When the UN authorized the intervention on March 17, 2011, and NATO started bombing two days later, Libyan government forces quickly halted their eastward offensive. As a result, Benghazi was not retaken by the government, the rebels did not flee to Egypt, and the war did not end in late March. Instead, the rebels in Benghazi reversed their retreat and launched a second westward offensive. Within barely a week, benefiting from NATO bombing of government forces, the rebels recaptured Brega and Ras Lanuf. In so doing, however, the ragtag rebels outran their supply lines, so the government again was able to retake the cities two days later. Over the next four months, such cities on the central coast changed hands several more times as the region became a primary theater of the war. Repeatedly, NATO would bomb Libyan forces, enabling the rebels to advance on populated areas, until the government counterattacked—with each round of combat inflicting casualties on both fighters and noncombatants.
In Misurata, too, intervention prolonged and escalated the fighting. On March 19, government forces were just retaking the city’s center from the re- bels who, without resupply routes, were doomed to fall within days, roughly one month after the fighting had started there. But when NATO attacked both the government’s ground forces near the city and its naval vessels off the coast, the rebels gained breathing room and reopened their supply lines. As a result, fighting in Misurata continued for another four months until the rebels eventually prevailed in late July, by which time the city’s death toll had grown substantially, as detailed below.
In Libya’s western mountains, the rebellion also revived, fostered by an in- flux of weapons and trainers from NATO member states. Accordingly, by late August 2011, rebels had converged on Tripoli in a pincer from east and west. Not surprisingly, government forces staged a fierce defense of the capital—magnifying severalfold the death toll of soldiers, rebels, and civilians in an area that had been quiescent during the preceding ave months
The rebels also had strong reason to believe that such intervention would be forthcoming. As early as February 22, 2011, former U.K. Foreign Minister Lord David Owen, while speaking to Al Jazeera, called for a no-fly zone.62 On March 2, the rebels’ military commander spoke by telephone to Britain’s foreign secretary “about planning for a No-Fly Zone,” according to the U.K. government.63 The next day, March 3, British Special Forces and intelligence agents clandestinely attempted to meet with rebels in eastern Libya.64 On March 5, France formally praised the rebels’ establishment of the National Transitional Council. Just ave days later, France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, agreed to recognize the rebel council as Libya’s legitimate government during a meeting at his office with the rebels’ top diplomat, Mahmoud Jibril.65 This was remarkable considering that the rebellion was barely three weeks old and the rebels already had lost most of their initial territorial gains. On the same day, March 10, while the rebels were in abject retreat, their political leader appeared on CNN to plead again desperately for a no-fly zone: “It has to be immediate action.”
This evidence demonstrates that, by the third week of the rebellion (if not sooner), the strategy of the rebels depended on forthcoming NATO intervention—which they had grounds to expect. Indeed, the early and significant signals of support from NATO countries help explain why the otherwise feeble rebels continued fighting the government’s vastly superior forces.
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