The dictator's forces have counter-attacked, taking back several towns in the west. After a week of heroic resistance, the small city of Az-Zawiya was blasted into smithereens and occupied by regime forces, though it seems many of the rebels escaped to fight another day. Misurata, Libya's third-largest city, is still holding fast, as are the far western towns, though for how long, noone can know.
What is clear is that while support for the dictator is minimal – the population of Tripoli is sullen and morose, the state propaganda victory parades shown on state TV are pathetically small, and it took the regime a full week for its crack troops to defeat the largely unarmed protestors of Az-Zawiya, a small city – the revolutionaries don't yet have the organization to topple the state's military machine. The revolutionaries made a brave but futile attempt to take the town of Sirte with nothing more than AK-47s and pickup trucks, and were driven all the way back to Ajdabiya by tanks, air-strikes and rocket barrages.
Still, the regime's greatest threat remains the eastern cities. They are not just the heartland of the rebellion, they are located in hilly terrain unfavorable to open tank warfare (in fact, the road to Tobruk was the site of some memorable battles in WWII). The regime is hastily throwing its most capable brigades at the east, knowing full well that they need to strike before the UN sanctions and the loss of oil revenues bites. Unlike Saddam-era Iraq, which had a sizeable middle class and trained engineers capable of keeping the refineries running, the Libyan regime is utterly dependent on skilled foreign labor.
The revolutionaries must play for time, dig solid anti-tank defenses, and mobilize its civilian population. Properly organized, the 1 million citizens of the east can put 50,000 soldiers into the field and eventually defeat the regime's mercenaries and elite brigades, which do not number more than 30,000. The revolutionaries control the border with Egypt, and have access to fresh weapons and supplies. The regime's obsolete, poorly-maintained tanks will become increasingly less effective and eventually useless, once the revolutionaries acquire sufficient anti-tank weaponry. Tunisia's nascent democracy will enforce UN sanctions on its border; and it will not be possible to export significant amounts of oil through Algeria or Chad. The only card the regime has left to play is air-power, and a UN-sponsored no-fly zone can take care of that.
I know what you're thinking: Slorgzilla has jumped the shark and joined the neocons, who are barking for another disastrous colonial war.
Nope, no sharks here. Any direct foreign intervention in Libya would be a catastrophe. But the problem is how best to deal with the legacy of *past* forms of foreign intervention. In a 2009 report for the US Congressional Research Office, analyst Richard F. Grimmett estimated the countries of Europe sold the regime $1.3 billion of military equipment during 2000-2009, Russia sold $600 million, and other countries an estimated $300 million worth. Now that $2.2 billion is being used by a murderous tyrant to kill his own people. Consider further that the European Union has been the main customer of Libya's oil, effectively financing the dictatorship.
Noone can fight the Libyan people's battle for them. But we can at least neutralize the regime's air-force, and save as many Libyan lives as possible.
No Libyan blood for oil, and no Libyan blood for arms sales, either.
