Enjoy That Feeling

By BJ Bjornson

The results of the first airstrikes on Libya are beginning to pay dividends for the rebel forces

The destruction brought a new hope to Libyan rebels seeking to end Gaddafi�s 41-year-long rule. Less than 24 hours earlier, they were on their heels as Gaddafi�s tanks and trucks pushed into Benghazi, the cradle of Libya�s month-old rebellion, raining a barrage of artillery and rockets that transformed the city of 1 million people into a lifeless shadow of itself.

A spokesman for the rebels told the television network al-Jazeera on Sunday that more than 8,000 Libyans who had joined their movement had been killed in the revolt. There was anger among residents and rebel fighters at what they called the international community�s slowness in authorizing a no-fly zone and other measures to stop the growing tide of civilian casualties.

. . .

The airstrikes in the early hours of Sunday were the first evidence of the military intervention by the United States and its European allies in this part of eastern Libya. The assault on Gaddafi�s ground forces is expected to have delivered a significant blow to his ambitions of retaking Benghazi and perhaps laying siege to other cities.

�We hope this will help us liberate our brothers in Misurata and Zawiyah,� said Adam al-Libi, 29, a rebel fighter, referring to two other cities under siege by Gaddafi�s forces. There were reports Sunday that government tanks had entered Misurata, another sign of Gaddafi�s defiance of the West.

Along the highway, eight tanks and a similar number of armored personnel carriers were reduced to mangled clumps of searing-hot metal. Russian Grad missile launchers, pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, amphibious armored vehicles and tank transport carriers also were destroyed, their carcasses littering the sides of the road.

The amount of heavy weaponry Gaddafi had massed along the highway suggested that his forces were preparing for a major siege of Benghazi. Less than five miles from Benghazi, Gaddafi loyalists had scrawled on a wall: �We are here to fight the rats,� a reference to Gaddafi�s labeling of the rebels as �rodents.�

It shouldn�t take too long for Qaddafi�s forces to realize that moving significant amounts of heavy equipment across open territory in the face of an overwhelmingly superior air power is a good way to litter the desert with their bodies.  Assuming they�re not suicidal, they should be mostly keeping said heavy weaponry put and working to mask any movements they do make.  Quick advances are now impossible, but in places where they have forces already in place, the game will start getting far more difficult.

Reports are that Qaddafi is already looking to use human shields to deter strikes against stationary strategic targets, and once battles start taking place within cities, rather than the areas between them, where the tanks and artillery will be placed within heavily built up areas, the usefulness of airstrikes to support rebel activities will decrease dramatically, all of which means that these first few heady days of easily identifiable military targets won�t last very long.

Assuming Qaddafi�s forces aren�t suicidal enough to allow themselves to be chewed to pieces from the air, the question becomes what happens next?  The airstrikes have given the rebels breathing room and likely saved Benghazi from being conquered, but it still doesn�t mean that said rebels have the weaponry available to retake the cities they�ve lost in the last couple of weeks, or even hold on to those where Qaddafi�s forces are still pushing forward in places such as Misrata.  The question for the next few days is whether the rebels can hold and retake the areas they�ve lost to the Qaddafi loyalists.

If they can�t, the question of just what the US, UK, France, and the other minor contributors to the �no-fly zone� are supposed to do next will come into play sooner rather than later.

As with most military interventions, the public tends to be pretty finicky, and without visible progress, patience and forbearance for the intervention will wane within a couple of weeks.  (Well, unless you�re a Republican, in which case you�re already screaming that it�s wrong for the President to do what you�ve been shouting at him to do because even now that he�s doing it, he�s doing it wrong!)  And like it or not, airstrikes on their own don�t tend to be the most effective of tools.

Assumptions of what air power alone can achieve against ground forces have usually turned out to be overrated; witness for example the relatively small amount of damage done to Serbian armoured forces by NATO in 1999.

Results in Afghanistan in 2001 were better, but in that case the integration of Special Forces allowed air power to be targeted in the most efficient way.

. . .

The second aspect is dealing with the air environment over Libya. Gaddafi's air force uses old technology, which poses only a small challenge to the advanced planes being deployed against it.

. . .

Of course at high altitude a pilot need not fear these aspects, but here's the rub: similar limitations in Kosovo are believed to have seriously impacted the ability of allied pilots to find and hit targets. That was in an environment where only one side was using tanks.

In Libya, both sides are using pretty much the same equipment and front lines are blurred. The situation is even more confused in towns and cities, where most of the fighting is taking place. Clearly identifying who is who, and striking the right targets accurately without help from trained forward observers on the ground, will be an immense challenge that should not be downplayed.

Gaddafi knows this and will no doubt be seeking to move his units closer to the rebels in order to maximise this difficulty.

The places to watch for the next little while are Misrata and Ajdabiya.  Misrata is the last major city in western Libya under rebel control and Qaddafi�s forces are subjecting it to heavy shelling from tanks and artillery.  Whether or not the coalition can prevent its fall and stop the heavy shelling will be one of the first real tests of whether or not airpower alone can really protect Libyan civilians from Qaddafi.  It doesn�t help that Misrata is where reports of Qaddafi�s forces using human shields are coming from.

Ajdabiya is the first major town back on the road from the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi.  It becomes the first major test of whether or not the coalition �no-fly zone� and accompanying airstrikes are sufficient to tip the balance of forces to the rebels.  If the rebels can�t retake Ajdabiya, any prospect of them unseating Qaddafi drops to nearly nil.  And without visible progress from the rebels on the ground, the divisions that are already starting to show in the coalition regarding leadership roles will only widen, as competing demands for either further intervention or walking away from being bogged down in a stalemate get going in earnest.

Have to note one good knee-slapper from the stories I read this morning:

U.S. Army Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of the U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for Libya, told reporters Monday that the allies wouldn't take sides in the conflict.

Right.  Because bombing the hell out of the pro-Qaddafi forces doesn�t constitute taking sides.