Women in front of the court house in Benghazi demonstrating in favor of a no-fly zone, mid-March, 2011

Whether it’s on the basis of an anti-imperialist narrative or cold-blooded realism, most of the opponents of intervention in Libya have one thing in common: bar those who belong to or a have a direct affiliation with the Gaddafi family, virtually everyone whose been beating this particular antiwar drum is outside and most often many thousands of miles away from Libya.

Stephen Walt, for instance, who writes from the comfort of a tenured chair at Harvard is skeptical about whether, absent Western intervention, bodies were destined to mount up in Benghazi on a scale that could fittingly be termed “mass killings.”

To be clear, I do think rebel lives would have been lost had Qaddafi’s force taken Benghazi, and I have no doubt that the Libyan dictator would have dealt harshly with the rebel leaders and anyone who fought to the bitter end. In other words, I’m pretty sure his forces would have murdered some of the rebels and probably some innocent civilians too. But the [US] president seems to have been convinced that Qaddafi was about to unleash genuine mass killings of perhaps as many as 100,000 people, in a city of roughly 650,000 (remember his pointed reference to Benghazi being nearly the size of Charlotte?). Thus, the president’s rhetoric strongly implied that tens of thousands of innocent bystanders were about to be ruthlessly slaughtered. That same image was reinforced by media references to the “lessons of Rwanda” that supposedly had shaped the views of some of Obama’s advisors.

Yet as I noted in my piece, there were no large-scale massacres in the other cities that the loyalists had recaptured. It is easy to believe that Qaddafi would have gone after the rebel leaders and diehard followers — whom he undoubtedly regards as traitors — but turning Benghazi into a ghost town filled with corpses was probably not in his own interest.

Obviously, one can argue that any substantial loss of life is worth preventing, and that the United States and NATO were justified in intervening even if the number of people at risk was fairly small.

How does one measure a “fairly small” number? I guess Israel’s war on Gaza provides a useful guide since this particular president demonstrated his ability to do no more than monitor the situation as hundreds of civilians — men, women and children, were slaughtered in the days just before Obama was sworn in as president.

If a siege of Benghazi or a direct assault had resulted in 5-10,000 casualties would this have counted in Walt’s mind as “mass killing”? As a reference through which that term might be defined, he cites Final Solutions by Benjamin Valentino, where the author notes: “the intentional slaughter of civilians in the effort to defeat guerrilla insurrgencies was the most common impetus for mass killing in the twentieth century.”

Given that Benghazi is the rebel stronghold, the fact that mass killings did not take place in other towns that Gaddafi’s forces earlier recaptured hardly tells us much about Benghazi’s likely fate in the event that Gaddafi had the opportunity to not merely cut the uprising’s offshoots but to sever its roots.

And having said that, the dehumanizing feature of so many criticisms against intervention has less to do with the fact that some, like Walt’s, rely on an utterly dispassionate realism, than that they are so thoroughly physically and psychologically removed from the experience of individual Libyans. It is no accident that in these arguments there is no Libyan voice.

For that reason, a single vignette from the front line — not the front line on a battle field but the interface through which the outside world and Libyans can connect — can tell us far more about this war than the endless polemics that are intent on telling us what a dreadful mistake this has been.

Ryan Calder provides one such story (and many more).

Last week, during the battle for Ajdabiya, I was sharing a ride from Tobruk to Benghazi with a 25-year-old guy dressed in a green knockoff Adidas soccer jacket with yellow stripes. I struck up a conversation.

“Why are you headed to Benghazi?” I asked.

“I’m stopping in Benghazi for the night and then heading to Ajdabiya,” the young man — I’ll call him Hussein — replied.

“It’s my hometown. Going to fight.” That is, to join the rebel forces.

“Take care of yourself, man,” I said.

“Thanks. What’s your name?”

“My name’s Ryan. I’m from the United States.”

“I’m Hussein. Your name’s Bryan? I love Bryan Adams. Celine Dion, too.”

“Uh, the name’s Ryan. With an ‘R.'”

“Oh.” Hussein told me he had four brothers and one sister. Four of the five sons are fighting with the rebels.

“Your mom must be scared,” I said.

“Yup.”

Hussein had been studying engineering at a university in Benghazi for a while, but dropped out. “What’s the point?” he said. “All of my friends who had graduated weren’t getting jobs anyway.” To get a proper job — an official one, with a regular salary, he later explained — you need to have been in the army. “And even then,” he went on, “it’s pretty damn hard to get a proper job. You need connections.” Most formal employment is controlled by the state. Otherwise, people work in the informal economy.

Hussein told me he had been involved in the rebellion “from the beginning. I was one of the protesters who started even before February 17” — the revolution’s “official” start date, he said.

“How did you know to join the demonstrations in the first place?” I asked.

“Facebook,” he said.

“And how’d you get into Bryan Adams and Celine Dion?”

“Facebook, you know? And other websites. Online, people are always talking music, sharing music.”

In Benghazi’s central square, nationalist songs celebrating Libyan freedom stream out of large speakers in the tent set up by the University of Garyounis, the largest university in the city. (In Benghazi, as in Cairo and Manama, student groups, women’s activists, professional associations, and other organizations set up tents near the center of the protest action, showing their solidarity with the revolutionary cause.) One clever Shargawi (that’s what you call someone from Benghazi) remixed to a beat a speech by Qaddafi in which the colonel vowed to take Benghazi back from the rebels street by street, house by house, room by room. Titled Zenga zenga, dar dar — “Street by street, room by room” — it has become a pop sensation in liberated Libya.

Yesterday, as we drove through a checkpoint, some rebels on inspection duty asked where we were from. “I’m from the United States,” I said in Arabic. “Yeah, man! I loooove heavy metal,” he responded in English, putting his fingers up and rocking his head back and forth, doing his best Ozzy Osbourne impression.

This morning, one of the fighters I had dinner with in Brega — Khalid, a 39-year-old bakery owner from Benghazi — called me over from the next room.

“Hey Ryan — come here for a second.”

“What’s up?”

“You like Sabaringasteen?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Sabaringasteen? You don’t know Sabaringasteen? He’s American.”

I drew a blank.

“Listen to this,” Khalid said, punching buttons on his phone. I recognized the opening snare hits and guitar riff immediately. Then the Boss’s voice kicked in. “I was … born in the USA…”

“I love Sabaringasteen,” said Khalid with a broad smile. “And Kenny Rogers. You know Kenny Rogers? Kantaree” — country — “music. I love kantaree music.” Khalid was wearing a red turtleneck and stonewashed jeans. He had a handlebar mustache and a bit of a paunch. It worked — all he needed was a ten-gallon hat.

***

As I write this, it’s 7 p.m. on March 29, and we’re driving back from Ras Lanuf to Brega. We pass young rebels with Kalashnikovs who had never touched a gun until the revolution, driving their own cars to the front, wearing camo and black-and-white checked kaffiyehs and reflective sunglasses — thawra chic. Groups of them sit by the side of the road, eating dinner. Some have brought along whatever they could find at home for protection: construction helmets, work boots, and even those plastic dive masks you wear to go snorkeling. Toyota Hilux pickup trucks zoom past, carrying Russian-made artillery pieces older than I am. This is what a 21st-century volunteer army looks like. These guys are all heart, not much coordination, and no training whatsoever.

To the north, in the stone’s throw between us and the Mediterranean, rises an orange gas flare from the Ras Lanuf Oil and Gas Processing Company. Here, from the Sirt Plain, come most of the 1.6 million barrels of oil that Libya produces each day. (Or at least, that was the figure before the revolution; it’s much lower now.) Behind us lie the gutted, burned-out shells of Qaddafi’s tanks and supply vehicles.

We pass a yellow road sign with a camel symbol on it. Camel crossing.

Muhammad, the driver, slips a CD into the stereo. The rapper Akon comes on. “You’re so beautiful… I wanna get with youuuuuu…”

Turkey working on ‘roadmap’ to end Libya war
Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey was working on a “roadmap” to end the war in Libya which would include a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces from some cities.

Turkey has held talks this week with envoys from Gaddafi’s government and representatives of the opposition.

“We are working on the details of this road map,” Prime Minister Erdogan told a news conference on Thursday.

He said a “real ceasefire should be settled immediately” and Gaddafi’s forces should withdraw from besieged cities.

“A comprehensible democratic transformation process that takes into account the legitimate interests of Libyan people should start immediately,” said Erdogan, calling for political reforms.

“The aim of this process should be to settle constitutional order that people freely elect their rulers.” (Al Jazeera)

General says US may consider sending troops into Libya as part of any international force
The U.S. may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, the former U.S. commander of the military mission said Thursday, describing the current operation as a stalemate that is more likely to go on now that America has handed control to NATO.

But Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers that American participation in a ground force would not be ideal, since it could erode the international coalition attacking Moammar Gadhafi’s forces and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.

He said NATO has done an effective job in an increasingly complex combat situation. But he noted that, in a new tactic, Gadhafi’s forces are making airstrikes more difficult by staging their fighters and vehicles near civilian areas such as schools and mosques.

The use of an international ground force is a possible plan to bolster the Libyan rebels, Ham said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Asked whether the U.S. would provide troops, Ham said, “I suspect there might be some consideration of that. My personal view at this point would be that that’s probably not the ideal circumstance, again for the regional reaction that having American boots on the ground would entail.”

President Barack Obama has said repeatedly there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Libya, although there are reports of small CIA teams in the country.

Pressed by Sen. John McCain, a leading Republican, about the situation in Libya, Ham agreed that a stalemate “is now more likely” since NATO took command. (Associated Press)

Saif Gaddafi: his father’s son, or the would-be face of Libyan reform?
On 19 February Dr Muhammad al-Houni, a Libyan academic and long-time adviser to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, finished a speech he had written for his patron to deliver on state television in the midst of a crisis.

Four days into the Libyan uprising, Houni suggested Saif strike a conciliatory tone. He should apologise for those who had died in the country’s east. He should insist too on the necessity of reforming his father’s four-decades-old regime, announcing a tranche of long-promised laws to usher in new freedoms.

“I wrote down what he must say,” Houni recalled on Thursday. “I said he should say sorry for the victims. But he went to his father and his father did not like it. So his father changed the speech.”

When Saif appeared on television, he looked and sounded every inch his father’s son, waving his finger angrily, and saying the words that have since become notorious: “We will fight until the last man, until the last woman, until the last bullet.”

Houni left Tripoli the following day. Shortly afterwards he issued a furious open letter to his former employer, accusing Saif of “donning his father’s cloak, which is contaminated with 40 years of his deeds”.

Once regarded as the Gaddafi family’s friendly, reform-minded western face, Saif, supported by his brother Saadi, has emerged in the past week as the most visible figure in the regime’s efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict on its own terms.

One influential figure, who knows the regime and members of the Gaddafi family well, is convinced that Saif speaks for the family with his father’s support.

“They are looking for a way out,” said the source. “It makes sense for Libya if there is a good exit [for Gaddafi]. What I understand they are saying is that the sons want to continue playing a political role [after the regime has fallen] by having their own party.

“They would accept an interim government and a transition period. What they will not accept is being forced to leave the country. It is what Saif has been working [on]. It is about getting the sides to sit down together and talk and also about having an exit strategy that is not insulting to Gaddafi: that leaves him but without power. That’s what Saif is fighting for.” (The Guardian)

Nato ‘apologises for hitting Libya rebels’
The commander of Libya’s rebel forces has said Nato apologised for mistakenly hitting a column of rebel tanks near the eastern town of Ajdabiya.

Gen Abdelfatah Yunis said the deadly air strike had occurred despite a warning to Nato that the tanks were being moved to the front line.

Nato said it was investigating the claim, without giving further details.

Rebels said four rebels died, while local doctors told the BBC at least 13 fighters had been killed in the strike. (BBC)

Inside Gaddafi’s dark places: The headquarters of Benghazi’s Revolutionary Committees
On February 17, at the beginning of the revolution, one of the first buildings that demonstrators stormed in Benghazi was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Committees. They razed it.

The Revolutionary Committees (al-lijan al-thawriyah) are Gaddafi’s die-hards. Established in the 1977 as the ideological vanguard of the Green revolution, their members have a reputation as thugs who menace, beat up, and sometimes kill those who take issue with the regime.

Being a Revolutionary Committee member can be lucrative, too. It is widely reported that members special benefits — such as cars and cash payments — for their dirty work. Members have also been promoted to senior government posts, in recognition of their loyalty to the Colonel.

When you see footage of Gaddafi supporters in Tripoli waving green flags with gusto and holding Gaddafi’s portrait aloft, many of those you see are probably Revolutionary Committee members.

Their Benghazi headquarters looks like an outsized high-modernist tepee. A fence in green trim surrounds it. Inside its burnt remains, there is a mural that reflects some of the ideological affinities between Gaddafi’s Third Universal Theory and communism. There are heroic laborers, rockets, and lots of right angles. It wouldn’t look out of place in Minsk.

A few other people are walking through the building, poking around. “Is this your first time in this building?” I ask a man in a black faux-leather jacket, probably in his late 20s.

“Yeah — only Revolutionary Committee members were allowed in this place before. And anyway, I wouldn’t have had any reason to come.”

He seems a little nervous talking about it. I imagine how it must feel being in the burnt-out headquarters of an institution whose name has been associated with fear for as long as you can remember.

I talk to another man, in his early 30s. It’s his first time here too. “You know, the Revolutionary Committee members — they’re not the kind of people you’d want to associate with. If someone introduced me to a friend and said he was a Revolutionary Committee member, I’d stay away from the guy.” He shakes an imaginary hand as if only decorum demands it, and then feigns walking away.

He then explains that many people are still uncomfortable speaking about the Revolutionary Committees. “They’re scared that Gaddafi could come back, you know?”

Fear of die-hards dies hard. (Ryan Calder)

C J Chivers reports:

Late Monday afternoon, as Libyan rebels prepared another desperate attack on the eastern oil town of Brega, a young rebel raised his rocket-propelled grenade as if to fire. The town’s university, shimmering in the distance, was far beyond his weapon’s maximum range. An older rebel urged him to hold fire, telling him the weapon’s back-blast could do little more than reveal their position and draw a mortar attack.

The younger rebel almost spat with disgust. “I have been fighting for 37 days!” he shouted. “Nobody can tell me what to do!”

The outburst midfight — and the ensuing argument between a determined young man who seemed to have almost no understanding of modern war and an older man who wisely counseled caution — underscored a fact that is self-evident almost everywhere on Libya’s eastern front. The rebel military, as it sometimes called, is not really a military at all.

What is visible in battle here is less an organized force than the martial manifestation of a popular uprising.

With throaty cries and weapons they have looted and scrounged, the rebels gather along Libya’s main coastal highway each day, ready to fight. Many of them are brave, even extraordinarily so. Some of them are selfless, swept along by a sense of common purpose and brotherhood that accompanies their revolution.

“Freedom!” they shout, as they pair a yearning to unseat Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with appeals for divine help. “God is great!”

But by almost all measures by which a military might be assessed, they are a hapless bunch. They have almost no communication equipment. There is no visible officer or noncommissioned officer corps. Their weapons are a mishmash of hastily acquired arms, which few of them know how to use.

With only weeks of fighting experience, they lack an understanding of the fundamentals of offensive and defensive combat, or how to organize fire support. They fire recklessly and sometimes accidentally. Most of them have yet to learn how to hold seized ground, or to protect themselves from their battlefield’s persistent rocket and mortar fire, which might be done by simply digging in.

Prone to panic, they often answer to little more than their mood, which changes in a flash. When their morale spikes upward, their attacks tend to be painfully and bloodily frontal — little more than racing columns down the highway, through a gantlet of the Qaddafi forces’ rocket and mortar fire, face forward into the loyalists’ machine guns.

And their numbers are small. Officials in the rebels’ transitional government have provided many different figures, sometimes saying 10,000 or men are under arms in their ranks.

But a small fraction actually appear at the front each day — often only a few hundred. And some of the men appear without guns, or with aged guns that have no magazines or ammunition.

For the nations that have supported the uprising, the state of the rebels’ armed wing — known as the Forces of Free Libya — raises many questions. It seems unlikely that such a force can carry the war westward, through dug-in Qaddafi units toward the stronghold of Surt, much less beyond, toward Tripoli, the Libyan capital. And a sustained war of attrition could quickly bleed their ranks dry.

The Guardian reports:

Britain is to urge Arab countries to train the disorganised Libyan rebels, and so strengthen their position on the battlefield before negotiations on a ceasefire, senior British defence sources have indicated.

The sources said they were also looking at hiring private security companies, some of which draw on former SAS members, to aid the rebels. These private soldiers could be paid by Arab countries to train the unstructured rebel army.

In what is seen in effect as the second phase of the battle to oust Muammar Gaddafi, it is now being acknowledged that the disorganised Libyan rebels are not going to make headway on their own. Nato member countries are looking at requesting Arab countries, such as Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, to train the rebels, or to fund the training. Qatar and the UAE are already involved in the Nato-led no-fly zone.

Some cabinet sources said that another Arab country that might be willing to train the rebels is Jordan. They are thought to have the best-trained officers, and are possibly the best army in the region, one Cabinet source said. The training of the Libyan rebels might take as long as month to turn them into an effective force capable of holding ground, and organise flanking manoeuvres. A source said: “They’re not advancing, they’re just driving up the road, and when they see guns drawn they turn round and go back again.”

The British decision to find ways to train and equip the rebels is a further sign of the determination of the coalition administration to drive out Gaddafi. It is argued that the training, if requested by the rebels, would not be in breach of the UN resolution as it would be covered by the mandate allowing “all means necessary” to protect the civilians from attacks by Gaddafi.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports:

Libya’s former-energy minister said Wednesday that several members of Moammar Gadhafi’s inner circle want to defect, but many are too scared to abandon the dictator fearing the safety of themselves and their families.

Omar Fathi bin Shatwan, who also served as industry minister, told the Associated Press that he had fled by fishing boat to Malta on Friday from the western Libyan city of Misrata.

Shatwan, who left the government in 2007, said he still had contact with some government figures and explained that many feared for their safety. In some cases, their families are under siege, he said.

“Those whose families are outside Libya will flee if they get a chance,” Shatwan said. “But many can’t leave, and all the families of ministers are under siege.”

Shatwan said he had last had contact with Gadhafi in 2006, and had not spoken with the tyrant’s sons since leaving office. “Ministers who are friends of mine, I have spoken to them,” he said.

The 59-year-old said he had spent 40 days at his home in Misrata before escaping from Libya, and witnessed Gadhafi’s forces pounding the city with heavy artillery and relentlessly shooting civilians.

Gaddafi appeals to Obama to intervene in Libya
Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu oumama, your intervention is the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair. Libya should be left to Libyans within the African union frame. (Mu’aumer Qaddaffi, Leader of the Revolution, Tripoli 5.4.2011)

Iran backs Libyan rebels, chastises West over oil, Bahrain
Libya’s rebellion has put Iran in an awkward position. Tehran has tried to balance support for the Libyan opposition, which it views as part of a region-wide “Islamic awakening,” with rejection of the NATO-led military strikes.

Iranian officials charged that the U.N.-endorsed military intervention on humanitarian grounds is hypocritical and part of a secret Western agenda. Tehran opposes any military intervention in the Middle East, even if in Iran’s interest, because of the precedent it sets. Iran also opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, despite the fact Saddam Hussein was Iran’s main adversary in the region.

In his Nowruz (New Year) speech last month, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei charged that the United States and its allies were motivated by interest in Libyan oil. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said that coalition was pursuing a new form of colonialism. (Tehran Bureau)

Sanctions are dropped against Libyan defector
The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions on Monday against the top Libyan official who fled to Britain last week, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader.

But the decision to unfreeze bank accounts and permit business dealings with the official, Moussa Koussa, underscored the predicament his defection poses for American and British authorities, who said on Tuesday that Scottish police and prosecutors planned to interview Mr. Koussa about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and other issues “in the next few days.”

Mr. Koussa’s close knowledge of the ruling circle, which he is believed to be sharing inside a British safe house, could be invaluable in trying to strip Colonel Qaddafi of support.

But as the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Mr. Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. (New York Times)

Libya rebels ‘pressured into Lockerbie apology’
Libya’s rebel administration has said that it signed an apology for the Gaddafi regime’s role in IRA attacks and the Lockerbie bombing under pressure from the British government, and that the document is the result of “misunderstanding”.

After initially denying that the document existed, the revolutionaries’ governing council acknowledged that its chairman, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, had indeed signed an apology on behalf of the Libyan people for Gaddafi’s provision of semtex used in IRA bombings and for the blowing up of the Pan Am flight in 1988. It also promised compensation.

Amid division and confusion over the declaration, which some blamed on a translation mix-up, council officials said that the issue of the Libyan government’s responsibility for attacks in the UK came up only because it was pressed on the revolutionary administration by the British. (The Guardian)

Libya’s rebel forces need more than just weapons
Robert Haddick, the managing editor of Small Wars Journal and a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, said the rebels’ most significant need is basic instruction in both offensive and defensive tactics at the small-unit level — and in identifying and training commanders.

“You could train hundreds of men in those skills, maybe even thousands, in two months, probably,” Mr. Haddick said.

“But I think the more difficult task, and something that would take far more time, would be to select leaders — squad leaders, platoon leaders and company commanders,” he said.

There is no good estimate on how many Libyans have taken up arms on the side of the rebellion. Many are not even full-time, but show up for a fight and then return home. They are of questionable physical conditioning. They have little training in weapons and none in military discipline.

Among the rebels, according to American intelligence estimates, are about 1,000 men who have trained with the Libyan army, as both officers and foot soldiers, before changing sides. The government’s force is estimated at roughly 30,000. (New York Times)

At KABOBfest, Tasnim writes:

The military intervention in Libya has divided the left into two camps, the pro-interventionists and the anti-imperialists who define it as a military assault equivalent to the war in Iraq. At the centre of this division is an apparent contradiction between supporting the people’s revolution against autocracy and an anti-imperialist stance which denounces western hypocrisy. As a Libyan, I reject this false contradiction. I see myself as an anti-imperialist, I denounce western double standards, and I supported the revolution and the intervention. I see no need to twist myself into an arguing position where I declare myself to be for the people’s revolution, but against the intervention that sustained it. That, to me, would be the contradiction.

The accusations levelled at the pro-interventionists include naivety, hypocrisy, and selling their soul (and dignity) to the devil. The rhetorical questions fly: How can you believe this is a humanitarian intervention? Who bolstered Gaddafi? How about Bahrain, Yemen, Palestine? Afghanistan, Iraq, see what they did there? Rwanda, see what they didn’t do there? Do the three letters O-I-L mean anything to you?

The charge of naivety is popular, because proving you’re not naive can be difficult. I don’t speak for Libyans, but I can speak for myself and those I know, and we don’t need to be told that those intervening in Libya are acting in their own interests. None of us believe that this so-called humanitarian intervention is motivated solely by concern for human life. We know who rehabilitated Gaddafi. We watched Berlusconi kiss his hand and Clinton pose with his son Mutassim and Blair sit in his tent and announce a New Era, all when the brutality of the regime was being masked by the thinnest possible patina of change, the change of Saif’s western bought PR.

We also remember when Gaddafi was lionized by some in the left as an anti-imperialist Nasserite during the 70s and 80s, a time when people were hung in public and Libyans were poisoned against progressive ideas because of the brutality of the regime that pretended to espouse them. We remember when Gaddafi was the enemy of the west. We remember Operation El Dorado Canyon. We remember the collective punishment of sanctions as a whole nation was held responsible for Pan Am 103, only adding to the suffering of the most vulnerable. We remember when we were the pariah-state, and Libyans were the terrorists after the plutonium. We don’t need to be told that this intervention is, as one friend put it, mish ashan sawad eyona – not for the sake of our eyes. None of us are apolitical or naive, we haven’t had a chance to be. Yet all of us support the intervention.

To denounce Libyan pro-interventionist stances as naive is condescending, imperious and an insult to our knowledge of our own history. I find it amusing that self-declared anti-imperialists flourish Libya’s history in the face of Libyans who support the intervention, when some of them knew no more about Libya a couple of months ago than its location on the map. And that it was ruled by a madman.

Cross-examining the military intervention does not make me uncomfortable. I am aware of the need to be wary. I am aware that western countries could easily have looked the other way and continued benefiting from their deals with the Gaddafi regime, and I am aware that by intervening they are banking on new deals and new interests.

What saddens me is the morally bankrupt arguments made by those intent on justifying their anti-imperialist stance at all costs, to the extent they will mine neoconservative material and echo Gaddafi’s accusations to prove the “rebels” are Al Qaeda, or CIA. Some have justified the crackdown, using Gaddafi’s claims of secessionist movements, ignoring the fact that resistance is as strong in Misrata in the West as in Benghazi in the East. Some have gone further than that to deny Gaddafi’s atrocities took place. Others don’t even venture into this territory but still elect to wag their fingers at Libyans for submitting to imperialism. And when these arguments offend a Libyan, an anti-imperialist declares: “I relish in the fact that you are offended. I enjoy it.”

I find it a little counter-intuitive to deny atrocities took place to prove that atrocities will take place. Yet when I look at the arguments of those who oppose the intervention and the methods some of them resort to, I’m reminded why I made my decision. I need the reminder because it was not an easy decision to make. The morning I woke up to find a column of tanks a few kilometres outside Benghazi and wished for air-strikes to make them disappear, I asked myself whether it was only because I am Libyan. I imagined an alternate universe where the Arab League and the UN had made the same choices during the Gaza massacre. For me, it’s a no-brainer. Whether they called it a “no fly zone plus” or a “kinetic military action,” if it took out the jets and the tanks heading into town, I would have supported it, as long as those on the ground supported it.

I look to the cities that have been bombarded by Gaddafi’s forces for over a month – Misrata and Zintan and the western mountain area – and I see none of the intellectual arguments against intervention coming from them. So I support them. I support the opposition in every Arab country rising up, I am an activist for Palestine and against the War on Terror, and I support the Libyan uprising. In all cases, I take my cue from the people most affected, not from pundits. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports:

There has been much to terrorise the people of Misrata over the past weeks of bloody siege. Tank shells and mortars have fallen at random in the heart of the rebel-held Libyan city, with little warning bar the final whistle of the explosive flying through the air. Muammar Gaddafi’s planes have periodically bombed the revolutionary enclave in the west of the country.

But residents say there has been nothing like the snipers.

“We are afraid even to step into the street any time. You can just be shot. I’ve seen children shot. They come in here with arms and legs destroyed. The snipers know who they are shooting. It’s terror,” said a doctor reached at one of the town’s hospitals who said he wanted to give his name only as Ali because he feared for the safety of his family elsewhere in Libya.

“Before you could go out when they weren’t shelling and bombing. But now you never know. Some of the snipers are not even wearing uniforms.”

The New York Times reports:

Friendly to Iran even as it serves as a base for the American military, Qatar has long had one of the most creative foreign policies in this unstable region. But now, by sending its tiny air force to fly missions over Libya and granting other critical aid to the Libyan rebels in their fight for freedom and democracy, this very rich Persian Gulf emirate is playing a more ambitious and potentially more risky role.

But for an absolute monarchy that was part of an alliance that supported Saudi Arabia’s move into Bahrain to crush democracy protests there, it is also somewhat incongruous.

A week ago, Qatar became the first Arab country to grant political recognition to the Libyan rebels, and its six Mirage fighter jets flying with Western coalition partners are giving the United States and European allies political cover in a region long suspicious of outside intervention.

Qatari officials say they are discussing ways to market Libyan oil from any ports they might hold in the future, to give the rebels crucial financial support, and they are looking for ways to support them with food and medical supplies. Qatar — the home base for the Al Jazeera satellite news channel, which is supported by the Qatari government — is also helping the Libyan opposition create a television station using a French satellite, to offset the state-controlled media.

Experts who follow Qatar say the current policies are consistent with two long-held objectives: to emerge as a world player despite its tiny size, and to play off its stronger neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia and Iran, to protect its sovereignty and natural gas wealth.

“They are staking a claim to being a leading voice in defining Arab nationalism for Arabs no matter their location,” said Toby Jones, a Rutgers University historian of the modern Middle East. He added that the nation’s leadership was seeking “to step out of the shadow of more powerful regional neighbors like the Saudis and Iranians.”

The New York Times reports:

At least two sons of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi are proposing a resolution to the Libyan conflict that would entail pushing their father aside to make way for a transition to a constitutional democracy under the direction of his son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a diplomat and a Libyan official briefed on the plan said Sunday.

The rebels challenging Colonel Qaddafi as well as the American and European powers supporting them with air strikes have so far insisted on a more radical break with his 40 years of rule. And it is not clear whether Colonel Qaddafi, 68, has signed on to the reported proposal backed by his sons, Seif and Saadi el-Qaddafi, although one person close to the sons said the father appeared willing to go along.

But the proposal offers a new window into the dynamics of the Qaddafi family at a time when the colonel, who has seven sons, is relying heavily on them. Stripped of one of his closest confidantes by the defection of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa and isolated by decades of attempted coups and internal purges, he is leaning on his sons as trusted aides and military commanders.

The idea also touches on longstanding differences among his sons. While Seif and Saadi have leaned toward Western-style economic and political openings, Colonel Qaddafi’s sons Khamis and Mutuassim are considered hard-liners. Khamis leads a fearsome militia focused on repressing internal unrest.

Al Jazeera reports:

Clashes have continued between pro-democracy troops and forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, at the key oil town of Brega, with the rebels saying they have taken control of a portion of the town.

On Monday, columns of opposition fighters drove up the main coastal highway, regaining ground they had given up the day before, but the effective use of artillery and landmines by Gaddafi’s troops kept them at bay.

Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton, reporting from the road to the east of Brega, said rebels had spotted trip wires in the sands on either side of the highway and were instructing fellow troops and journalists to stay on the pavement.

Human Rights Watch has reported that Gaddafi’s troops laid anti-tank and anti-personnel mines around Ajdabiya when they controlled the city last week.

The regime’s troops seem better able to hold onto ground than the untrained and undisciplined rebels; they dig entrenchments and have not retreated from Brega, even after another night of coalition air strikes on their positions on Sunday.

'And what kind of training did you get when you joined the rebels?' 'Training?' He laughed. 'Man, I just watched someone else and figured it out on my own.'

Ryan Calder is a PhD candidate from Berkeley, California, currently in Libya doing field research on the uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring.

What caused the Libyan revolution of 2011? This is the “big question” that motivates my research. At one level, the answers are simple. The Qaddafi regime has been in power for four decades. Most Libyans are tired of its oppression, and of the way it channels economic resources and opportunities to Qaddafi loyalists. With Tunisia and Egypt as inspiration, young, Facebook-using Libyans organized peaceful demonstrations on February 17. After the regime responded with bullets, a revolution began.

That’s the straightforward narrative. It is, I believe, correct. But it doesn’t tell the full story. Many people around the world live under oppressive and corrupt governments, but most of them don’t launch revolutions. Moreover, it’s one thing to protest — as people are doing across the Arab world this year — but it’s quite another to mobilize an armed revolution against a government that has had an iron grip on power for 41 years, with tens of thousands putting their lives at risk.

Why has the Libyan revolution of 2011 has unfolded the way it has? Why now? What concerns do ordinary Libyans have? How do they see the world? Who are the people willing to put their lives on the line to get rid of Qaddafi? Why do some Libyans remain loyal to the Qaddafi government? And what factors might determine whether this revolt succeeds? To answer such questions, we need a textured understanding of Libyan society in 2011, and of the way revolutions happen in the age of Facebook, satellite TV, and mass media. That’s why I’m here.

In one of Ryan’s most recent posts, he describes what has made this an “accordion war” in which day by day, the front swings west and east as the small oil towns west of Benghazi have been repeatedly and quickly liberated by rebels and then just as quickly retaken by Gaddafi forces.

The fact that the young men in this revolution are now most often referred to as “rebels” obscures the fact that this was and remains a civilian uprising. Most of these men have probably had less experience handling and using weapons than the average gun-owning American. And some of these “rebels” don’t even have guns!

Although they contain a few well-trained military units such as Al-Sa’iqah (the special forces who joined the opposition in Benghazi), the vast majority of the rebels are civilians with no military training whatsoever. “I’d never fired a gun in my life before this revolution,” one 25-year-old fighter from Al-Marj told me. “If Gaddafi found you with so much as a bullet, he’d throw you in jail.”

Those rebels fighting at the front don’t even receive military training before they go. “How’d you learn to use that thing?” I asked one 38-year-old engineer I met in Ras Lanuf carrying a Kalashnikov. “And what kind of training did you get when you joined the rebels?”

“Training?” He laughed. “Man, I just watched someone else and figured it out on my own.”

Right now, there’s no military apparatus outside Tripoli with the organizational capacity to train the rebels anyway.

“And where did you go to enlist?” I asked.

He laughed again. “There’s no enlisting. You just find a weapon and show up at the front. If you don’t have one, you wait until another rebel dies and you take his. Or you get some off of Gaddafi’s dead soldiers.” Indeed, I’ve seen groups of rebels scouring the remains of Gaddafi’s bombed-out tanks and armored personnel carriers along the coastal highway, looking for usable weapons and ammunition.

Later, Khalid, a 39-year-old bakery owner from Benghazi who makes a mean bowl of bean soup, showed me his Russian-made Kalashnikov. It was made in 1976.

So what are the ragtag rebels and their outdated weaponry good for? In particular situations – such as street battles within Benghazi against Gaddafi’s Al-Fadil Brigade, or in occasional skirmishes with the Revolutionary Committees – these ragtag fighters have proven effective on an individual level. Many have demonstrated incredible courage, such as Mahdi Ziu, an overweight father of two who loaded his own car with propane and drove it into a heavily defended gate to save his comrades’ lives and help take the main military base in Benghazi. Everyone in Benghazi remembers Mahdi as a hero.

But I’ve seen rebels hightailing it too. A few days ago, at the front 20 km east of Brega, I was interviewing Faraj, a 19-year-old unemployed rebel who lives at home with his parents. He didn’t appear to be armed.

“Do you even have a gun?” I asked. “Yeah – well, you know how it is. There’s about one Kalashnikov for every four or five of us rebels,” he said. “Mine’s in the car.”

We heard one shell land several miles away. A column of black smoke rose slowly.

Faraj and his comrades jumped in their cars and fled, even before the gang of foreign photographers with me stopped clicking their shutters.

The rebels’ rapid retreat is not so much a function of cowardice, but of the fact that when Gaddafi’s shells begin falling, there’s not much they can do. Word on the street here is that even the best of the rebels’ artillery can travel only 20 km, whereas Gaddafi’s newer weaponry fires 40 km. In such situations, amateurs with machine guns and light anti-aircraft guns mounted on their pickup trucks, whether brave or not, have little to contribute.

So when the rebels retreat in the face of enemy fire, they retreat fast. When shells start to land within earshot and Gaddafi’s forces appear to be advancing, a line of Toyota Hilux pickup trucks and ordinary passenger cars – Hyundais and Kias and Chevys and ancient Datsuns that barely putter along — pull U-turns and start streaming away from the front.

These are the ragtag rebels: groups of four or five buddies who carpool to the front in their own cars, high-school teachers and high-school dropouts, petroleum engineers and shepherds and bakery owners, packing their own lunches of macaroni and beans, wearing construction helmets and plastic safety goggles for protection, and carrying the Kalashnikovs they managed to buy on Benghazi’s streets.

When the shells start to land, most of these guys leave the fighting to the trained forces who are at the very front lines. There’s not much for them to do anyway. Those at the very front lines, like Al-Sa’iqah, are better equipped, better trained, under organized command, and know what to do in the face of enemy fire. Lacking training, weaponry, and command the ragtag rebels are mostly useless in these situations. There’s no point for them to stick around and risk getting blown up.

Hence the accordion war.