Some thoughts on yesterday’s 9/11 Benghazi hearing

As I watched the hearing committee go back and forth over the circumstances surrounding the 9/11 Benghazi attack it became painfully evident that there were two issues being discussed, almost entirely independently from each other.

The first of these was the security failure. Key personnel asked for more security and Deputy Assistant Secretary Lamb rejected the request. In retrospect this was a supremely bad move on her part. Ms. Lamb obviously has a lot on her plate, and the security demands of Benghazi were evidently just one among dozens of locations demanding attention and resources.

This is the sort of unpleasant, boring, and banal allocation work that is the hallmark of mid-level management - the drudgery of budgetary concerns combined with the sort of administrative decision-making that inspires resentment in your subordinates and contempt in your superiors. The type of work that exists in the middle strata of corporations, schools, government agencies, militaries, and any other top-down mass human endeavor where someone is needed to nitpick over financial minutia.

DAS Lam was most likely doing her job the way she's always done it – attending to the letter of the law, with less of an eye towards its spirit. A different string of decisions on her part probably wouldn’t have enabled the security staff to repel the attacks, but some of those who died that night might still be alive today.

This is certainly an awful state of affairs, and Ms. Lamb should've had the decency to tender her resignation sometime over the past month, but it’s hardly a cause for a Congressional hearing. Deadly attacks on embassies and consulates are far less common now than they were during the Regan years, but they still happen on a regular basis. Note the following:

·         June 14, 2002, U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan - Suicide bomber kills 12 and injures 51. 

·         February 20, 2003, international diplomatic compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Truck bomb kills 17.

·         February 28, 2003, U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan - Gunmen on motorcycles killed two consulate guards. 

·         July 30, 2004, U.S. embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan - Suicide bomber kills two.   

·         December 6, 2004,U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - Militants stormed and occupied perimeter wall. Five killed, 10 wounded.   

·         March 2, 2006, U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan - Suicide car bomber killed four, including a U.S. diplomat directly targeted by the assailants. 

·         September 12, 2006, U.S. embassy in Damascus, Syria - Gunmen attacked embassy with grenades, automatic weapons, and a car bomb (though second truck bomb failed to detonate). One killed and 13 wounded.

·         July 9, 2008, U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey - Armed men attacked consulate with pistols and shotguns. Three policemen killed.   

·         September 17, 2008, U.S. embassy in Sana'a, Yemen - Militants dressed as policemen attacked the embassy with RPGs, rifles, grenades and car bombs. Six Yemeni soldiers and seven civilians were killed. Sixteen more were injured. 

The second issue at play in the hearing was a very different one: the shifting statements regarding the attack that were issued by the State Department and the White House. This is where pundits grow shrill, and certain committee members start to yell. This is also where ignorance and idiocy vigorously rears its head.

Why did the State Department, and in particular ambassador Rice, make such an obviously incorrect statement regarding the nature of the attacks on the Embassy? And why did they maintained that line for almost a week when everyone knew that any connection between the notorious anti-Islamist video and this specific attack was minimal at best?

The answer to this is simple, and for those who were watching the testimony of Ambassador Kennedy it should have been painfully obvious. The official statements by Susan Rice and the others during the first week after the attacks were strictly limited to what they were given permission to say by the CIA.

It wasn’t based on the “intelligence we had at the time”. It was very strictly controlled messaging under orders from the CIA. In spite of the clear inconsistencies between Rice’s statement and the obvious facts on the ground, the script that the White House and the State Department had to stick to was the one they had been given by the CIA. Until the D/CIA gave them a new script, it's all they could say.

(Frankly, in their rush to politicize this incident, the Oversight Committee has done a major disservice to the CIA, and created additional danger for their on-the-ground ops in Libya)

The building that was attacked in Benghazi was a base of operations for the CIA, and a consulate in name only. This attack was a major intelligence failure on the part of the CIA, and they are in the middle of a very serious investigation into the particulars (which is why yesterday’s committee didn’t get access to the security videos, among other things). As such, any information about their intelligence capacity before, during or after the event is going to be heavily scripted, controlled, and often times deliberately misleading.

You can be assured that the White House and the State Department know far more about the incident than they can publicly admit, and they’re not going to formally acknowledge any of it until the CIA says they can.

Protests and Provocations

If it wasn’t obvious before, in light of last night’s assault on the US embassy in Yemen, it should be painfully evident that the 9/11&12 Middle East protests against the anti-Islam movie “The Innocence of Muslims” aren’t really protests, and they don’t really have a whole lot to do with the movie either (which may not even exist).

When the 9/11 protest in Cairo began, multiple witnesses reported that much of the crowd didn’t even know why they were there, and the first part of the protest largely involved people milling about as the reasons for the gathering was explained to them. They were told to show up, and they did – who told them to show up? (Some other important questions about the Cairo incident here)

I’ll get to that shortly.

The protesters were there was for one reason and one reason alone: to provoke a violent reaction by the guards protecting the embassy in order to generate backlash. If the protests at the embassy had turned into a sort of Kent State in Cairo, as I suspect they were supposed to, the attack on the Consulate in Benghazi would have seemed far more believable as a genuine protest gone wrong, and we would be facing the possibility of real grassroots protests across the Middle East.

The heroes of the day in Cairo were the on-site US Embassy guards, and their superiors who refused to fall victim to the provocation, and chose not to use force in an ambiguous and possibly threatening situation.

In Libya, however, the situation was substantially different. The incident at the Consulate in Libya was a preplanned assault on a predetermined target. Four pickup trucks full of armed men used grenades and RPGs to attack the Consulate compound in the middle of a rather small and unremarkable protest.

The debate, at this point, is whether there was coordination between the organizers of the protests in Cairo, and the attack in Benghazi. With the assault on the Yemeni embassy, the plot thickens.

Frankly, I’d be shocked if more than a few of the people at the embassy in Yemeni had any idea about the film. Like the protesters in Egypt, the film was really irrelevant – they were there at someone’s behest to provoke a reaction.

I suspect that what we’re seeing is a new approach to operations by Al Qaeda franchisees and affiliates.

In the absence of a central command, and with the loss of most of their senior planning staff, Al Qaeda can’t really pull off the large-scale operations that they used to be known for.  Instead, they are now engaged in the work of trying to rebuild some measure of unity and support in the Muslim world. Their goal here is to provoke some sort of high-profile disproportionate response by the US.

These events, coming on the heels of the release of the Weinstein video and the Zawahiri video, point to a much looser approach to AQ operations that are vaguely synchronized, but not really coordinated. (See also the attack in Somalia) This approach may be marginally successful in the short run, but it needs to produce major results ASAP, because it involves lots of groups committing to public action in a way that makes them easy targets for some very skilled and dangerous people.

What's the current situation in Libya right now?

This is an old post - click here for the most recent update on Libya.

You should also be checking http://www.libyafeb17.com/

The specificities of the coalition campaign are probably well beyond the knowledge of anybody except for those military and intelligence personnel directly involved (and presumably some key government officials as well). Suffice it to say dozens of tanks and armored vehicles have been destroyed on the ground, and the vast majority of Qaddafi’s anti-air capacities have been eliminated. US Air Force C-130s are now broadcasting to the Libyan people, and the No-Fly zone is now in effect from Tripoli to Benghazi.

It is worthwhile to point out that this is not simply a "no-fly zone". The wording of the UN resolution was to protect the safety of Libyan civilians, and although many members of the Arab League are balking at the scope of activity, what we're seeing is a full implementation that will probably come as close to implementation of ground forces without the actual implementation itself.

Many of the military officials involved have expressed minimal optimism regarding their expectations for this undertaking, emphasizing repeatedly that they will not be removing Qaddafi from power, they will simply be destroying as much as possible of his capacity to inflict harm on civilians.

Some of them have said that the result may simply be a stalemate on the ground, but don't believe that for a minute. These guys know exactly what's going on. Qaddafi's goose is cooked, but the actual work of removing him will be left to the Libyan people themselves.

Here's the thing, as I've been saying for the past week, the rebels are not as badly off as most people are assuming.

Qaddafi's forces have been hemorrhaging troops continuously for weeks. Entire battalions have defected, and are under the command of generals who were formerly loyal to Qaddafi. The discouraging events of the past week are not evidence of the Revolution's failure; they are the realities of war - specifically the realities of urban tank combat in North Africa. Patton said, "war is hell", but we in America haven’t had the opportunity to see the effects of large-scale ground combat since the first Gulf War (and war may be too strong of a word used to describe that conflict – it implies that there are actually two sides fighting).

Regardless, Qaddafi's field commanders (possibly one or two of his sons, probably with some direction from Qaddafi himself) committed to a campaign of speed and brutal force. It's sort of the equivalent of pulling your goalie in the last five minutes of a hockey or soccer game and putting an extra offensive player on the field in hopes of driving deep into the opponent’s territory and evening the score. Unsurprisingly, it's a very risky strategy. It has put his armor dangerously far from their supply lines, which are exposed and spread out over hundreds of kilometers. Tanks need a tremendous amount of fuel, and without infantry support they are susceptible to specific types of close range attacks. In urban environments, a handful of men with Molotov cocktails can cripple a tank if they are acting with little or no regard for their own safety or survival

Although it will take months, or even years to finally ascertain the correct sequence of events, my suspicion is that when Qaddafi's armor was moving into Benghazi they were entering a trap. Former Libyan soldiers (some say as many as 8000) were being held in reserve near Benghazi under the leadership of Libyan generals loyal to the uprising. The tanks that reached the city were rolling into the teeth of a resolute and ready resistance.

The French and American air strikes that took place yesterday and today were devastating, and they certainly saved civilian lives, but I suspect that even without them the Libyan resistance would have been successful in its defense of the city.

The real advantage of the airstrikes is their emotional effects. Pro-Qaddafi soldiers who yesterday or the day before were convinced of Qaddafi’s inevitable success are now more likely to abandon Brother Leader and his dwindling forces. That, I feel, will be where the ultimate success of the coalition efforts is seen. Not in the planes and tanks that they destroy, but in the message that they send to the remaining Qaddafi loyalists – It's over.

As I said before, the final victory will belong to the Libyan people – they are the ones who will ultimately remove Qaddafi from power.

So there it is. No Fly Zone over Libya.

I wasn't crazy about the idea, but when the Arab League backed it I was somewhat mollified (and pretty much assumed that it was inevitable).

It'll be interesting to see who gets to enforce it. The nearest US carrier is in the Red Sea, and can't do it without flyover permission from Egypt. The French have a Harrier/VTOL carrier in the Med, and the British have a Helocarrier nearby, but neither is ideal for air-to-air combat against dedicated fighter jets.

Qaddafi should do some good speechmaking tonight.

Can Qaddafi regain control? Don't bet on it.

News from Libya over the past few days has been alternately frustrating and depressing. The momentum of the opposition forces seems to have broken as they reached Qaddafi’s main strongholds of Sirte (his hometown) and Tripoli (the capital). Once they lost their inertia, Gaddafi was able to begin concerted counterattacks. Despite being numerically outnumbered, Gaddafi’s remaining troops are his most loyal and by extension, the best equipped and best trained soldiers.

However, despite the pessimism on the part of many, it is important to note that a war of attrition would not favor Gaddafi. To preserve his primary advantage (better weapons and equipment) he needs a robust support system for his forces – something that only comes with money, supply chains, and loyalty. The elite soldiers may still support him, but the logistical components of his army will be much harder to retain - mechanics, cooks, truck drivers, etc. are what make a military function in the long run, and at this point they are only likely to carry the army’s burden while under duress. This goes double for the air force support crew. The more sorties a plane flies, the greater its need for careful maintenance and repair (just ask US helicopter crews in Afghanistan), and the higher the risk of serious systems failure.

Qaddafi may be able to recapture some of his lost ground, and he may even successfully retake some of his oil and gas production/refinement areas, but the only strategic advantages those will afford him are morale-related. He won’t be able to resume gas exports – the people who kept the refineries operating were the foreign workers who evacuated weeks ago, and the home-grown Libyan work force is notoriously inadequate. Large portions of his funds have been frozen, he has few trading partners for whatever oil he may have - maybe Venezuela, but they don’t really need oil, they make plenty of their own.

There is also some good news today. The Arab league has asked the UN to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. (It is worthwhile to note that the countries most resistant to the idea were Syria, Yemen, and Algeria – all countries that are dealing with some precarious political situations, and have used violence against their own citizenry or are likely to do so in the near future.). This paves the way for a multilateral projection of force that is less likely to bite the US in the ass later. I’ve been pretty critical of a US-led no-fly zone, but the explicit approval of the Arab League significantly assuages my concerns.

The White House has already responded positively to the Arab League's statement, and Hillary Clinton will be meeting with one of the main Libyan opposition leaders shortly.

The pace has been excruciating, but I believe that the long-term outcome will be a good one.

Please help the people of Libya

As I've mentioned earlier, it's difficult to watch the horrific events from so far away and feel helpless. For those of you who are looking for something that you can do to help the people of Libya the good folks over at http://www.libyafeb17.com/ provided me with a connection to World Medical Camp of Libya http://www.wmclibya.org/

World Medical Camp Libya
PayPal - No Account Required

I'll keep the paypal button on my sidebar, so please keep the link handy and direct your friends to my page if they mention a desire to help.

We can't give blood, but we can at least give money.

Libya and the wider situation - Updates

Algeria has finally lifted the state of emergency that has existed since the early ‘90s which means that the government’s authority to use the military will, in theory at least, be curtailed. Given that Bouteflika has been using the military against dissidents for 20 years, it remains to be seen whether ending emergency powers will actually change anything.

“Gaddafi’s gift”, as I called it on Wednesday, may be paying off in Yemen, where after multiple deaths the President actually issued an order for the military to protect the protesters. We’ll see how long it lasts.

The violence against protesters in Bahrain also seems to have paused for the moment, as the various parties gather themselves for the next round of who knows what.

The killing is done for now, but it is too early to tell if the cold peace between the regime and the dissidents will last and, if so, how long. Bahrain’s revolution is not over, but its outcome is far from decided.

Iran seems grim. The protests aren’t really getting as much traction as they need to, and without the support of the workers unions and the merchants it doesn’t look good for them. Some rather sobering analysis here. An interesting election took place yesterday for the leadership of Iran's chamber of commerce which may play out in some interesting long-term ways as Iranian business leaders continue to flex and grow their power.

Saudi Arabia – After several weeks of surgery and convalescence in Europe and Morocco, King Abdullah returned home and showered his citizens with $37,000,000,000 in gifts/benefits in a move that, frankly, comes across as a cheap way of paying off his citizens to keep them happy. And there’s plenty more money where that came from, particularly given that oil prices are now over $120 a barrel. (On that note, Tom Friedman, whose NYT columns have been pretty hit-or-miss for quite some time, finally had a really good one this week)

Overall, even if countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco and Jordan only see minor reforms in the aftermath of Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, it’s still a positive step forward. Rights, once given, are harder to take away, and every crack in the façade is a step closer to regime collapse.

In Israel there were rocket attacks from Gaza into Be'er Sheva yesterday, which fortunately only damaged a building and didn’t take any lives. As expected, the IDF response was swift and unequivocal. I’ll be putting up a post on Israel in a day or two, so I’m not going to get too deeply into that right now.

The situation in Libya can’t last much longer. A constitutional committee is underway in Benghazi and despite the viciousness of Gaddafi’s actions his troops are rapidly losing ground. His personal Envoy just fled to Egypt to beg for asylum and there are rumors of a split in the Khamees brigade, which (if true) would mean that it’s pretty much over for Brother Leader.

End of the line, G.

(Stay tuned to http://www.libyafeb17.com/ for continual updates)

I’ve had some interesting conversations about US intervention in Libya, and as much as a no-fly zone would be nice, it unfortunately isn’t as simple or easy as it sounds. Some good analysis here and here. As shocking and horrifying as the reports of planes firing on crowds of people is, the vast majority of the killing has been done on the ground with soldiers, mercenaries, tanks, and artillery. To do something really effective would require much more than keeping the government’s planes on the ground, and if this was a more protracted event intervention would probably be a realistic option but it looks to be just about over.

So what can we do? For one, Libya will need tremendous amounts of medical assistance once this ends (they actually need it now, but their #1 priority is to get rid of Gaddafi). I’m in the process of contacting some relief and aid agencies and some Libyans to see if we can coordinate or participate in some assistance activities – I’ll keep you posted.

Minor update

Lots of people doing excellent updates now - I'll be posting some analysis later today when I get home.

In the meantime, you may find today's post at the Arabist interesting.

He links to a continuously updated google map tracking the status of the various Libyan towns and cities and whether they are government or protester controlled.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=208005345448417215163.00049cf3a2cdebe5bd17f

Another week begins.

What now?

Quite a weekend for me.  Yesterday my page had some 400 hits in a 24-hour period, a pretty dramatic record, considering I was averaging about a hundred hits a day previous to that (though I’ve only been doing this seriously for less than a month).

I’m pretty happy with my coverage of the situation with Libya, given that much of what I was reporting on the 19th is finally making it into the mainstream news.  This raises a point (or two) I’d like to clarify for the sake of my reading audience - I am not a journalist.  In this current situation that is something of an advantage.  The situation on the ground is so chaotic that by the time a single event can be confirmed and verified, the larger situation has already changed dramatically.  In Libya, the news that was three hours old might as well have been news that was a day old, and news that was a day old was still being vetted for accuracy by the international news agencies.

For me to rely on insider commentary, twitter feeds, uploaded YouTube videos, and hastily posted messages and audio files on poorly put together webpages is rather dangerous.

Hyperbole, confusion, mistranslation, panic, misinformation, wishful thinking, personal bias, and deliberate propaganda are all factors that must be taken into consideration when relaying information from the sources.  I am, essentially, flying by the seat of my pants and hoping that my own knowledge and critical thinking capabilities are sufficient to the task at hand.  Only time will tell how right or wrong I’ve been in my assessments (although frankly, I think I’ve been doing pretty well all things considered).

Fortunately, no one’s making policy decisions based on my read on the Middle East (I hope).

Frankly, I don’t think anybody’s making any policy decisions at all at the moment.  Right now, everyone’s in tactical mode rather than strategic mode, and that’s not likely to change until the situation becomes a wee bit less volatile.

Anyway, thanks for reading. By the way, while on the topic, I know that many of you are educated and intelligent people - if you read  something here that strikes you as being  questionable, or flat out wrong, please, please, please feel free to address i.  I’d rather be publicly corrected than publicly wrong.

Now, on to the material at hand:

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Libya - I really think this is the end of the line for the Libyan regime.  As I mentioned yesterday, al-arrabiyya reported that Qaddafi had left the country for South America (Brazil or Venezuela). Unfortunately, no one else is supporting it, so I can't vouch for its accuracy at this point.

One of Qaddafi's sons, Seif al-Islam, gave an unintentionally hilarious off-the-cuff speech last night (I hope it was off-the-cuff, if those were his prepared remarks then that boy needs help). Several translations can be found, and I highly recommend that you read it in full, it’s full of crazy little gems like,

We all now have arms. At this time drunks are driving tanks in central Benghazi. So we all now have weapons. The powers who want to destroy Libya have weapons. There will be a war & no future. All the firms will leave, we have 500 housing units being built, they won't be completed. Remember my words. 200 billion dollars of projects are now underway, they won't be finished.

or this one:

The army said that some protesters were drunk, others were on hallucinogens or drugs. The army has to defend its weapons. And the people were angry. So there were deaths, but in the end Libyans were killed.

There are thee parts behind this

1- Political Activists whom we agree with,
2- What happened in Bayda are Islamic elements. Bayda is my town, my mother is from there. People called me. They stole weapons and killed soldiers. They want to establish an Islamic Emirate in Bayda. Some people took drugs & were used by these protesters.
3. The third part are these children who took the drugs and were used. These are facts like it or not.

Ayyad elBaghdadi did a real-time translation of the speech on the fly via twitter and at the end of it said, “I feel stupider just for having written it down”.

The level of denial is a full magnitude higher than Mubarak’s was during his final speech, but as funny as the whole thing may be for us abroad, the situation on the ground for Libyans is incredibly grim. As I said before, it is impossible to overstate the bravery of the Libyan people at this point. After the past three days of conflict, everyone in the streets knows that death is a strong likelihood.


Although the general populace, large numbers of the tribally affiliated population, and many members of both the army and the police have joined with the uprising, the Libyan government has three pillars of support:
The Elite military, led by one of Qaddafi’s sons, and heavily staffed with regimes loyalists, these people are not merely fighting at the whim of the leadership, they are likely fighting for their own lives, and as such will not be pulling punches when it comes to combat (this is no longer crowd control, this Is all-out combat)

The Libyan Air Force, which draws heavily from the Qadhadfa (Qaddafi’s own tribe) for its pilots and officers. Family loyalty is essential here as are old tribal rivalries. Unsurprisingly, nepotistic favoritism has been very good to Qaddafi’s tribe, but very problematic for inter-tribal relations. (Short article on this here)    Additionally, it’s a lot easier to kill people from a fighter plane than it is with a machine gun. Bombing of major urban areas has already been reported, and I just don’t know how long it will take to get the situation under control.  If the ground crews to stop supporting sorties, then it could end sooner than later, but I honestly have absolutely no idea what the likelihood of something like that is.

The mercenary forces who have been confirmed in Benghazi and several other places are the third pillar of regime support, and the most unpredictable.  They are reportedly from places like Chad, Bangladesh and (?  Niger), and they don’t stand a chance of survival if captured.  Many of the worst atrocities witnessed in Benghazi and other eastern cities have been attributed to the mercenaries, and they have shown their contempt for the general populace through their ruthless violence.  At this point they probably just want to escape with their lives, and there’s a good chance that many of them won’t.  Well armed, terrified man with few options are capable of truly horrific things.

That being said, I don’t think the government’s resistance is sustainable.  The only question is how much damage will they unleash on the populace before they are taken down? (Check out Dirk Vanderwall’s analysis here) Plus his book is right there on the sidebar ---->

***

Yemen - I’m sorry to say I haven’t had a lot of time to follow Yemen, given the situation in Libya, but a few things should be mentioned: The president has refused to step down.  The violence has been steadily escalating, though not nearly to the same degree as Libya. Good ongoing analysis here.

**

Iran - Hard to say.  The green movement Is no longer concerned with the president, at this point they’ve set their sights on being supreme leader himself, Kahmeini.  This implies a restructuring of the entire Iranian political system, rather than just political reform, and the chances for success are anyone’s guess at this point.

The protests have continued steadily, with building intensity, but nothing on the scale that we witnessed back in 2009.  Thousands in the streets at times, but not hundreds of thousands.

An interesting rumor has been circulating, saying that Hezbollah members have been supporting the Iranian regime during crackdowns on protesters.  Similar rumors were circulating in 2009, but were never confirmed.  It should be mentioned here that such a thing is possible but, it is also quite possible that the rumor is a piece of targeted propaganda intended to drive a wedge between the green movement protesters and the regime’s support for militant Shiite activity abroad.

***

This is particularly interesting because in Bahrain the government is accusing Hezbollah of giving support to the protesters in the Pearl roundabout (now being called martyr's roundabout). While on that topic, the situation in Bahrain doesn’t seem to be moving towards resolution yet.  The protesters continue to occupy the roundabout, and the government continues to make unsuccessful overtures towards resolution along with halfhearted moves towards another round of crackdowns.  The acts of violence of the past few days seem to have quieted down, but there are still reports of a strong Saudi presence on the ground.

Nicholas Kristoff has a good piece up in the NYT today

***

Saudi Arabia has been awfully quiet lately.  As Napoleon said, never interrupt your enemy when he is busy making a mistake.  Libya and Egypt and Iran have all been longtime competitors and/or opponents of the Saudi regime, and the Saudi royal family is doubtless watching these events extremely closely as they unfold.  Although their position is not nearly as precarious as that of the various North African regimes, the events in Bahrain must be incredibly worrying to them.  Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have very close relationships, and although Saudi Arabia does not share Bahrain’s large disenfranchised Shiite population, they do, nonetheless, have a significant concentration of Shiites in their Eastern oil producing territories.  Actions by the Bahraini government against its Shi’a population, particularly with the support of the Saudi military, could create serious tensions within Saudi Arabia’s small but defiant Shiite population.

***

One last point (I may post another update later today) Morocco was the scene of several major protests yesterday - some good recap and analysis can be found here.  The vast majority of these protests were peaceful, with the exception of one in Tangier that degenerated into rioting and looting.  I suspect that if the Moroccan government is able to mitigate the response in show clear signs of attentiveness and responsiveness to the needs of their citizens, they’ll be okay.  If, however, the violence expands and the government is overly heavy-handed in its response, then I’ll have to move Morocco from the “safe” column and into the “regimes in play” column.

***

Many more links and much more extensive information on the greater middle east can be found in today's post at the Arabist: http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/2/21/sehams-regional-links-2011-02-21.html

All-out revolution is underway in Libya.

So, Libya again.

As I’ve said before, the situation in Libya is incredibly important.  It’s also unique in many respects.

Although Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt are all nearby, Libya differs from them significantly in its degree of isolation.  America has had working relationships with Algeria Egypt and Tunisia for quite some time, whereas our relations with Libya have only recently, and very slowly been thawing.neither the US government nor the US media have any substantial presence on the ground there.

Right now, what is going on in Libya is unlike the protests anywhere else in the Middle East.  Certainly, the violence in Bahrain and Yemen is jarring and horrific, but Libya is undergoing something of an entirely different stripe.  While the government of Bahrain has turned to its allies in Saudi Arabia for support in suppressing public protests, and the Yemeni government lacks the stability for a coherent response to the uprisings in their streets, Libya is undergoing an all out war.

War.

Battles for entire cities and towns are currently underway.  Helicopters are shooting at crowds, and government hired mercenaries (reportedly non-Libyan french-speaking Africans) are gunning people down in the streets.  Body count estimates at this point are into the hundreds, but I would suspect they are, in actuality, much higher.

The current strategy being used by the government speaks to the precariousness of their situation.  The fact that mercenaries have been deployed in cities suggests that the leadership does not fully trust its own soldiers to do the dirty work, and there have been reports of soldiers being beaten for refusing to fire on civilians and even some areas where the military seems to have joined with the protesters.

The  intensity of the uprisings seem to have taken the government by surprise, oddly enough.  Or perhaps the Libyan Army isn’t all that good at logistics, or perhaps there is turmoil within the ranks.  For whatever reason, there weren’t enough troops in place to control the situation when it began, and protester have seized two of the airfields in western Libya that were being used to reinforce the troops.

There have also been reports that some of the mercenaries have seized hundreds of hostages, and are demanding that they be allowed to leave safely in exchange for the release of their prisoners.

Benghazi was one of the first cities to rise up, and as a result of it has been the target of the heaviest attacks by Libyan military and the heaviest fighting. Hospitals are reportedly full of the dead and injured, the soldiers on the ground are shooting to kill, and Libyan voices are calling the government’s actions there “massacre”.

The extent of the situation is still unclear, but there are reports that the military has joined with the revolting citizens to free al-bayda and are headed to Benghazi to support the people in the streets there. There are also reports that the Libyan government is sending in more mercenaries to the conflict areas.

It’s basically become impossible to follow, but you can catch up here:

http://www.libyafeb17.com/ is pretty comprehensive,

I've also been following these four twitter feeds http://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi and http://twitter.com/ShababLibya and http://twitter.com/EnoughGaddafi and http://twitter.com/libi4ever

Al Jezeera has a Libya live blog, but it's not as thorough as it should be

The Libyan government did shut down the internet yesterday, but parts of it seem to be back up.(Which is a good thing for bit.ly and anyone else using a .ly suffix)

The most comprehensive site for the situation on the ground is here:
http://www.libya-/letters/v2011a/v31jan11z.htm#n18feb116 (run through Google translate). Be warned - there are very graphic pictures of dead protesters on this page. This site will tell you more than you want to know about the situation right now.

This video is from the libya-watanona.com page - it's mostly protest footage, but be warned, there are some graphic images of the dead and wounded in the video as well.


Oh, yea, and Gaddafi's leadership congress has pledged a change in government administrators. Yea, that'll fix the situation.