Over the weekend forces loyal to Colonel el-Qaddafi advanced against rebel forces in the west regaining lost territory and heading east toward Benghazi, the opposition capitol. General Abdul Fattah Younes, Qaddafi’s former interior minister and one of the rebel leaders is calling the movement a strategic retreat. According to press reports, the rebels are preparing to make a last stand near Ajdabiya, a town of 120,000 and about 100 miles from Benghazi. According to a report in the New York Times, General Younes has called Ajdabiya a “key” city and the rebels plan on defending it. The article quoted him as saying: “War is a matter of advance and tactical withdrawal…What we are trying to do is lure him into an area where we can even the fight.”
Rebel leaders continue to call for a no-fly zone. In an interview in the Daily Beast, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Qaddafi’s former justice minister who according to Al Jazeera, has now emerged as leader of Libyan National Transitional Council stated: “We want a no-fly zone, and a naval blockade. Qaddafi has been using his air force and navy to destroy the country and all the cities. All we want is to have the international community level the playing field. We don’t want boots on the ground. We can fight to liberate our own country with our own blood and that will be our honor.”
The rebel cause received a boost over the weekend when The Arab League called on the UN Security Council to impose no-fly zone against any military action against the Libyan people. The League said it didn’t want any foreign intervention in Libya and that the no-fly zone should be lifted once the crisis was over. Unclear was who would enforce the zone, although the League said in statements it would play a role. The debate over this issue is expected to continue this week over multiple fronts to include the UN and NATO.
I continue to have reservations about the wisdom of a no-fly zone on several levels. First off as reported in many press reports, Colonel Qaddafi, is not just using airplanes successfully against rebel troops. One New York Times reports indicates he’s using “a relentless onslaught of tanks, artillery, helicopters and ships at sea has sent rebels hurtling back the past several days from a series of oil towns along Libya’s virtually indefensible coastal plain.” Ajdabiya, the current defense point is also along the coast.
In order for a no-fly zone to work you have to secure the sky over the battle area and the waters off the Libyan coast so aircraft carriers and other ships participating in the operations can operate safely. When I say secure the sky I’m talking about all weapons that could hurt aircraft participating in the enforcement of the zone. That includes obvious systems like surface to air missiles and anti-aircraft guns but also includes man portable surface to air missiles carried by the troops. That means dropping weapons on these targets to secure the areas. Since man portable surface to air missiles are small and difficult to detect, you would also have to bomb enemy troops to make sure they couldn’t fire those weapons. That would seem to me to imply a level of involvement that goes beyond what the Arab League has indicated they would like to see. Additionally, a no-fly zone in and of itself will not win a war. The U.S. and its allies maintained a no-fly zone over Iraq for a decade and the government was not brought down until you had “boots” on the ground. The rebels obviously believe they can win the conflict on the ground with the no-fly zone in place.
There’s no doubt in my mind that even stretched thin by obligations in Iraq, Afghanistan, humanitarian assistance in Japan, etc; NATO and the UN could cobble together a force to impose the zone but is this a precedent the international community wants to set? At what point and under what circumstances do the nations of the world intervene in the internal affairs of another country? Can any rebel group in any nation now request international military assistance? I don’t know and continue to be haunted by what transpired in Rwanda in the 1990’s while the world stood by; but believe there should be agreed upon conditions.
Bahrain
Didn’t want to end my blog without mentioning Bahrain. Events there have been overshadowed by the Libyan crisis and the Japan earthquake but there were some interesting developments over the weekend. According to reports in Al Jazeera, the large anti-government protests have been continuing and over the weekend “riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters camped in front of Bahrain Financial Harbor…dozens of protesters sought medical help…There were also clashes between pro- and anti-government groups at the University of Bahrain in the souther city of Sakhir. The school has now suspended all of its classes indefinitely.”
What has really grabbed my attention in all of this are Al Jazeera reports that “A Saudi military force of about 1,000 troops has been sent to Bahrain to help protect government facilities there…The move follows a request from Bahrain for help from its Gulf Arab neighbors after Bahraini police clashed on Sunday with mostly Shia demonstrators in one of the most violent confrontations since troops killed seven protesters last month.”
This is the first report I’ve seen about a Saudi intervention and will be interesting to monitor if true. As Oprah would say, “What I know for sure” is Bahrain is the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet the naval component of U.S. Central Command which is currently overseeing the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Somali Pirates among many other things.
Think I’ll end here. As always, my views are my own.
