With airstrikes, armor and artillery, military units loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi hammered the rebels seeking his ouster in battles along the eastern Mediterranean coast and in the besieged western city of Zawiyah on Tuesday, as a new report documented how badly the insurgents lagged the Qaddafi forces in equipment and capabilities.
Qaddafi forces battered the rebel-held city of Zawiyah for a fifth day. With land lines, cellphones and the Internet down, and journalists barred from the area, it was impossible to tell whose flag flew over the central square as darkness fell. Fighting was also reported in the rebel-held city of Misratah, Libya’s third largest, about 100 miles east of Tripoli.
The Libyan air force, dominated by members of Colonel Qaddafi’s native tribe, renewed its strikes on rebel positions around the coastal oil city of Ras Lanuf. Rebels had taken control of the city days ago, when they appeared to be moving briskly westward. On Tuesday they were struggling to regroup after losses the night before, so that they might move again toward the Qaddafi stronghold of Surt, west of Ras Lanuf on the road to Tripoli.
Rebel fighters — including an increasing number of professional soldiers — prepared themselves for a government drive to recapture Ras Lanuf. All afternoon, reinforcements in the form of dozens of white Toyota pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns and antiaircraft guns streamed in from the opposition-controlled east. The battles unfolded in an atmosphere of rumors and uncertainty in the capital, where reliable information was increasingly scarce and unrealistic propaganda increasingly plentiful. Unconfirmed reports circulated of peace proposals that could involve Colonel Qaddafi’s giving up power.
The only basis for the reports appeared to be televised remarks by a former prime minister suggesting, without elaboration, that both sides should negotiate, as Colonel Qaddafi had suggested before. By the end of the day, both sides had vigorously denied making or receiving any overtures of any kind.
President Obama and the British prime minister, David Cameron, agreed in a phone call on the shared objective of “the departure of Qaddafi from power as quickly as possible,” the White House said in a statement, adding that they would “press forward with planning, including at NATO, on the full spectrum of possible responses, including surveillance, humanitarian assistance, enforcement of the arms embargo and a no-fly zone.”
In the Middle East, the Gulf Cooperation Council has already endorsed a no-flight zone, and speaking in Washington, a representative of the Arab League said it was expected to support the idea as well. Britain and France are working on a United Nations resolution to authorize a no-flight zone, though it is unclear that such a measure could gain needed support from Russia and China, which are traditionally leery of military intervention.
Western leaders have stressed the need for international support before undertaking a no-flight zone, so they do not appear to be meddling. Colonel Qaddafi has already begun attacking the idea of Western airstrikes as a form of colonialism. A report released Tuesday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based group known for its assessments of relative military strength, underscored the challenge facing the rebels. Colonel Qaddafi “has long neglected the military formations in the east; the dilapidated bases and installations there contrast sharply with the well-kept barracks and tank parks outside Tripoli,” the report said, relying in part on satellite images to compare the number and make of tanks and other equipment. “This goes a long way toward explaining why the momentum generated by the revolution has yet to overwhelm pro-regime forces.”
Air power is Colonel Qaddafi’s biggest advantage, the report found, noting that so far the rebels appeared unable to use bases and planes they captured in the east. Planes and helicopters give the Qaddafi forces an additional advantage, the report said, in moving ammunition and supplies, a crucial factor given the length of the Libyan coast between the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and the capital, Tripoli.
The rebels obtained “an extensive collection of surface-to-air missiles” from defecting bases in the east, the report noted, but have been unable to get them to the front lines, where they might counter Colonel Qaddafi’s Russian-made warplanes. Still, despite the weapons advantage, the report noted that the Qaddafi forces appeared lacking in morale. “In recent skirmishes in small coastal towns the rebels have easily repelled the pro-government forces’ largely uncoordinated attacks with the most rudimentary of weapons,” the report said. “The loyalty of the air force has also been called into question as many bombs have been reportedly dropped miles from their targets.” In an interview with the pan-Arab news channel Al Arabiya on Monday night, Colonel Qaddafi’s son Saadi appeared to pull back the curtain on some Qaddafi sibling rivalry — a weighty issue because his sons command private militias, play major roles in the government and own communications companies and other businesses. Colonel Qaddafi’s son Muatassim, considered a hard-liner, is national security adviser, while his brother Seif al-Islam has campaigned for more open government and become Colonel Qaddafi’s heir apparent.
Complaining that all his own personal initiatives for Libya were thwarted, Saadi el-Qaddafi contended that for the last four years it was Seif, not their father, who was in fact “the person who used to run the show every day in Libya.” Colonel Qaddafi told Seif and the country’s top ministers, “ ‘You have to run the show, you have to run the affairs, take care of people, tribes, cities and the budget,’ ” Saadi el-Qaddafi said.
Saadi, a former professional soccer player who has sometimes enjoyed a playboy lifestyle abroad, told Al Arabiya that he always felt underappreciated. “I used to propose projects, but they used to tell me that your ideas are always difficult and complicated, asking me to suggest something simple,” he said.
But Saadi also reiterated his father’s warning that Libya would descend into chaotic tribal warfare if the colonel left power. “All the tribes are armed, of course,” he said. “There are hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, who all support the leader, and all of them are armed tribes. If something happens to the leader or steps down, who will control these tribes then? He answered his own question: “Each one will act on its own, and we will face a civil war like in Somalia or Afghanistan.”
As the Qaddafi government pushes back at the rebels in the east and protesters in Tripoli, its efforts are posing mounting obstacles to the roughly 130 foreign journalists the government has invited to the capital to cover the unrest. Senior government officials have promised the journalists the chance to report freely, and reporters were initially able to interact freely even with rebels. But a profusion of heavily armed checkpoints have made it increasingly treacherous to move around the Tripoli area.
More than a dozen journalists have been detained trying to investigate reports of a massacre by Qaddafi forces in the rebel-held city of Zawiyah. A group of 10, including correspondents from The Los Angeles Times and the BBC, were held for about seven hours. Three others from the BBC were held overnight.
In an interview about the issue, Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, told Reuters that the Libyan military had little experience with free-roaming journalists. “They are involved in ground operations,” he said. “They don’t want any media presence.”
Source: New York Times
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