This past week in Libya fighting on the ground has all but stopped. The rebels appear to have secured Brega and there have been some isolated clashes between rebel and government forces in the villages around Nalut on the Tunisian border in the foot hills of the Nafusa mountains. NATO bombing continues of course.
On Sunday (24/7/11) British aircraft attacked the Qaddafi compound in Tripoli for the second night in a row. The military justification given for these attacks is that they were an attempt to destroy the defensive walls around the compound in an effort to make it easier for rebels to storm it. The problem is that none of the residents of Tripoli want to storm the compound and the closest rebel units are stuck some 125 miles (200km) outside of Tripoli so the walls will be rebuilt long before they arrive.
On Monday (25/7/11) Britain joined France in suggesting that Qaddafi could remain in Libya if he agreed to give up power although I think that was more aimed at me then Qaddafi. By Wednesday (27/7/11) Britain had clearly changed it's mind and expelled the remaining Libyan government diplomats from Britain. Coming just five days after the terror attacks in Norway Britain had been hoping to present this to the world as a necessary step to protect Britain from Libyan terrorism. Due to the Norway plan going a bit wrong Britain instead presented the move as showing their continuing commitment to the rebels and a necessary step to allow the rebels Transitional National Council (TNC) to access frozen Libyan government assets. The reality though is that since mid-February there have been daily protests by the rebels and Qaddafi supporters outside the Libyan Embassy in London. Britain is now starting to run out of the money needed to police these demonstrations so closed the Embassy in the hope that the protests would stop. That means that rather then showing it's support for the rebels and it's commitment to overthrowing Qaddafi the decision to expel the diplomats shows that Britain is running out of both the will and the resources needed to continue the conflict.
On Thursday (28/7/11) the military commander of rebel forces, Abdel Fatah Younis was killed. By the rebels themselves. Although accounts of exactly what happened to him vary it seems a faction of the rebels accused Younis of being a Qaddafi spy and took him prisoner. He was then either shot and killed on his way to interrogation or was shot and killed during interrogation which doesn't say much about the way the rebels treat their prisoners. It also highlights perfectly the problems that Libya will face if and when Qaddafi is overthrown. Far from being an organised single group the rebels are in fact a ramshackle coalition of competing tribal, religious, social and political factions unified only by their desire to overthrow Qaddafi. Should Qaddafi go then that unifying factor will be gone and the rebel coalition will most likely collapse into a variety of warring factions.
In fact the killing of Younis highlights this problem so perfectly I think Britain might have had a hand in his death in order to promote discussion within the NATO-led coalition about what's going to happen in a post-Qaddafi Libya. Of course this is not being done out of any concern for the Libyan people you understand. It's just that if Britain were to back the wrong faction then they won't get any of Libya's oil which will leave them both looking stupid and seriously out of pocket for the entire operation.
From the Libyan government's perspective the killing of Younis only serves to prove that under the rebels Libya won't be the land of milk and honey that some people still think it will be. So the Libyan state broadcaster has been extensively covering the incident. On Friday (29/7/11) this prompted Britain to try and take the Libyan state broadcaster off the air by bombing several satellite relay stations. This effort failed and the Libyan state broadcaster is still available both inside Libya and internationally.
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