Libyan Civil War Megathread

[Ed Anger]

I'd hate to be a Libyan government artilleryman at this point in time.

[derspiess]

I'd hate to be a Libyan government artilleryman at this point in time.

I saw a hilarious video on CNN last night where reporters were told they were going to be taken to the site of an air strike that had caused lots of civilian casualties.  So when they arrived it turned out to be just a bunch of wrecked BM-25s with no signs of any casualties whatsoever.  They asked the Libyan gov't. handler where the civilian casualties were & he went off on a Baghdad Bob-style rant.

[Caliga]

I'd hate to be a Libyan government artilleryman at this point in time.

You wouldn't have to spend much more time fretting about it though.

[DGuller]

I saw a hilarious video on CNN last night where reporters were told they were going to be taken to the site of an air strike that had caused lots of civilian casualties.  So when they arrived it turned out to be just a bunch of wrecked BM-25s with no signs of any casualties whatsoever.  They asked the Libyan gov't. handler where the civilian casualties were & he went off on a Baghdad Bob-style rant.

It would've been a much more interesting ending if Libyans responded: "Where are civilian casualties?  Right where you'll all standing right now.  Muahahahahaha!"

[Savonarola]

Where there's a will there's a way:

Gadhafi troops attack main hospital in Misrata
Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Despite coalition airstrikes, troops loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi continued to terrorize residents of the besieged rebel-held city of Misrata Wednesday.

In the city's main hospital, where 400 people -- about half of them patients -- were located, one witness said Gadhafi's forces had attacked. The push began at 8 p.m. (2 p.m. ET), when "heavy tanks for Gadhafi troops start attacking the hospital -- the bombs falling here 20 meters (66 feet) around us," said one person inside the hospital. He said two deaths had occurred "around the hospital."

At one point, shelling occurred without respite for 40 minutes, he said. "Now, fortunately, no more shelling, but the situation is so serious that all the teams here -- the doctors, the patients -- are paralyzed, scared."

He called for international intervention to protect the civilians inside the institution. "Nobody can work here," he said. All the doctors here are completely paralyzed." Ambulances were not able to leave the hospital, which had lost its electricity and was running on generator power, he said.

During the last day, the international coalition has flown 175 sorties over Libya -- 113 of them by U.S. planes and the remainder from other nations participating in the U.N.-backed mission, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Gerard Hueber told reporters Wednesday.

The Libyan air force has been crippled, and the no-fly zone spans Libya from east to west along its coastline, said Hueber, the chief of staff for U.S. operations. But the coalition has had no indication that Gadhafi was complying with a United Nations mandate to stop attacks against civilians.

With Gadhafi's air power rendered ineffective, coalition airstrikes were focusing on his ground forces in Ajdabiya and Misrata.

Coalition jets are using smart bombs to target mechanized forces and mobile surface-to-air missile sites and impede supply lines for their "beans and bullets," Hueber said. The targets include Libya's premier 32nd Brigade, commanded by one of Gadhafi's sons and fully engaged in the fighting.

"It's an extremely complex and difficult environment," Hueber said about going after forces in populated areas.

"And our primary focus is to interdict those forces before they enter the city ... cut off their lines of communication and cut off their command and control," he said. "There have been no reports of civilian casualties. Our mission here is to protect the civilian populace and we choose our targets and plan our actions with that as our top priority."

Wednesday night's outbreak of violence broke a respite that began earlier in the day with the coalition attacks -- the first calm in a week, Misrata residents reported.

"We would like to express our gratitude to the international community since there were airstrikes this morning," said Mohammed, an opposition spokesman in the city who would identify himself only by his first name.

Gadhafi's forces had been stationed on the outskirts of the city, where they were providing support and supplies to loyalists fighting rebels in Misrata proper.

Earlier in the day, grocery stores and other shops opened in the city, which is located two hours east of Tripoli and has been inaccessible to journalists.

One person inside the hospital told CNN that five more people were killed in the last 24 hours, raising the death toll to at least 95 in the last seven days. A man who died Wednesday morning was shot by a sniper, the doctor said.

Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis, a former interior minister who quit to lead opposition forces, said rebels have requested weapons from several nations to help the embattled city.

"Misrata is destroyed and they need weapons," Younis told CNN. "We try to send them weapons, but of course they were all light weapons. There were no heavy weapons."



Inside bombed Libyan military base In Tripoli, the clatter of anti-aircraft weapons could be heard.

In Ajdabiya, parts of the city fell to opposition forces even though Gadhafi's men, who have been pounding the area with artillery and heavy tank bombardments, retained control of the northern and western gates, opposition fighters and witnesses told CNN.

A hospital staffer and opposition fighters said nine people were killed Wednesday in fighting near the northern gate.

The international airstrikes against Libyan military positions began over the weekend after Gadhafi defied a United Nations-mandated cease-fire in attacks against civilians. The strikes are intended to help establish a no-fly zone.

The campaign was in its fifth day as Sweden announced it has frozen more than $1.53 billion in Libyan assets in response to EU sanctions imposed on the northern African country.

France launched the air campaign in Libya and Britain and the United States followed. Germany is not participating in the military action, though it agrees with the United Nations resolution in principle, and moved Wednesday to ensure that its ships were far removed from the Libyan campaign.

A German navy spokesman said Wednesday that all German ships previously under NATO command in the Mediterranean Sea were reassigned to operate under national command and are returning to previously scheduled port stops in Europe to await further instructions. German crew members of NATO fighter jets were also under German command.

Britain announced an international meeting for next Tuesday called to assess successes and needs in Libya.

Late Monday, coalition forces suffered a setback when a U.S. fighter jet malfunctioned and crashed near Benghazi in eastern Libya.

The two crew members parachuted out and landed in different places. U.S. rescue teams, picking up the pilot, dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs after they saw an armored vehicle approaching the pilot and feared for his safety, said Capt. Richard Ulsh, spokesman for the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

An investigation of the incident is underway after reports surfaced that some Libyans were wounded by shrapnel.

Capt. Becky Massey, the pilot of one of the two Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft involved in the rescue, said the bombs were dropped three miles from the downed pilot. One of the Ospreys then landed and picked up the pilot.

A U.S. aircraft later dropped munitions on the F-15E wreckage to destroy it, a U.S. military official told CNN.

Rebels had already recovered the second crew member, a weapons officer, and treated him with "respect and dignity" until coalition forces reached him, U.S. Navy Adm. Samuel Locklear III said Tuesday. It was not immediately clear how the weapons officer was retrieved by U.S. authorities.

The Libyan war was sparked in February by protests demanding an end to Gadhafi's almost 42-year rule. The Libyan strongman responded with force, prompting the international community to take action.

However, a Johns Hopkins University professor said the coalition can achieve only so much through aerial strikes.

"We have to understand the limits of what air power can do," Fouad Ajami told CNN's "AC360."

"This is a recipe for a stalemate," he said.

Criticism and questions persist about the international campaign, with no clear answer on who will take over command of the mission and what the exit strategy will be.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the timetable for a transition of military leadership will be coming in days, not weeks.

NATO said Wednesday it will decide shortly what its role in the operation will be. A spokesman added the alliance is well prepared.

"This is the bread and butter of NATO," an official said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has voiced his opposition to NATO taking political leadership over the Libya campaign. He suggested that a commission composed of foreign ministers from the participating states play that role.

Ajami, however, said the Arab world would welcome NATO involvement.

"They know that the calamity is unfolding in Libya, and they know that no help is going to come other than from the West and from the United States."

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday that Kuwait and Jordan have agreed to provide logistical support to the Libyan effort.

Jordanian government spokesman Taher Edwan told CNN that Jordan's role will be limited to a humanitarian one. "Jordan did not and will not have any military participation in Libya, neither in planes or on the ground at all in Libya," he said.

Qatar has already contributed planes to mission.

The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday it will participate -- but only in providing humanitarian assistance.

Toward that end, the country has sent a ship and two planes with basic relief supplies, the country's news agency said.

[Savonarola]

From Al-Jazeera:

NATO nations fail to reach agreement on Libya 

Last Modified: 23 Mar 2011 20:01

NATO members have again failed to agree on what role the military alliance should play in operations in Libya, following a third day of talks in Brussels, the Belgian capital.

Ambassadors from the 28-nation alliance have held daily meetings since Monday to decide whether NATO should take a commanding role in imposing the no-fly zone over the North African country amid differences between NATO members already participating and Turkey, which has criticised the conduct of the operation.

France insists that political control should be in the hands of an international coalition, while NATO would be in charge of planning and operations.

"There was no agreement and the discussions continue," a diplomat told the AFP news agency, following Wednesday's round of talks among ambassadors of the 28-nation alliance.

The debate will resume Thursday, the diplomat said.

Turkey, a NATO member, has said the air campaign over Libya led by France, the US and Britain has already gone beyond the scope of last week's UN Security Council resolution to enforce a no-fly zone and protect civilians.

The BBC reported on Wednesday that Abdullah Gul, the Turkish president, had cautioned the international coalition not to follow any hidden agenda over its operations in Libya.

Gul said it was "obvious" that some coalition countries saw the conflict as an opportunity for themselves.

Turkey has said the alliance's role should be governed by several conditions, including an end to the military campaign as soon as possible.

In a speech to his ruling AK Party on Tuesday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's prime minister, said Turkey "will never point a gun at the Libyan people" and would explain its position to NATO allies.

Barack Obama, the US president, under domestic pressure to limit US involvement, said on Tuesday he had "absolutely no doubt" a deal would be reached soon.

The question of who takes over leadership of the Libya mission is crucial for Obama, who has stressed limited US involvement to both voters and politicians worried about US forces becoming bogged down in another Muslim country while still occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan.

'Arab sensibilities'

The US, Britain and France agreed on Tuesday that the alliance should play a key operational role, but the agreement of all 28 NATO states is needed and they have been split over whether it should also exercise political control.

France, which launched the air campaign against Libya with Britain and the US on Saturday, argues that having a US-led NATO in charge would erode Arab support because of the alliance's unpopularity in the Arab world.

Qatar has sent four warplanes, the United Arab Emirates has offered support, and David Cameron, the British prime minister, said Kuwait and Jordan had agreed to make logistical contributions to protect civilians in Libya.

France wants to create an ad hoc steering group of member states of the coalition, including the Arab League, to exercise political control.

Laurence Lee, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Brussels, said the US, the French and the British had come to "some sort of accommodation with each other" but that there was still no final agreement.

Lee said: "On one level, the Americans, the British, have their way ... that NATO would run the military aspect of things and in turn the French would have their way, the Nato political command wouldn't be in charge and instead the plan says there would be a different sort of umbrella grouping.

"[This] would take in not just foreign ministers from Western NATO countries but foreign ministers from countries, for example, like Qatar or the Arab League ... to demonstrate a much bigger political umbrella and give a nod to the fact that NATO is acutely aware that this could be inflammatory to Muslim and Arab sensibilities."

One possible model would be the structure of the NATO-led International Peace Assistance Force in Afghanistan, in which non-NATO participating nations get a seat in the political steering group, diplomats said.

"For reasons of efficiency, we want a single command structure to run the coalition action, and NATO has such capabilities, so we must use its resources," Francois Baroin, a French government spokesman, said after a cabinet meeting in Paris.

"We are working to ensure that the coalition continues to retain the political leadership," Baroin said. "Talks with our allies are being finalised. It''s not quite nailed down yet."

UK summit

William Hague, the UK foreign minister, said on Wednesday that Britain would host an international conference in London next Tuesday to discuss progress on the Libyan intervention.

"At the conference we will discuss the situation in Libya with our allies and partners and take stock of the
implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973," Hague said in a statement.

"We will consider the humanitarian needs of the Libyan people and identify ways to support the people of Libya in their aspirations for a better future."

Hague said a "wide and inclusive range of countries" would be invited, particularly from the region.

"It is critical that the international community continues to take united and coordinated action in response to the unfolding crisis," he said.

"The meeting will form a contact group of nations to take forward this work."

Earlier French officials said the meeting would be at foreign minister level and would include the African Union, the Arab League and the associated European countries.

Turkish navy

Also on Wednesday, Turkey offered four frigates, a submarine and a support ship to help NATO enforce a UN arms embargo on Libya, the military alliance said.

Brigadier Pierre St Amand, a NATO military officer, said the alliance had so far received offers of 16 ships from a number of countries to implement the mission.

He said the ships included: a command-and-control ship from Italy; 10 frigates, including four from Turkey and one each from Britain, Spain, Greece, Italy, Canada and the US; submarines from Spain, Italy and Turkey; and auxiliary ships from Italy and Turkey.

St Amand said the NATO mission was authorised to use armed force to enforce the embargo.

The NATO mission will have the means to intercept and board suspicious ships, and the authority to fire a warning shot across the bow, a NATO official said on condition of anonymity.

"If after inspection, doubts remain as to the legitimacy of the cargo, the vessel will be diverted to a designated port for further inspection," St Amand said.

The operation was officially launched late on Tuesday after envoys of the 28-nation alliance gave the green light

[derspiess]

I'm generally pro-Obama, but I agree with you. They don't have anything close to the media control that the last administration seemed to have (reports of Obama telling congressional leaders that there'd be no raids by U.S. aircraft on Libya -- followed by B-2 raids a day later), and that's a significant failure.

That's a really cute way to characterize it.  Oh, no-- it has nothing to do with the administration lacking a coherent message.  The Obama administration just lacks all the sympathetic journalists the Bush administration had

[dps]

Well to be fair a mafia style family using force to loot the assets of the state describe a whole number of Middle Eastern regimes not in a state of collapse and describe Libya prior to the current conflict.  That's not me making a 'why not Saudi Arabia' comment, I don't buy that argment.

There are degrees of kleptocracy.  Many of the princely or monarchical middle eastern states make some attempt to create a civilian sphere with some semblance of the rule of law.   That never really existed in Libya and now that whatever passed for civil society in that country has rejected the Qadaffi dons, the fiction is laid bare.  The Gulf regimes, whatever their many faults, are not at that level of extreme.  If you were to ask "why not Syria" I would tend agree - other than for practical reasons of expediency, I can't see any need to respect the "state sovereignty" of the Assad criminal organization.

Apparently the populations of many Mid East countries are coming to similar conclusions, that their problems are created by their bogus governments. We don't see anti-West slogans and movements in these nations, at least not in their initial calls for reform or in protests in the streets. Even Syria is having some small protests. Years ago the previous ruler massacred thousands of protesters; that may not be so doable now with so much changing and so many in the world watching.

It doesn't matter how many people are watching if you don't care about their opinions on the matter.

The key question about the do-ability of it is, will the military stay loyal if they're called on to massacre their own civilian population on a large scale.

[Neil]

I think he is a retired colonel, it's just an honorary title.  He is "Guide to the Revolution" but that is not a governmental position.  There is a whole governmental structure based on councils which then nominate higher councils and eventually government ministers and he has no position in that structure. 

Your latter point is well taken; however, it just reinforces the lack of some claim of legitimacy based on state sovereignty.

Does it?  An idiosyncratic absolutist state isn't unprecedented.

[CountDeMoney]

Not to worry;  President-Elect Palin is just around the corner.  Not too much longer now.

[Josephus]

Palin wants us to bomb the hell out of those Libyans, because she doesn't think women should be married to other women.

[derspiess]

Not to worry;  President-Elect Palin is just around the corner.  Not too much longer now.

Just think of all the teachers' health insurance we could have paid for the the money we blew on those cruise missiles

[Octavian]

I'd hate to be a Libyan government artilleryman at this point in time.

I'd hate to be a Libyan at any point in time.

[CountDeMoney]

Not to worry;  President-Elect Palin is just around the corner.  Not too much longer now.

Just think of all the teachers' health insurance we could have paid for the the money we blew on those cruise missiles

Are you kidding? The teachers' unions are why we don't have enough cruise missiles.

[Slargos]

Not to worry;  President-Elect Palin is just around the corner.  Not too much longer now.

Just think of all the teachers' health insurance we could have paid for the the money we blew on those cruise missiles

Could you really? 

What's the opportunity cost of reducing the production of missiles? How many employees would have to be let go, and what would it cost to keep them fed and housed? Is a teacher's health insurance more important than a factory worker's?