Uprising in Libya

[K. A. Pital]

Shouldn't it be "civil war and military intervention in Libya" by now?

[Thanas]

Maybe, but as these are directly resulting from the uprising and still part of the overall uprising, I think this fits better - especially considering how this thread still deals mostly with the reasons for and the process of the uprising.

[Sea Skimmer]

It seems unlikely to you that the developed nations' forces can act far in excess of the resolution?

If we did the battle of Misratah would be over by now. In fact it looks like we aren’t even pushing the resolution to is clear limit of attacking forces merely threatening to attack civilians, most likely because it is a goal to minimize military deaths as well as civilian. With the number of sorties being flown, no way should a brigade sized force have any tanks or artillery left, but the Qaddafi forces at Misratah do still have that kind of equipment because most of the time NATO planes are only firing on vehicles they see firing at civilian areas.

*shrugs* To me, it seems kinda obvious and even dull. If there's evidence, it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand just because we're talking about First World nations militaries involved, or a UN resolution authorizing the operation.

I'm sorry Stats, how many civilians killed by coalition air strikes so far, about zero that anyone can find in a week right? We'd like to keep it that way, and that means bombing traffic going down the coastal road when all of Qaddafi forces in that region have switched to using civilian vehicles is a non starter. Its too much risk to make sense.

Where are these "reports", anyway?

BBC, Al Jazeera. People can look it up themselves, I'm not going to repost every single thing I read. Most of what reaches the point of being reported by them as turned out to be true, more then 75% at this stage, but I my best to not mention stuff that looks highly questionable.

[HMS Sophia]

I updated the title.

Thanks for that

[Tribun]

Guess what's wrong with this picture:

(Sorry, the picture is too big to post it directly, so here the link)

[CaptainChewbacca]

Is it just not true?

[Vendetta]

Is it just not true?

It's true that there were large demonstrations in London. It's even true that some of the demonstrators were protesting about involvement in Libya. However, the vast majority and entire point of the demonstration was protesting about the Tories' budget cuts.

[Lord Woodlouse]

Any idea what kind of resistance is waiting at Sirte?

[Big Orange]

Do you realize how incredibly short sighted that thinking is? The west already had extensive oil contracts with Gaddafi, oil prices have only risen since the UN got involved, driving up the price of any and all oil in the world, not just what comes out of Libya. Air strikes present a massive risk of exploding oil facilities. No ground troops are allowed.

I'm in full support of the no fly zone on principle, Quaddafi's mass murdering antics can't just carry on within a short plane flight away from Western Europe, but I apologise about being jaded about Britain's role in this and its past relationship with the lunatic, listening too much to the anti-war crowd (who were right about Iraq, but seem to be in auto-drive about the current Libyan intervention). OK, I've read up on the appreciable benefits of a no-fly zone (the data's days old) and here's on article on how the current Libyan situation differs from the '03 Iraq fiasco:

Top Ten Ways that Libya 2011 is Not Iraq 2003

Here are the differences between George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the current United Nations action in Libya:

1. The action in Libya was authorized by the United Nations Security Council. That in Iraq was not. By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense or with UNSC authorization. Most countries in the world are signatories to the charter and bound by its provisions.

2. The Libyan people had risen up and thrown off the Qaddafi regime, with some 80-90 percent of the country having gone out of his hands before he started having tank commanders fire shells into peaceful crowds. It was this vast majority of the Libyan people that demanded the UN no-fly zone. In 2002-3 there was no similar popular movement against Saddam Hussein.

3. There was an ongoing massacre of civilians, and the threat of more such massacres in Benghazi, by the Qaddafi regime, which precipitated the UNSC resolution. Although the Saddam Hussein regime had massacred people in the 1980s and early 1990s, nothing was going on in 2002-2003 that would have required international intervention.

4. The Arab League urged the UNSC to take action against the Qaddafi regime, and in many ways precipitated Resolution 1973. The Arab League met in 2002 and expressed opposition to a war on Iraq. (Reports of Arab League backtracking on Sunday were incorrect, based on a remark of outgoing Secretary-General Amr Moussa that criticized the taking out of anti-aircraft batteries. The Arab League reaffirmed Sunday and Moussa agreed Monday that the No-Fly Zone is what it wants).

5. None of the United Nations allies envisages landing troops on the ground, nor does the UNSC authorize it. Iraq was invaded by land forces.

6. No false allegations were made against the Qaddafi regime, of being in league with al-Qaeda or of having a nuclear weapons program. The charge is massacre of peaceful civilian demonstrators and an actual promise to commit more such massacres.

7. The United States did not take the lead role in urging a no-fly zone, and was dragged into this action by its Arab and European allies. President Obama pledges that the US role, mainly disabling anti-aircraft batteries and bombing runways, will last “days, not months” before being turned over to other United Nations allies.

8. There is no sectarian or ethnic dimension to the Libyan conflict, whereas the US Pentagon conspired with Shiite and Kurdish parties to overthrow the Sunni-dominated Baathist regime in Iraq, setting the stage for a prolonged and bitter civil war.

9. The US has not rewarded countries such as Norway for entering the conflict as UN allies, but rather a genuine sense of outrage at the brutal crimes against humanity being committed by Qaddafi and his forces impelled the formation of this coalition. The Bush administration’s ‘coalition of the willing’ in contrast was often brought on board by what were essentially bribes.

10. Iraq in 2002-3 no longer posed a credible threat to its neighbors. A resurgent Qaddafi in Libya with petroleum billions at his disposal would likely attempt to undermine the democratic experiments in Tunisia and Egypt, blighting the lives of millions.

Informed Comment

Stopping Gaddafi's thugs and tanks from massacring thousands of people is perfectly fine and dandy, but its still troubling that it has to come to direct military action (but at least it's reactive instead of mindlessly pro-active). I'm worried about the still potentially messy follow up that's inevitably going to happen later this year.

[Eulogy]

Of course force has to be used. This is a lunatic monster leading an army of monsters and obedient drones. How else is Gadzooks gonna be stopped and brought to justice?

[Sea Skimmer]

Any idea what kind of resistance is waiting at Sirte?

One reporter on the BBC said the streets are full of armed civilians and some uniformed soldiers; so likely more then enough resistance to prevent further rebel advance for the moment (as in the rebels will need a real force to get past, but they might bypass it in some strength). But i will also note that about 30 days ago we also had reports of deep splits in the population at Sirte. They may all fight against the rebels, or the city may undergo an uprising when they arrive. I don't think the rebels will be quick to push up on Sirte though, because of how unknown the situation is for them at the moment, and how far they are strung out now.

[Ariphaos]

The opposition is claiming that they just walked into a defenseless Sirte. Gaddafi's forces appear to be retreating to Tripoli.

[Koolaidkirby]

do you have a source on this?

[K. A. Pital]

Al Jazeera's reports of the war in Libya have been notoriously inaccurate, so I wouldn't put much thought behind something shown there. A Russian reporter went to Abjabiya just after an Al-Jazeera report that there was a hospital bombed by Qaddafi's aviation, and lo, the hospital was not bombed. Also, word is that Qaddafi opened arms depots in the West of Libya and gives out weapons to civilians in his side of Libya. Advancing any further without massive civilian support in Qaddafi territory would be untenable for the rebels.

I'm sorry Stats, how many civilians killed by coalition air strikes so far, about zero that anyone can find in a week right?

How many actual civilians (non-combatants) were killed in the conflict at all? Reliable deathtolls will come after the whole war is over, one way or the other. The intervention is limited to airstrikes and is only days old. We have yet to see if this will be the new Yugoslavia.

Also, use Google translate on this:
http://top.rbc.ru/special/21/03/2011/563161.shtml

No reports, say you? Russian bloggers have been inside the Libyan conflict for quite a few weeks, and it seems they report a picture which is a little different from the NATO picture. Bombing of hospitals in and around Tripoli? Then again, maybe Quaddafi people are posing as Russian bloggers? Crazy as it is. Like I said, we have to see what happens.

[Edward Yee]

I just...

I need to know if this here is what LibyaFeb17 claims it is.

Reuters has a "Libyan rebel spokesman" claiming that Sirte has fallen to the rebels.

[Ariphaos]

Al Jazeera's reports of the war in Libya have been notoriously inaccurate, so I wouldn't put much thought behind something shown there. A Russian reporter went to Abjabiya just after an Al-Jazeera report that there was a hospital bombed by Qaddafi's aviation, and lo, the hospital was not bombed. Also, word is that Qaddafi opened arms depots in the West of Libya and gives out weapons to civilians in his side of Libya. Advancing any further without massive civilian support in Qaddafi territory would be untenable for the rebels.

I'm sorry Stats, how many civilians killed by coalition air strikes so far, about zero that anyone can find in a week right?

How many actual civilians (non-combatants) were killed in the conflict at all? Reliable deathtolls will come after the whole war is over, one way or the other. The intervention is limited to airstrikes and is only days old. We have yet to see if this will be the new Yugoslavia.

Also, use Google translate on this:
http://top.rbc.ru/special/21/03/2011/563161.shtml

No reports, say you? Russian bloggers have been inside the Libyan conflict for quite a few weeks, and it seems they report a picture which is a little different from the NATO picture. Bombing of hospitals in and around Tripoli? Then again, maybe Quaddafi people are posing as Russian bloggers? Crazy as it is. Like I said, we have to see what happens.

After the Russian coverage of the Iraq war, I'll take my grain of salt with me as far as trusting it is concerned.

[Sea Skimmer]

Also, use Google translate on this:
http://top.rbc.ru/special/21/03/2011/563161.shtml

No reports, say you? Russian bloggers have been inside the Libyan conflict for quite a few weeks, and it seems they report a picture which is a little different from the NATO picture. Bombing of hospitals in and around Tripoli? Then again, maybe Quaddafi people are posing as Russian bloggers? Crazy as it is. Like I said, we have to see what happens.

I won’t waste my time, a random blog is not a news source. Words mean very little unless they are confirmed by pictures or videos later, I’ll trust the big names in news because at least in this war, they've come up with pictures and video a damn lot to back stuff up with. Its not been perfect, but fairly good. If a hospital was bombed in Tripoli, how on earth would Qaddafi not bus the western media in to film it within 1 hour flat? We would have video of this spreading across the globe within 90 minutes! Where is the video? While is this not a top global news story? Its not like Al Jazeera would hesitate even slightly to put a video on the air of Obama himself strangling a baby in the ruins of an orphanage.

In fact not a single bit of air raid damage to civilian structures of any kind has been shown to reporters in Tripoli or any other place in Libya. Not even a single house damaged by falling anti aircraft fire as been presented (which suggest few people are shooting back) and exactly one attempt at blatantly faking damage to a house has showed up. Qaddafi has claimed the west has bombed hospitals, fishing boats, civilian buses and numerous homes. NOT A SINGLE BIT of this has been proven. Meanwhile what has been shown is Qaddafi goons dragging away a women and beating her up as they do so. Who to believe right?

I doubt Qaddafi is posting as bloggers, it would be far easier to simply pay the bloggers to lie. Qaddafi has however been hacking rebel websites and using all means possible to spread complete lies so anything is possible.

Think about it Stas. Tripoli has over 1.5 million people. If even 10% of those people would openly support Qaddafi that would be enough for a 150,000 person rally. But no pro Qaddafi rally that has appeared that was even remotely that size. The largest I have seen anything of was hardly more then two thousand people, if not fewer and most are in the dozens or low hundreds. Hell even 1% is 15,000 people, and even that has not happened. Suspicious no? Not that I think not even 1% of the population supports Qaddafi, but he is clearly lacking mass popular support and his forces in the field have shown themselves to be short on infantry.

I and many others have begin to speculate recently that it is entirely possible that a large chunk if not almost all of the pro Qaddafi demonstrators are paid, and indeed it was alleged by people in the country earlier in the war that Qaddafi was importing people as demonstrators to Tripoli, from the south of the country and from other African countries, more so then he was recruiting mercenaries. Is this old report true? I don’t know, but it’s certainly more then possible for a man with six billion dollars in gold alone to have hired several thousand people to wave flags around. We know for a 100% fact that Qaddafi was busing his own demonstrators around Tripoli in the first two weeks of the war, this of course does not prove the demonstrators are not willing supporters, but its obvious a very large stage act is going on. We also know that all movements of foreign reporters in Tripoli are being heavily restricted and they usually won’t even let them film from vehicles while Qaddafis own men drive the reporters to the scene they are to report from. They just get driven from one pro Qaddafi rally of 100 people to another pro Qaddafi rally of 100 people.

[Zinegata]

I wouldn't exactly trust Russian bloggers on the supposed number of civilian casualties due to Coalition bombing either.

Moreover, there was an extremely lame attempt by the Qadafi regime to show fake evidence of civilian casualties this week. Jon Simpson and some international correspondents were trucked to a site where a civilian was supposedly wounded by a coalition missile strike, except...

1) The "missile crater" was so shallow it could have been dug by a dog.

2) The "shrapnel" that supposedly peppered a nearby home was clearly bullet holes made by somebody firing his AK-47 randomly at a wall.

3) The people interviewed couldn't agree if the wounded person was a 16 year old girl or a four year old boy.

The only real "evidence" on the scene was some fragments that did look like it came from some kind of missile. But given that the Qadafi regime had tried to incompetently stage a fake "civilian casualties bombing" as opposed to bringing the journalists to an actual bombed-out hospital, I would take any report of civilian casualties from the Qadafi regime and its supporters with a grain of salt until independently verified.

[Sea Skimmer]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ma ... eign-press

This is a nice short report on the controls and Qaddafi is imposing on foreign reporters in Tripoli. No mention of any damaged hospitals. Far far from it.

Honestly I am simply amazed that bomb fragmentation or falling AA fire has not produced at least some real damage to civilian buildings Qaddafi could show off, I never thought this would be so clean. But it looks like the coalition is only dropping bombs and missiles set to delay action in Tripoli, so they make big craters but at the same time highly localize the blast and fragmentation effects.

[Zinegata]

Honestly I am simply amazed that bomb fragmentation or falling AA fire has not produced at least some real damage to civilian buildings Qaddafi could show off, I never thought this would be so clean.

I suspect it's because trucking them to the areas with some damage to civilian buildings will also let the journalists see rows of burning Libyan tanks, airplanes, or other legitimate military gear.

It's interesting to note that even in the fake "civilian bombing" piece that was reported by the BBC and Jon Simpson, they passed by and filmed a wrecked mobile radar vehicle that the Qadafi regime wasn't able to clean up for the cameras.

I suspect that the regime is so desperately short of manpower that they couldn't clean up the wreck, so they instead picked up fragments of the missile from the destroyed radar vehicle, and used it as one of the props for that staged civilian bombing site instead.

[Sea Skimmer]

I suspect it's because trucking them to the areas with some damage to civilian buildings will also let the journalists see rows of burning Libyan tanks, airplanes, or other legitimate military gear.

Unlikely, no fighting with heavy weapons is known to have taken place took place within Tripoli itself. Machine guns, and maybe some strafing from helicopters were used, but that's the limit. The T-72 tanks seen in the streets before they crushed Zawiya didn't need to use the main guns because no one had RPGs or many weapons at all in the early days.

It's interesting to note that even in the fake "civilian bombing" piece that was reported by the BBC and Jon Simpson, they passed by and filmed a wrecked mobile radar vehicle that the Qadafi regime wasn't able to clean up for the cameras.

I suspect that the regime is so desperately short of manpower that they couldn't clean up the wreck, so they instead picked up fragments of the missile from the destroyed radar vehicle, and used it as one of the props for that staged civilian bombing site instead.

That could be. I'm not so sure those pieces were even from a missile though, they could have been from a smashed up microwave for all one could really tell at least in the video I saw. Doesn't matter anyway. The damage faking was so pathetic its amazing; you would have thought they could have at least gotten a live 152mm shell, buried it halfway into the ground, and exploded it by a command wire. That could have produced a convincing damage pattern and made reporters at least wonder if perhaps something small like a Hellfire had struck. Bringing in a real 500lb bomb would have also worked pretty well! I really don't put it pasty Qaddafi to blow up one of his own hospitals before this is over; the fact that nothing like this has happened suggests he is short of smart people as well as warm bodies.

[Thanas]

It is telling that he could not hold on to his birthplace - especially in a tribal society.

[Zinegata]

Re wrecked hardware: Yeah, probably no tanks in Tripoli itself.

What I meant was that it's possible they could have trucked the journalists to a civilian building near a military base outside of Tripoli that got damaged.

However, Qadafi's henchmen are probably more scared that the journalists will simply ignore the minor damage on the civilian building and instead show the extensive damage inflicted on the military base - which would clearly send the message to Qadafi's frontline forces and supporters that the Coalition bombing is working and they are fucked.

I really don't put it pasty Qaddafi to blow up one of his own hospitals before this is over; the fact that nothing like this has happened suggests he is short of smart people as well as warm bodies.

Or, as Jon Stewart once joked, even his own media apparatus and security forces may have given up listening to him and are just making the most half-assed attempts to "follow orders". Kinda hard to want to follow the orders of somebody who rambles on national TV.

It really makes me wonder what would have happened if the Coalition started bombing just one week earlier than it actually did. Given how quickly the regime's forces are collapsing despite being on the brink of taking Benghazi just a week prior, we could've seen Gadafi ousted much sooner.

[Eframepilot]

It is telling that he could not hold on to his birthplace - especially in a tribal society.

He hasn't lost Sirte quite yet. The initial reports seem to have been based on rebel scouts encountering little resistance at first. But now actual battle has begun there.

[Tribun]

It is telling that he could not hold on to his birthplace - especially in a tribal society.

He hasn't lost Sirte quite yet. The initial reports seem to have been based on rebel scouts encountering little resistance at first. But now actual battle has begun there.

Yep, there's fighting on the road to the city. The city itself, surprisingly, is reported to be empty, so propably most of the residents, which are known to be fanatically pro-Gaddafi, realized that their city is near the front and moved to Tripoli.

In other news, parts of the army in the Kurfa region have defected to the Rebels.