The Libyan rebel council is launching a campaign of arrests nationwide (or at least the portion of the nation they control) against militia factions which refused to obey their demands to operate under the council’s control, terming the dozens arrested “Gadhafi supporters.”
This included an attack on the eastern border village of Josh, which has long since been emptied of residents but was occupied by a militia faction. The rebels briefly captured the village, but after “several hours of fighting” they abandoned it once again, showing how difficult concrete territorial gains are to make in the long civil war.
Efforts to root out unofficial militias as “Gadhafi loyalists” started yesterday, when troops attacked a license plate factory in Benghazi, killing four members of a rival faction which refused to disarm.
The moves seem to be sitting quite well with NATO, as France has announced that it is sending another $259 million of “assets” to the rebel council. There is growing concern, however, that the council’s moves toward centralization, particularly when they aren’t making any inroads against Gadhafi, are just creating more enemies.
Hi Jason,
I also have a few misgivings about the situation in Libya, but I am disappointed to see your chosen stance to be antiwar means you also choose to ignore inconvenient facts. For example, your last comment says the rebels aren't making any inroads against Gadhafi.
Well, let's see: The have taken over almost all of the mountain region SW of Tripoli in the past month. They have made a flash raid in the deep south (as reported on July 21 by an embedded WSJ reporter Charles Levinson to take control of a swathe of far-south teritory including the border crossing with Niger, and could from there threaten the main Gadhafi town of Sabha. They have wrested control of part (soon maybe all) of Brega from entrenched Gadhafi troops, making an attack on Ras Lanuf a possibility. They have just (it appears) captured Zlitan, moving west from Misrata.
The Nafusa campaign is most telling, because if the rebels can oust the Gadhafi troops from Jawsh and one or two remaining other holdouts in that area, this will free up those hundreds of soldiers to push up towards Gharyan, the last main town before Tripoli.
The next time you make a sweeping statement, make sure you have the right broom!
Regards,
Roger Monson, London
But they'll lose it by tomorrow. Then they'll retake it the day after and lose it the day after that. Repeat step 1 – 2 ad nauseum.