elbows
Well-Known Member
Its rather a long way away, and there are likely fears about being attacked from the air, or of leaving Benghazi not strongly defended enough.
There are still plenty of gaps in our knowledge, but it sounds like the armed contingent on both sides has been pretty small really by almost any standard. This may yet turn out to be inaccurate, but as various reports that have been coming in for days about various groups matching on Tripoli seem to have amounted to nothing that we know of, and the media are now coming to the conclusion that the worst fears about scale of attacks from the air have proven false, Im inclined to think that some of my criticisms about the picture twitter was painting were reasonable.
The good news of recent days has been that the people appear to have managed to hold off regime attempts to retake certain locations in the west. That and the multiple defections, along with signs that the will of the people in Tripoli to protest has not been utterly crushed by the violence. There are some unconfirmed reports that some of the military defections may have come undone though, although Im not sure how much this means considering the relative lack of pro-regime military muscle that has actually been on show. Saif was making thinly veiled threats today along the lines that they had been holding their forces back so far, and the only way to know if there is even a shred of truth to this claim is to wait and see if the regime pulls something out of its hat on the ground. I find it quite hard to believe that if they actually had more military capability, they would not have already used it to try to take back the western locations that have fallen. Maybe they only have enough capability to keep Tripoli just within their grip, and to launch very limited attacks on a couple of western locations.
There is a video that has appeared recently that is supposedly showing a statement from Libyan navy switching sides. But as I cant speak arabic I cant confirm what they are saying.
Todays propaganda show seems like a very strange thing, completely out of sync with events. It may be that this was Saifs preferred strategy all along, but his ideas didnt win the argument within the regime during the first phase, with someone else favouring a massive show of force. After that strategy failed he has been given the chance to try it his way, but its too late to win back international support so his efforts seem doomed to fail. Either that or they are simply playing for time, time to escape or to try to get some new capability for violence somehow. One of the defectors that has turned up in Egypt was rumoured to have been trying to whip up support from certain tribes, or find more mercenaries from abroad, but he failed and so sought asylum in Egypt instead.
