Libya Feature: On the Opposition's Front Line "Where is America?" (Anderson)

Hours before the United Nations passed its resolution for "all necessary actions" to protect citizens against the Libyan regime, The New Yorker published this piece by Jon Lee Anderson, who interviewed opposition fighters as the regime advanced in north-central Libya:

....The rebels have lost ground because they have not learned how to hold it. At the front lines at Ras Lanuf and Brega, they didn’t dig trenches, and so when jets came to bomb them they panicked and ran. Last Friday, I was with them as they abandoned what had been their new fallback front line, in front of the refinery east of Ras Lanuf (having lost the town itself the day before) under withering barrages of rocket fire. That night, I slept in Brega; when I ventured back, the next day, to see if there was anything left of the front line, I found just fifteen or twenty battlewagons at a checkpoint in the desert fifty miles east, near El Aquela. A few more technical vehicles with guns showed up from Brega to reinforce the line; a few were beyond, “probing “ the desert, according to an officer I talked to—one of the very few soldiers I had spotted anywhere near the front lines in recent days.

Suddenly, the sky filled with the approaching roar of a diving jet fighter, which swooped in and, as we scrambled next to a car, dropped a bomb about a hundred feet from where we were. Once again, as we had seen so many times in the previous days, everyone fled—because there was no cover, and nowhere to hide. At Brega, there was a kind of reassembly of men, but they were few, and there were, again, no fortifications, no trenches, and precious few guns. The next morning, Brega, too, was abandoned amid similar scenes, as Qaddafi’s forces, coming onwards, heralded their intention to advance with long-range rocket fire and more aerial bombardment.

For days now, all the fighters have come up to Westerners like myself and asked, with varying degrees of passion, “Where is Obama, where is America?” They wanted to know why the West has, as they see it, dragged its feet about a no-fly zone. It had become clear that without some kind of international deterrent force the rebellion would fail. From here, the arguments being used against a no-fly zone, which seems a low-risk investment in the anti-Qaddafi revolution, have been impossible to fathom. It worked in Serbia, after all, and the West had managed to impose and then enforce a no-fly zone with alacrity in Iraq after the first Gulf War, and then kept it in place for twelve long years. Why is it suddenly so difficult to impose one here in Libya?

In truth, even if a no-fly zone is imposed now, it might not be enough to stop Qaddafi’s advance. Its real value, as far as I have been able to ascertain, would be the symbolic importance, the morale boost it would give the fighters, to allow them to feel that they are not entirely alone in the world. It might even buy them enough time to rally more volunteers to stand and fight, rather than retreat, in the face of Qaddafi’s advancing ground forces—or at least to dig some trenches. If Libya’s revolutionaries are truly abandoned, however, anything is possible. An ideological incoherence seethes in these young people—trying to be brave, terrified and nonetheless going forward, and being blown to pieces—which could be exploited if their revolutionary euphoria turns to bitter resentment.

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