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

Late on Saturday night (18/6/11) NATO finally admitted that they'd attacked a rebel convoy near Ajdabiya wounding at least 16. Just a few short hours later on Sunday morning (19/6/11) the Libyan government announced that a NATO air strike had struck a civilian home in Tripoli killing at least nine members of the same family. This time NATO were much quicker to admit responsibility blaming the incident on a weapons system failure i.e a Paveway guided missile falling short of it's target. However as the intended target was about a mile (1.6km) away from the house a lot of people have suggested that NATO did this on purpose. I personally don't believe that theory but it would fit in with NATO's current strategy in Libya.

When the NATO operation began back in March the plan was that the Libyan army would quickly desert, the government would fall and the rebels would walk from Benghazi to Tripoli being welcomed as conquering heroes every step of the way. Clearly this did not happen. So American and Egyptian special forces began covertly training the rebels in camps between Benghazi and Tobruk. Although they were quickly and overtly joined by British, French and Italian military trainers this training program is going to take until September/October at the earliest. In the meantime NATO have focused on trying to collapse the Libyan government in Tripoli both by extensively bombing the city and trying to starve it of food, gasoline and electricity.

In order to achieve this there are three key objectives; the Ghadamis/Bordj Messaouda border crossing with Tunisia/Algeria, the oil refinery at Zawiya & the pipline that feeds it and the gas fired power station at Zuwara & the pipeline that feeds it. Led by soldier's from Britain's SAS* Libyan rebels captured the border crossing back in late April. Since then they've been fighting their way across the Nafusa mountains towards Zawiya and Zuwara in the hope of strangling off supplies to Tripoli. That's why last weeks fighting was a major setback for the rebels and NATO because it appears that they've run into a Libyan government stop line and are unable to advance any further much like what happened when the rebels tried to advance on Sirte back in March.

Of course the easiest way to shut down the oil refinery at Zawiya and the power station at Zuwara would be to destroy the oil and gas pipelines that feed them. However the British troops that have been commanding rebel forces in the area have so far been hesitant to do this because Britain's objective is to suck as much oil and gas out of Libya as quickly and cheaply as possible. Destroying the pipelines will make that task all the more difficult. Likewise if the rumours that Libyan government forces have seized the oil pipeline feeding Tobruk is true then it has been a very bad week for the rebels and NATO. In fact it looks like they're back to plan A of waiting until the rebel army can be trained up and hoping that they can smash their way through Sirte.







* A member of the SAS was killed on Thursday (17/6/11). However Britain's Ministry of Defence (MOD) described the solider as a member of the Parachute Regiment who was killed in Afghanistan where "Parachute Regiment" was clearly a euphemism for "SAS." It makes you wonder if "Afghanistan" was also a euphemism for "Libya."