Operation Oil Theft: Week 2. Day 2.

Over the past 24 hours with the assistance of British and French air strikes the Libya rebels have managed to advance out of Ajdabiya through Brega and into Ras Lanuf. So on the map below they now occupy positions up to and including the broken blue line.



Also today (27/3/11) NATO have voted to assume full command of coalition air strikes against ground targets in Libya. This adds to NATO's control of the naval blockade of Libya and the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya. This is what the United States from the start but NATO control has been opposed by two significant groups within NATO. Firstly Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Germany have been opposed to NATO involvement because they don't want to be associated with yet another western war against a predominately Muslim country with vast oil reserves. Secondly France and Britain have been opposed to NATO involvement because they don't want their hands tied by other NATO members as they wage a war of aggression against the Libyan government.

However from now on NATO's 28 member political council will decide what targets foreign aircraft will be able to engage on the ground in Libya although I suspect that those decisions will be reviewed retrospectively rather then before the bombs are dropped. Or to put it another way what happens now it Libya has absolutely nothing to do with either the Libyan government or the rebels.

In the meantime the UN's decision to intervene in Libya has sent to message to anti-government protesters across the middle east that whatever the rights wrongs of their cause all they need to do is keep protesting and the international community will intervene eventually. So far this has caused the governments of Syria and Yemen to come under severe pressure. Technically Syria is still at war with Israel and Yemen is home to Al Qeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAB) so I'm sure that this can only end well(!)