Operation Oil Theft: Month 4, Week 2, Day 1.

This past week has seen the third meeting of the International Contact Group on Libya in Abu Dhabi. As a result it has been a busy week in Libya itself with lots of excitable reports of rebel forces breaking out from both Misrata in the west and Ajdabiya in east and gaining territory. However on all occasions the rebel's assaults have been beaten back by Libyan government forces maintaining the stalemate with the usual 20-24 people being killed each day across both sides.

The big difference though has come in an intensification and tactical change in the NATO bombing campaign. Up until now NATO have been attacking single targets like air defence systems, tanks etc at night. This week they've started using sustained day time air raids. According to American sources in Tripoli on Tuesday (7/6/11) the air raid began at around 10:00 (local) in the morning and continued until 23:00 (local) at night. During this time a minimum of 90 bombs were dropped on the capital alone. Although it might not seem like it this is a clear sign that NATO have run out of things to bomb. So rather then trying to destroy military targets like tanks they are now bombing in an attempt to terrorise the Libyan population because even the morale of battle hardened troops breaks under continuous bombardment. Some commentators have compared this tactic to the Blitzkrieg tactic that the Nazi's used at Guernica and throughout the second world war. While they're being a little overly dramatic they're not that far from the truth.

Equally now that Qatar is up and running as the rebels oil merchant the International Contact Group is also running out of things to talk about. At the Abu Dhabi meeting there were the usual claims that the Libyan government could fall at any moment and the usual attempts to legitimize the rebel's Transitional National Council (TNC) including referring to it as the more formal sounding National Transitional Council. The main news of the meeting though was the TNC's announcement that it is incapable of feeding the population of "Free Libya" that it represents. The prospect of a looming famine prompted international donations to the Libya fund to rise to US$1.4bn including the US$250 million already pledged. The most interesting of these pledges are the US$420 million pledged by France because it is around 60% of the amount that France spends on the bombing campaign each week. The US$586 million pledged by Italy is also interesting because it is backed by frozen Libyan assets. Although I'll need to look at the details this could set a worrying precedent. Overseas assets are normally held by private companies rather then governments so apart from announcing it's going to allow the Libyans to spend Libyan money by making this announcement Italy appears to be saying that it has taken the assets of one person and given them to someone else. That is more commonly known as theft.

The contact group also agreed that it's next meeting will be held in Turkey in July. This seems appropriate because through reconstruction contracts it looks like most of the money in the Libya fund will be going to the Turks rather then the Libyans.