BENGHAZI, Libya — As the Libyan war grinds on across
three fronts and rebel forces find themselves pinned down on their own
territory outside two strategic eastern oil cities, the rebels’ most
resolute European ally, France, is insisting that they negotiate with
Moammar Gadhafi to peacefully end their 5-month-old uprising.
Yet the rebels are sticking to their guns — literally.
They’re convinced that victory is inevitable and
adamantly refuse to negotiate directly with Gadhafi even as the French
government contends that the Libyan leader is seeking ways to relinquish
power.
After the United States formally recognized the rebel
Transitional National Council on Friday as the country’s legitimate
government body, the rebels again insisted that Gadhafi must go before
negotiations begin.
“Our position remains: no negotiations until Gadhafi,
his sons and his inner circle are gone,” said Habib Ben Ali, media
liaison for the council.
In the rebels’ de facto capital, Benghazi, commanders
lay out a battlefield strategy that seeks to allay concerns in Western
capitals over the failure of the four-month NATO air campaign to topple
the Gadhafi regime. But the unorthodox approach relies more on faith and
bluster than proven military tactics, and raises the prospect of a
prolonged conflict.
Rebel commanders say they plan to strangle Gadhafi by
cutting off Tripoli, the capital, from three directions. They predict
that government troop defections and low morale, combined with fuel and
supply shortages, will open the way to the city soon.
But rebels on each front are devising their own
strategies, with only limited direction from headquarters in Benghazi,
said Abdul Jawad, a senior rebel commander.
“We are not a traditionally structured military
organization,” Jawad said, a profound understatement given the rebels’
haphazard formations.
Rebel forces are poorly trained and equipped, with
little central command and scant grasp of military tactics. For months,
their commanders have promised the imminent “liberation” of Tripoli,
only to find themselves mired in a protracted battlefield stalemate.
There were more promises last week, as Jawad and
another prominent rebel commander, Ismail Salaby, assured followers of
“very good news” and “a big surprise” on the battlefield in coming days.
“You will be liberated very soon,” Salaby said, addressing rebels in
government-held towns.
But a day after those confident predictions, rebels
in the Nafusa Mountains in the west struggled to hold off a government
assault on a remote village the rebels had seized just a week earlier —
about 60 miles from their prize, Tripoli.
The lack of battlefield progress has frustrated North
Atlantic Treaty Organization members. Many NATO countries are urging
the two sides to negotiate, but the government and the rebels say
publicly that they intend to fight or die.
The rebels are so confident, they have laid out a
detailed plan for running the country. The opposition promises a
temporary government in Tripoli, to include representatives from areas
now held by Gadhafi, followed by national elections and a constitution
guaranteeing individual liberties. The rebels envision seating a newly
elected government within 15 months of seizing Tripoli.
Although a council spokesman told the Los Angeles
Times last month that the body had held indirect talks with government
representatives, the council refuses to take part in direct
negotiations.
“We will decide our own course, and that is to
liberate Tripoli,” said Salaby, a bearded former imam who commands the
rebels’ largest brigade.
Both sides are crippled by cash, fuel, ammunition and
other shortages. Tripoli is suffering long gasoline lines and severe
commodity shortages. Rebel fighters recently cut a major fuel line to
the capital, already crippled by the NATO sea embargo and no-fly zone.
Some rebel leaders say they plan a major offensive to
reach Tripoli before early August, the start of the monthlong Muslim
holiday of Ramadan, when daily life halts for fasting and prayer. But
others say a battlefield breakthrough in such a short time is unlikely.
Asked whether rebels could reach Tripoli by Ramadan, Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, the council vice president, hedged his bets.
“We would like to think that the tyrant would not
still be in power by Ramadan,” Ghoga replied. “But if he is still there,
then we’ll fight on and hope we can end this conflict very soon.”
Ghoga said rebels had been slowed by land mines planted by Kadafi forces and by superior firepower.
Col. Ahmed Bani, a former government air force pilot
and now the rebels’ top military spokesman, said the conflict was likely
to last into Ramadan.
“Ramadan will give our fighters an extra boost to their morale,” he said.
Gadhafi still has more than 8,000 troops in the east,
Bani said. And despite punishing daily airstrikes by NATO warplanes, he
said government forces have held on to many tanks and rocket launchers
by hiding them in civilian neighborhoods and farms where NATO fears
civilian casualties.
Gadhafi’s forces are being replenished by young
cadets from the national military academy in Tripoli and by mercenaries
from sub-Saharan Africa, Bani said. But western rebels report mass
defections of commanders and fighters. Bani said a large cadre of
defecting officers was on the Tunisian border, poised to re-enter Libya
and assist the rebel campaign.
The western rebels hope to seize the strategic
mountain city of Gharyan, which would allow them to cut Gadhafi’s
north-south supply lines to Tripoli from his southern desert stronghold
of Sabha.
Other western rebels hope to advance enough to cut
Gadhafi’s supply line along the coastal highway to the western border
with Tunisia.
Meanwhile, rebels moving west toward Tripoli from
rebel-held Misrata, 125 miles east of the capital, are closing in on
Zlitan, a government stronghold. Seizing Zlitan would propel rebels to
the outskirts of Khums, the last major coastal city protecting the
capital.
Those advances, if successful, would isolate
Gadhafi’s troops in the east in Port Brega, Ras Lanuf and the garrison
town of Surt, 275 miles east of Tripoli by road.
But the rebel strategy assumes the sustained ground
attacks mounted by Gadhafi’s forces so far will somehow fade away. It
also hinges on continued airstrikes and air and sea embargoes by NATO,
as well as underground support from rebels operating inside
government-held towns.
Bani said commanders are in daily contact with rebels
in Tripoli and other government-held cities and are able to get some
weapons to them.
“They know we’re coming,” Bani said, “and they will rise up to meet us.”
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