” and “Qaddafi, go away!” as they met with leaders of the rebels’ Transitional National Council, headed by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who was justice minister in Colonel Qaddafi’s government until the rebellion began in February. Back in London, Mr. Hague described the rebel leaders as “genuine believers in democracy and the rule of law,” but said that they should make more detailed post-Qaddafi plans.
Libyan rebels have entered the northwestern town of Yafran, previously held by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, reports say.
Youssef Boudlal, a Reuters photographer in the town, on Monday said the town had been wrested by the rebels.
“We are inside the town … There is no sign of any Gaddafi forces. I can see the rebel flags … We have seen posters and photos of Gaddafi that have been destroyed,” he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai called Tuesday for an immediate halt to coalition air strikes on civilian homes and threatened to take unilateral action to block such attacks if international forces don’t take him seriously.
Three days after an errant U.S. air strike killed as many as 12 Afghan women and children in southern Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai called a press conference to criticize the international alliance.
“The Afghan people can no longer tolerate these attacks on their homes,” Mr. Karzai said during the televised news conference. “Nobody has the right to take the life of an Afghan child.”
While Mr. Karzai has no significant authority to block the air strikes, his threats could inflame passions across Afghanistan and undermine the fragile working relationship with Western leaders as the U.S. military prepares to begin withdrawing thousands of troops this summer.
Western officials in Kabul said that relations between Mr. Karzai and the U.S.-led coalition have been deteriorating and the Afghan president took repeated jabs at military leaders during his hour-long press conference.
“We must clearly demonstrate our understanding that Afghanistan is an ally, not an occupied country,” Mr. Karzai told reporters. “And our treatment with NATO is from the point of view of an ally. If it turns to the other, to the behavior of an occupation, then of course the Afghan people know how to deal with that.”
Russia, a quasi-democracy and an imperial power that never quite gave up all of its colonial holdings, has dedicated much of its post-Soviet foreign policy to resisting everything that the NATO intervention in Libya stands for. It shrugs at human rights violators, abhors military intervention, enshrines the sovereign right of states to do whatever they want internally without fear of outside meddling, and above all objects to the West imposing its ideology on others. NATO itself, after all, is a military alliance constructed in opposition to the Soviet Union. But Russian President Dmitri Medvedev took a surprising break from Russian foreign policy precedent on Friday when, in the middle of a G8 summit in France, he declared that Libyan leader Muammar “Qaddafi has forfeited legitimacy” and that Russia plans “to help him go.”
For Libya, Russia’s call for Qaddafi to go is more than just symbolic. Russia abstained from the original UN Security Council resolution authorizing the no-fly zone, but was reportedly upset that NATO states stretched the resolution to launch an extended bombing campaign. Russia’s angry reaction, it was widely assumed, meant it might outright veto any future Security Council measures on Libya. But Medvedev’s recent statement makes clear that his government supports the implicit goal of the air strikes — regime change in Libya — and would not block further action toward that end. If Qaddafi had hoped that he might outlast the Security Council’s will to fight, he is clearly nowhere close. The window for him to leave the country peacefully remains open, but is clearly closing quickly.
Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi scattered antitank land mines on the port of this besieged city late Thursday night, threatening once more to close the city’s only route for evacuation and supplies, according to accounts of witnesses, photographs and physical evidence collected on the ground.
The land mines were delivered by a Chinese-made variant of a Grad rocket that opens in flight and drops mines to the ground below, each slowed slightly and oriented for arming by a small green parachute, according to an identification of the sub-munitions by specialists who were provided photographs and dimensions of the weapons.
The mines hit the port at 9 or 10 p.m. Thursday, after rockets were heard being fired on the city from the southeast. A short while later, a truck driven by rebels who were patrolling the harbor struck two of them. Both men inside were wounded, according to a port supervisor and one of the victims, Faisal el-Mahrougi, the driver.
Officials and guards said more than 20 mines were distributed in the attack, and remains of at least 13 were observed firsthand. It was not possible to verify an exact number, as many had been destroyed by rebels who, to clear the mines, shot them with rifles, causing them to explode. By nightfall on Friday, the port appeared to have been cleared.
Attacks by forces loyal to Colonel al-Gaddafi on civilian and residential areas of Misratah may amount to war crimes, Amnesty International said today in a new report on the bleak situation in the besieged city.
Misratah: Under Siege and Under Fire [PDF] accuses al-Gaddafi forces of unlawful killing of civilians due to indiscriminate attacks, including use of heavy artillery, rockets and cluster bombs in civilian areas and sniper fire against residents.
It also documents systematic shooting at peaceful protesters and enforced disappearance of perceived opponents, which can amount to crimes against humanity.
Of all the generalizations commonly made by foreign observers and subjectively augmented by Gaddafi about Libya, especially during the people’s present remarkable quest for freedom and democracy, one of the least valid is that tribalism is pervasive in the Libyan society and its politics.
Characteristically, Libya is the most homogeneous, both culturally and religiously, in Africa and the Arab world. The tribal structure is merely a social phenomenon and has no fundamental importance aside from being only a thing of the past, a part of the cultural lore of the people and their history.
There is no lack of effective sense of national unity in Libya. This unity has been formally initiated by Independence and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and subsequently preserved by astute political awareness on the part of the citizens and a deep sense of common destiny. Thus, conscious of their identity as an independent political unit, the Libyan people all over the liberated regions of the country are relentlessly and genuinely sounding their voice in their peaceful demonstrations nowadays that “Libya is one nation, one clan, one family” and that the myth of tribalism exists only in the mind of the dictator and his few deceived followers.
Furthermore, the appearance and amazing proliferation of the constitutional flag, the symbol of national independence, fluttering almost everywhere in great numbers and shapes, bear unmistakable witness to such unity.
Rebels and NATO strikes repel assault on Ajdabiya
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military forces appeared to falter on Sunday in a second day of assault against the rebel city of Ajdabiya, as opposition fighters aided by heavy NATO airstrikes retook positions through much of the city.
Occasional skirmishes between small units within the city on Sunday morning appeared to be dying out. And other than an apparent mortar attack against a rebel checkpoint, the loyalists’ artillery and rocket batteries were mostly silent by the afternoon, when rebel fighters were able to roam many of Ajdabiya’s streets with confidence.
It was a sharp turnabout from the fighting on Saturday, when heavy artillery barrages sent rebel forces running several times through the day and caused heavy damage here. Loyalist forces were able to infiltrate the city, fighting gun battles in the city center against local rebels who had stayed to defend their homes. But by Sunday, that threat appeared to have passed.
“I think the Qaddafi forces go out of the city,” a doctor working at the city’s hospital said, in English.
By 4 p.m., a long rebel column of pickup trucks passed through the city’s main street, firing their weapons in the air in celebration.
The rebels’ gains were at least in part because of heavy NATO airstrikes throughout the morning and afternoon outside Ajdabiya, at a vital crossroads of highway networks in eastern Libya. NATO officials reported destroying several tanks on the western approaches to the city, and in the rebel holdout city of Misurata, over the past day.
“The situation in Ajdabiya, and Misurata in particular, is desperate for those Libyans who are being brutally shelled by the regime,” General Bouchard said.
While NATO’s operation is focused on destroying the heavy military equipment that poses the most threat to civilians, the statement said the airstrikes were also hitting ammunition bunkers and supply lines. “We are hitting the regime logistics facilities as well as their heavy weapons because we know Gaddafi is finding it hard to sustain his attacks on civilians”, General Bouchard said. (New York Times)
Airstrikes blew up 11 tanks belonging to forces loyal to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi as they approached Ajdabiya today, and 14 more were hit earlier on the outskirts of Misrata. NATO strikes also left craters in the road used by Qaddafi to resupply troops shelling Ajdabiya, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said. (Bloomberg)
“Where is Nato?” demanded the same people who only days earlier were waving French flags and shouting “Viva David Cameron”.
But behind the growing anger in revolutionary Libya over what is seen as a retreat by the west from air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces – a fury compounded by two botched Nato raids that killed rebel fighters – there was a second question: where are our leaders?
Nato’s failure to use its air power to reverse days of military setbacks for the rebels prompted a collapse in confidence in the west’s intentions among Gaddafi’s foes. Conspiracy theories flew. The west wants a divided Libya so it can control the oil, said some. Turkey, a Nato member, is vetoing air strikes because it supports Gaddafi, said others.
The concerns intensified on a day which saw Gaddafi’s forces advance further eastwards into oppositon territory than at any stage since international airstrikes began. Fierce fighting in Ajdabiya saw at least eight people killed and recapturing the city would give the Libyan military a staging ground to attack the rebels stronghold, Benghazi, about 100 miles further east.
Nato denied it was scaling back attacks and explained it faced new challenges in striking Gaddafi’s forces now that they have switched from relying on tanks and heavy armour in favour of smaller fighting units in pick-up trucks that are harder to hit. Not many in the liberated areas of Libya were interested. They were angry – and wanted their leaders to tell the west. But the revolution’s self-appointed chiefs in the interim national council were nowhere to be seen. (The Guardian)
NATO air strikes target Misurata
Libyan rebel forces have beaten off a new assault by government troops on the besieged western city of Misurata, but lost eight of their fighters in fierce street battles.
Mustafa Abdulrahman, a rebel spokesman, told Reuters by phone that Saturday’s fighting was centred on the Nakl al-Theqeel road to Misurata port.
He praised what he called a positive change from NATO, saying its aircraft carried out several air strikes on forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader. Rebels have complained for days that NATO is too slow and imprecise in responding to government attacks. (Al Jazeera)
Libyan refugees tell of region suffering in silence
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces are shelling homes, poisoning wells and threatening to rape women in a remote mountain region, out of sight of the outside world, said people who fled the area.
The violence in the Western Mountains region, a sparsely-populated area reached only by winding roads, has received little of the international attention given to attacks on cities on the coast such as Misrata and Ajdabiyah.
But residents who escaped the region in the past three days, loading suitcases and mattresses onto their cars and driving across the border into Tunisia, said they were subject to a campaign of terror.
They now want their story to be heard.
“The bombardment … is targeting homes, hospitals, schools,” said Mohamed Ouan, from the town of Kalaa, who arrived at Tunisia’s Dehiba border crossing with about 500 other Libyans from the Western Mountains.
“No one is interested in this region, which is suffering in silence,” he told Reuters late on Saturday.
Another man from the same town, Hedi Ben Ayed, said: “Just imagine, there is no life left there. Gaddafi’s forces used petrol to burn the drinking water wells so we would go thirsty … Believe me, his forces have even killed the sheep.”
“You shouldn’t ask questions about the number of dead,” he said. “The last victims were a whole family which was killed on Friday by indiscriminate bombardments.”
REBELLION
The Western Mountains region, which includes the towns of Nalout, Kalaa, Yafran and Zintan, is populated by Berbers, a group ethnically distinct from most Libyans and traditionally viewed with suspicion by Gaddafi.
Away from the wealth on Libya’s Mediterranean coast, they scratch out a living rearing goats and sheep on mountain scrubland. Until a generation ago, many lived in underground caves they had carved out of the rock.
When people in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi revolted against Gaddafi’s four-decade rule in February, residents in the Western Mountains region, southwest of Tripoli, joined in.
Videos posted on the Internet show crowds in Kalaa waving the green, black and red flag of the anti-Gaddafi rebels and chanting slogans in the Berber language.
Another video, from Nalout, showed people at a protest holding up a banner with the words: “The rebels of Nalout are supporting the Benghazi rebels.”
For weeks afterwards, forces loyal to Gaddafi, reeling from uprisings across the country, left the rebellion in the Western Mountains unchallenged. Now though, they are seeking to restore their control.
Libyan officials deny attacking civilians, and say they are waging a battle against armed criminal gangs and al Qaeda sympathisers who, they say, are trying to destroy the country.
FEAR OF RAPE
Aziza Belgasem, an 86-year-old woman, sits in a corner of the encampment at Dehiba where dozens of families parked their cars after arriving from Libya.
She wept as she said: “He has destroyed everything. Gaddafi is a catastrophe … We want to go back to our homes in peace.”
Her son, Mohammed Aissa, explained why his mother was distraught. She had to leave her daughters behind because they could not find fuel for their vehicles to escape.
Many said they fled after days living in fear of abuse — including rape — at the hands of Gaddafi’s forces.
“We are here because we were threatened with death, with kidnap, and with the rape of our sisters,” said Walid Salem, who is from Kalaa. “Gaddafi’s forces have promised to rape all the girls.”
“I slept for several nights in an underground cave out of fear, not of being killed but of being kidnapped.”
Said Amrawi said it was the threat of rape which made him flee his home in Nalout. “To be frank, there is no shelling in Nalout, but I am afraid that my wife and daughters will be raped,” he said.
“I wanted to bring them to a safe place … As for me, I want to go back to Nalout.”
One man, from the town of Yafran, appealed for foreign help. “We do not want direct NATO intervention but it is necessary, otherwise there will be no one left in Yafran,” he said.
Even in exile, the spirit of the rebellion in the Western Mountains lives on. A group of children played in the encampment, among them a 9-year-old boy.
Holding a plastic gun in his hands, he repeated the words: “I want to kill you, Gaddafi.” (Reuters)
US and Egyptian special forces have reportedly been offering covert armed training to rebel fighters in the battle for Libya, Al Jazeera has been told.
An unnamed rebel source related how he had undergone training in military techniques at a “secret facility” in eastern Libya.
He told our correspondent Laurence Lee, reporting from the rebel-stronghold of Benghazi, that he was sent to fire Katyusha rockets but was given a simple, unguided version of the rocket instead.
“He told us that on Thursday night a new shipment of Katyusha rockets had been sent into eastern Libya from Egypt. He didn’t say they were sourced from Egypt, but that was their route through,” our correspondent said.
“He said these were state-of-the-art, heat-seeking rockets and that they needed to be trained on how to use them, which was one of the things the American and Egyptian special forces were there to do.”
The intriguing development has raised several uncomfortable questions, about Egypt’s private involvement and what the arms embargo exactly means, said our correspondent.
Something new has appeared at the Libyan front: a semblance of order among rebel forces. Rebels without training — sometimes even without weapons — have rushed in and out of fighting in a free-for-all for weeks, repeatedly getting trounced by Moammar Gadhafi’s more heavily armed forces.
But on Friday only former military officers and the lightly trained volunteers serving under them were allowed on the front lines. Some were recent arrivals, hoping to rally against forces loyal to the Libyan leader who have pushed rebels back about 100 miles (160 kilometers) this week.
The better organized fighters, unlike some of their predecessors, can tell the difference between incoming and outgoing fire. They know how to avoid sticking to the roads, a weakness in the untrained forces that Gadhafi’s troops have exploited. And they know how to take orders.
“The problem with the young untrained guys is they’ll weaken us at the front, so we’re trying to use them as a backup force,” said Mohammed Majah, 33, a former sergeant.
“They don’t even know how to use weapons. They have great enthusiasm, but that’s not enough now,” he said.
Majah said the only people at the front now are former soldiers, “experienced guys who have been in reserves, and about 20 percent are young revolutionaries who have been in training and are in organized units.”
The regime of Muammar Gaddafi has initiated a concerted effort to open lines of communication with western governments in an attempt to bring the conflict in the country to an end.
Libya’s former prime minister, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, told Channel 4: “We are trying to talk to the British, the French and the Americans to stop the killing of people. We are trying to find a mutual solution.”
Although the regime last night rejected a rebel offer of a ceasefire if Gaddafi withdraws his military from Libya’s cities and permits peaceful protests, senior British sources said the Gaddafi government was open to dialogue.
“If people on the Gaddafi side want to have a conversation, we are happy to talk,” one said. “But we will deliver a clear and consistent message: Gaddafi has to go, and there has to be a better future for Libya.”
The regime rejected the rebels’ ceasefire conditions, saying government troops would not leave cities as demanded.
However, signs that the regime was looking to reach out to the west came after the Guardian reported that a meeting had taken place between Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to Gaddafi’s influential son Saif al-Islam, and British officials on Wednesday in London. Ismail is a fixer who has been used by the Gaddafi family to negotiate arms deals and has considerable contacts in the west.
Government forces killed six civilians in the city of Misrata on Saturday in an unrelenting campaign of shelling and sniper fire aimed at driving rebels from the main city they hold in western Libya, medical officials said.
Doctors said that 243 people have been killed and some 1,000 wounded in more than a month and a half of fighting between Moammar Gadhafi’s forces and rebels in Misrata. Most of those slain Saturday were hit by snipers, they said.
One said government forces appeared to be trying to wound civilians.
“The weapons that the Gadhafi brigades use are not meant to prevent movement in the city, but to cause also deformation or paralysis so the suffering of the people endures all their lives,” the doctor told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
As the Libya conflict enters its third month, Whitehall is full of whispered talk of secret defections and cloak-and-dagger deals with more “reasonable” elements within the much-weakened Tripoli regime. The embattled sons of Muammar Gaddafi are looking for a way out, and may even be prepared to dump their father to save their own skins – or so the grapevine has it.
Security analysts and diplomatic insiders see things differently. It’s clear, they say, that after weeks of inconclusive conflict, neither side can win a military victory. Without a western ground invasion, the rebels are not strong enough to dislodge Gaddafi. So instead, Britain and the US are increasingly engaged in psychological warfare in the hope of fomenting internal dissension and regime collapse. This campaign includes disinformation about the other side’s intentions.
The revamped approach apparently scored a big success this week with the defection of Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s foreign minister. But two can play at this game. Gaddafi’s most prominent sons, Saif al-Islam and Mutassim, the national security adviser, were also waging their own “war of nerves”, the sources said. They appeared to be calculating that the Nato-led coalition will run out of time, split apart, and forfeit crucial Arab and domestic support.
At least 10 rebels were killed by a coalition air strike on Friday, fighters at the scene said on Saturday, in an increasingly chaotic battle with Muammar Gaddafi’s forces over the oil town of Brega.
The rebel leadership described the deaths as an unfortunate mistake and called for continued air strikes against Gaddafi’s forces, who have reversed a rebel advance along the coastal highway linking their eastern stronghold with western Libya.
Hundreds of mostly young, inexperienced volunteers could later be seen fleeing east from Brega toward the town of Ajdabiyah after coming under heavy mortar and machinegun fire.
A contingent of more experienced and better organized rebel units initially held their ground in Brega, but with most journalists forced east, it was unclear whether they had remained inside the town or pulled back into the desert.
The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials.
While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.
In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.
American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.
In addition, the American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi, said United States government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the activities. American officials cautioned, though, that the Western operatives were not directing the actions of rebel forces.
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.
The United States and its allies have been scrambling to gather detailed information on the location and abilities of Libyan infantry and armored forces that normally takes months of painstaking analysis.
“We didn’t have great data,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, who handed over control of the Libya mission to NATO on Wednesday, said in an e-mail last week. “Libya hasn’t been a country we focused on a lot over past few years.”
Several weeks ago, President Obama signed a secret finding authorizing the C.I.A. to provide arms and other support to Libyan rebels, American officials said Wednesday. But weapons have not yet been shipped into Libya, as Obama administration officials debate the effects of giving them to the rebel groups. The presidential finding was first reported by Reuters.
World powers meeting in London have agreed to set up a contact group to lead international efforts to map out Libya’s future, with the first meeting to take place in Qatar, Britain has said.
“Participants of the conference agreed to establish the Libya Contact Group,” said a statement issued by William Hague, the British foreign minister, who chaired the meeting of more than 40 countries plus the UN and NATO.
The group would provide “leadership and overall political direction to the international effort in close co-ordination with the UN, AU (African Union), Arab League, OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) and EU (European Union) to support Libya”, the statement said.
Hague said that “Qatar has agreed to convene the first meeting of the group as soon as possible”.
After the first meeting in Doha, Qatar, the chairmanship will rotate between the countries of the region and beyond it, the statement said.
Following London talks, Hague held a news conference with Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister.
Qatar’s prime minister urged Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, to step down to halt bloodshed and said that he might only have a few days to negotiate an exit.
Troops loyal to longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have shelled pro-democracy forces heading west on the main coastal highway, pushing them out of Bin Jawad, a small town around 150 kilometres east of Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown.
The reversal on Tuesday for Libya’s nascent opposition came after their forces made a speedy, two-day advance from Ajdabiya.
Ajdabiya is a crossroads town that Gaddafi’s troops had held for two weeks before an international military intervention allowed pro-democracy fighters to take it back.
On Monday, the pro-democracy forces moved as far west as Nawfaliya, another small town around 20 kilometres past Bin Jawad, before making a hasty evening retreat in the face of artillery fire from Gaddafi’s troops.
A spokesman in the eastern opposition stronghold of Benghazi had announced earlier that day that Sirte itself had fallen, a rumour that turned out to be untrue.
The US has been giving the impression that it has backed away from the bombing campaign in Libya. It has now emerged that while the initial intensity of the high-altitude air strikes and cruise missile attacks has diminished, the US has not let up. In a dramatic and significant escalation of the assault on Gaddafi’s forces, the US has deployed low-flying, heavily-armed aircraft against Libyan armour.
It is a deployment far removed from the initial concept of a “no-fly” zone.
The Pentagon has revealed that AC-130 gunships and A10 tankbusters, of the kind used in Iraq and Afghanistan, have been deployed in Libya. “We have employed A10s and AC-130s over the weekend,” Vice-Admiral Bill Gortney, said.
The aircraft are better suited than high-flying fighter bombers to attack targets in built-up areas without so much risk of civilian casualties, defence officials say.
However, their sheer firepower can lead to civilian deaths as their attacks on the Iraqi city of Falluja after the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated.
The Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signalled that Turkey is ready to act as a mediator to broker an early ceasefire in Libya, as he warned that a drawn-out conflict risked turning the country into a “second Iraq” or “another Afghanistan” with devastating repercussions both for Libya and the Nato states leading the intervention.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Erdogan said that talks were still under way with Muammar Gaddafi’s government and the Transitional National Council. He also revealed that Turkey is about to take over the running of the rebel-held Benghazi harbour and airport to facilitate humanitarian aid, in agreement with Nato.
Speaking in Istanbul at the weekend, Erdogan said Gaddafi had to “provide some confidence to Nato forces right now” on the ground if there was to be progress towards the ceasefire the Libyan leader wanted and an “end to the blood being spilled in Libya”.
Eman al-Obeidi, the woman who accused Gaddafi’s men of raping her, now faces criminal charges, according to the Libyan Government. A spokesman told Channel 4 News the “accuser was now the accused”.
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