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Who Took Tripoli?
- Africa Institute of South Africa
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106 Africa Institute of South Africa Who Took Tripoli? The infighting and intrigue among the differing militias had compounded the weaknesses of NATO in Libya. Despite the coordination with the special forces, the rivalries between the militias ensured that there could be no effective planning between them. NATO had been bombing Libya for nearly five months and the demands for ending the bombing had been growing louder. Opinion inside Africa for a negotiated settlement intensified, with African writers calling for the AU road map to be the basis for negotiations. The UN mandate for ‘the responsibility to protect’ ran only until the end of September. Russia was calling for the reconvening of the Security Council to discuss the mandate of the no-fly zone. With the cooperation between Russia, China and South Africa in the Security Council, there was no guarantee that there would be an agreement on an extension of the UN Security Council mandate. For the Obama administration, the 60-day period allowing the President to engage in ‘hostilities’ without authorisation from Congress was over. These external and internal factors impelled the orchestrators of Operation Dawn Mermaid to plan the seizure of Tripoli for August 10. However, the work to place the foreign troops and special forces in Tripoli had not been completed. Since the April meeting held in Tunisia to organise the Tripoli ‘uprising’, NATO had been working with the Gulf states to ferry troops and equipment to Libya. We know from a detailed Reuters report that this process took months, and that the battle for Misrata was a crucial aspect of the ability of Qatar to land equipment and personnel. In an interim report entitled ‘Accidental Heroes’, the Royal United Services Institute acknowledged the role of foreign troops in the assault on Tripoli: It is notable that, from April, the UAE established a Special Forces presence in the Zawiyah District and started to supply rebel forces in that area with equipment and provisions by air. Qatar also assumed a very large role; it established training facilities in both Benghazi and, particularly, the Nafusa Mountains in May 9 and acted as a supply route and conduit for French weapons and ammunition supplies to the rebels (notably in June), including by establishing an air strip at Zintan.206 107 Who Took Tripoli? Horace Campbell European newspapers reported later that Qatar had fielded more than 5 000 troops to Libya to remove Gaddafi.207 The British military commentary on the seizure of Tripoli also argued that this confidence in Qatar had been built up in Afghanistan: Western special forces could have confidence in the training roles undertaken by Qatar and the UAE, because the Special Forces in those countries have in turn been trained by the UK and France over many years. Furthermore, Jordanian and UAE special forces have increased their operational experience through long term deployments in Afghanistan.208 What was missing from the Western military analysis of who took Tripoli was the role played by Western media and Al Jazeera in the war propaganda campaign that fabricated false studio images of the entry of the ‘rebels’ in Tripoli. Lizzie Phelan, a British journalist on the ground, gave many examples of the confusion wrought by Al Jazeera on what was happening in the Tripoli ‘uprising’. It is from the reports of journalists on the ground, as well as from following the day-by-day accounts, that one can reconstruct the different elements that constituted Operation Dawn Mermaid. The reconstruction of NATO’s triple assault – by air, land and sea – to capture Tripoli was followed by military experts all over the world.209 Operation Dawn Mermaid was initially meant to begin on August 10, but the Qatari troops, disguised as ‘rebels’, had not yet been in place in Zawiyah, Zintan and Ghanyan. In Washington, new demands for ‘boots on the ground’ were made when the security establishment grasped the fact that the August 10 date for the capture of Tripoli was approaching without the necessary forces and equipment in place. The desperation within the foreign policy establishment was quite explicit when one commentator from the conservative Jamestown Foundation, in Washington, D.C., produced a report on August 9 stating that, to avoid a worst-case scenario, ‘the coalition can continue the war of attrition for a long time to come, eroding Gaddafi’s forces but also the coalition’s own reputation at the same time. It can also resort to an abrupt escalation of air strikes.’210 The intensified...