Operation Oil Theft: Month 4, Week 3, Day 1.

In Libya it has been a bad week for the rebels. Between Sunday (12/6/11) and Tuesday (14/6/11) government forces mounted a counter offensive in the areas of Ajdabiya, Misrata and Zintan. Although this counter offensive only served to consolidate the position of the government troops rather then break the stalemate it did serve to highlight the limitations of the rebel forces and increase the daily death toll for a around 25 per day to around 40 per day across both sides. The death toll was not helped by the fact that on Wednesday (15/6/11) NATO aircraft mistakenly targeted rebel positions near Ajdabiya injuring 16.

Despite mistakes like this the rebels have been calling for NATO to carry out more air strikes in order to help them defeat government forces. While NATO did resume daytime air raids against Tripoli of Friday (17/6/11) - the traditional day of rest - the air campaign has been kept to a minimum this week. In part this has been a response to an incident on Tuesday (14/6/11) when NATO aircraft killed 12 civilians after targeting a bus near the city of Kikla, south west of Tripoli. Mainly though it is an admission by NATO that they have run out of targets to attack and an acknowledgement of the growing international opposition to the campaign against Libya.

In the United States a group of Senators representing both the Republican party and the Democrat party have begun a lawsuit designed to end America's involvement in the conflict. The case is centred on something called the War Powers Act which states a US President can only conduct a war for 90 days before they must seek the approval of Congress. Barack Obama thinks that this rule does not apply in this case and has not applied for Congressional approval. It is now up to a US judge to decide if the case can proceed because it is highly unlikely that the US Congress will give permission for the Libya war. In fact the lower house (House of Representatives) has already voted for a bill cutting off funding for the Libya conflict although it still needs to pass the Senate before it comes into effect.

This mounting pressure has caused the international coalition (Britain, France, Qatar) to circulate the idea of introducing an international peace keeping force to Libya. The reason why they now feel confident to allow this is because the map which looked like this at the start of operations;



Now looks like this;



Where the blue lines mark the front line between rebel and government forces and the areas of black represent Libya's oil fields.