Rebels and pro-Gaddafi forces appear to be losing their way amid growing concern in the west over the revolution's end game
Peter Beaumont , foreign affairs editor, and Chris McGreal in Benghazi guardian.co.uk, Saturday 2 April 2011
COMMENT
Reading this piece again confirms what I have been warning against: The Kissinger doctrine at work. Work on both sides to exhaust them and to have leverage with both, but make sure that neither side prevails or completely collapses.
"For weeks, Libya's revolutionary leadership has spoken almost in awe of the soldiers who defected from Muammar Gaddafi's army and who would lead the rebel assault to bring him down. And for weeks, the disorganised civilian volunteers who have rapidly advanced and almost as swiftly retreated along a few hundred miles of desert road have awaited the arrival of these professional soldiers to turn around the revolution's fortunes. Finally, some made an appearance for the first time at the frontline near Brega. They appeared disciplined, well armed and under command – a stark contrast to the free-for-all of the civilian rebel militia. But there were no more than a few dozen of them and the question still remained: where were the thousands of experienced soldiers that the revolutionary leadership had so often invoked to bolster morale? Did they exist?.....
Wearing sunglasses and a red and green scarf around his neck, Younes toured the frontline near the port of Brega, shaking hands with the crowd of volunteers who formed around him firing their weapons in the air. While their visit boosted morale at a time when the rebels have been in retreat once again, a more important question remains – whether these men, who have avoided the frontlines for their own reasons, can turn the war around. And from this weekend it is not who is fighting that is the question but who will no longer be fighting, with the US announcement that its warplanes will no longer carry out bombing raids. Even before the American decision, the number of air strikes, mandated by the UN security council resolution 1973, had been sharply diminishing. On Friday, Nato announced that coalition aircraft had flown 74 strike missions the previous day, down almost a quarter from earlier in the week. Of those missions, US aircraft flew only 10. And that number of strikes looks likely to decline as responsibility passes largely to the UK, France and Canada......
The slowing of the coalition mission has only helped to contribute to a growing sense that the conflict in Libya is stumbling into a new and uncertain phase, marked not by the strengths of the opposing sides but by a realisation of their weaknesses.....
Instead, what has begun to emerge is what many feared in the first place – a stalemate, defined by two sides playing a kind of lethal tag in the desert over deserted oil towns....
What is also true, however, is that in being weakened by the conflict both sides may be forced into new positions suggesting that, ultimately, negotiations rather than military force might bring the crisis in Libya to an end.....
Whatever the outcome, what seems most unlikely is that the rebels' newly visible generals will be leading their troops into Tripoli any time in the near future."
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