One thing is clear in Libya: Rebels can't advance without air support

In downtown Benghazi, a billboard erected in late February insisted in English, “No to foreign intervention. The Libyan people can do this on their own.” That was torn down by rebels last week in a tacit acknowledgment that actually, the rebels can't do this on their own.

Indeed, three things have become clear in the international air campaign to protect Libya’s uprising against Muammar Qaddafi that is now in its 12th day:

• Foreign airstrikes decisively tip the battlefield in the untrained, if eager, rebel army’s direction;
• The rebels can advance easily along the sparsely inhabited desert running west towards Sirte, Qaddafi’s hometown, as long as foreign warplanes are plowing the road in front of them;
• Absent that air support, Qaddafi’s army drives them relentlessly back.

We’ve seen all of that in the past two weeks since the United Nations cleared the way for airstrikes. The armored column that threatened to overrun Benghazi, the rebel capital, was devastated by a few hours of attacks from French Mirage fighter jets on March 19.

After British Tornado aircraft destroyed at least 20 tanks, rocket launchers, and armored personnel carriers around Ajdabiya at the end of last week, the rebels finally broke the siege of that town, the last major population center before Sirte, 300 miles west.

The rebels then began their second surge across the desert, making it to the outskirts of Sirte – Qaddafi's hometown – on Sunday in their pickup trucks and Chevy sedans behind an advancing curtain of airstrikes that Qaddafi’s forces had no answer for. Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawwad, two towns they lost before the UN Security Council took action, were easily reclaimed for “Free Libya.”

But then yesterday, for whatever reason, the sorties that had disrupted Qaddafi’s supply lines and made it impossible to move his forces east dried up.

Government troops began to flank the disorganized rebels at desert crossroads, and began to pepper them with the same rocket and mortar fire that drove them back earlier this month.

At least 10 rebels have died in the fighting around Ras Lanuf and the hamlet of Uqayla, which is further east, in the past 24 hours, according to the hospitals at Ras Lanuf and Ajdabiya.

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