How far – and how fast – will Qaddafi's forces push into Libya's 'liberated' east?
Today, Muammar Qaddafi’s forces induced a panicked rebel retreat from Brega, peppering the town – home to one Libya’s largest petrochemical complexes – with rocket and mortar fire.
Pro-Qaddafi fighters raise their weapons as they are pictured during a government-organized visit for foreign media in Bin Jawwad, Libya, Saturday. Pro-Qaddafi fighters like these have been pushing rebels further back everyday. How far east will they get?
Ben Curtis/AP
Benghazi, Libya
Benghazi, the de facto capital of Libya’s rebellion, has become a city where fear-driven rumors are rapidly replacing the heady optimism of just one week ago, when the disorganized rebel militia held two of eastern Libya’s key oil installations and were vowing to march on Tripoli.
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Staff writer
Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East. Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.
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Today, Muammar Qaddafi’s forces induced a panicked rebel retreat from Brega, peppering the town – home to one Libya’s largest petrochemical complexes – with rocket and mortar fire.
It’s been the government’s pattern in recent days: Massive amounts of indirect fire from a distance, with the regime’s forces moving forward once most of the rebels withdraw. The same tactic was used last week as Qaddafi’s forces retook the town of Ras Lanuf, home to Libya’s second-largest oil export terminal
The disorganized rebel militia, still with no organized leadership and obvious involvement from the military units who have defected to the rebel side, rarely gets close enough to even see their enemy, Without the heavy weapons and training needed to return the indirect fire that is relentlessly driving them back, Qaddafi’s forces are essentially shooting ducks in a barrel.
Around the crossroads with the main coastal highway and Brega’s petrochemical complex, where rebels were massed yesterday afternoon, homes and shops were left smoldering by the government troops' fire. Last week, Qaddafi hit his own oil facilities at Ras Lanuf
Full casualties are as yet unknown, but an ambulance driver in the area said at least one car with a family seeking to flee Brega was caught in the barrage, killing a husband and wife and their two children.
How far east will Qaddafi's forces push?
Now, the road lies open to Ajdabiya, a large town 40 miles from Brega, and from there it’s just 100 miles to Benghazi. Along the road linking these towns and cities are the same militiamen – scattered, confused, and outgunned – who have been routed consistently with few loses to Qaddafi’s forces in recent days.
With momentum on his side, Qaddafi and his loyalists are also stepping up a propaganda campaign against the rebels, seeking to encourage fence-sitting Libyans to side with what they’re portraying as a winning team, and promising death for those who don’t.
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