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Reportage
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It is a measure of the disarray currently afflicting the rebels in their quest to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi that they cannot even agree on who is responsible for leading the offensive. At present, there are two generals – both previously Gaddafi loyalists – who claim leadership, and have their own devoted bands of followers. General Abdul Fattah Younes, who until a few weeks ago served as Gaddafi’s interior minister, claims to have been given command of the ragtag force battling to keep the dictator’s forces at bay along the eastern coast. But his position is being challenged by General Khalifa Heftir, who fled into exile in the 1980s and became a close confidant of the CIA. Heftir’s faction claims that Younes is responsible for the rebels’ disastrous performance in the recent fighting at Brega and Ajdabiya; in turn, Younes’s supporters claim Heftir is a CIA stooge.
In the interests of battlefield cohesion, you would think that the Transitional National Council, the opposition’s civilian leadership, would have stepped in to put an end to this unhelpful squabbling. But the authority of this self-appointed, 31-member body is itself being undermined by infighting over who should control policy.
From the outset, Nato’s military effort has been severely hampered by the rebels’ disorganisation and lack of experience – which is no doubt why our National Security Council (NSC) has opted to send a group of senior officers to provide a degree of organisational infrastructure.
It is to be hoped that this mission enjoys considerably more success than the NSC’s previous attempt to engage with the rebels, when it decided last month that the best way to make contact was to have a joint MI6/SAS team dropped into eastern Libya in the middle of the night by a special forces helicopter. Within minutes, the group was captured and disarmed by a group of Libyan farmers.
Posted in: Transitional National Council
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