High-level bombing, planning by low-level ground forces and a back seat for the US. This was no great victory for Nato
While Nato spy planes and bombers were flying by day and night over Libya, covert planning was taking place on the ground. The air strikes, by just a handful of countries – this was no victory for the Nato alliance – provided the rebels with cover, but plans for the endgame were being drawn up in detail elsewhere.
There were plenty of officials, in London in particular, who lived through the painful experience of Iraq. They were well aware of the limits of air power, and the need to plan in detail for the build-up, and then the final push, on Tripoli. The UN mandate referred specifically to protect civilians and "civilian-populated" areas under threat of attack, and to have excluded a "foreign occupation force of any form". But it was quite clear from the start that regime change was the objective.
The Libyan conflict gave birth to a new kind of covert intervention involving military advisers and special forces, not from the US – not even only from European countries, notably Britain's SAS – but those of Arab countries, notably Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
They were engaged in denial operations, supported not by US dollars, but by Gulf money and weapons. Europeans, mainly British, French, and Italian, provided training and communications equipment. The US, out of the limelight, supplied pilotless drones and detailed, real-time, intelligence which played an important role. As the Guardian reported, British special forces, with those from other countries, including Qatar, and rebel commanders have been planning "Mermaid Dawn" for weeks: a carefully worked out assault on Tripoli involving co-ordinated action by Nato bombers, rebel sleeper cells, and a flotilla of boats from Misrata.
Detailed contingency plans were drawn up to restore Tripoli's mobile phone network and – in marked contrast to what happened in Iraq – the city's infrastructure, notably public utilities including power supplies, banks and other services. The importance of involving as many officials, technicians and security forces was rammed home by Libyan rebel leaders and their foreign advisers alike.
Could this combination of high-level bombing and covert intervention and planning by low-level ground forces set the pattern for future conflicts? Over what other Arab country would Nato warplanes be allowed to fly with impunity for five months?
If one lesson was the need to plan and co-ordinate land operations, Libya provided two others. One was the reluctance of war-weary America to take a lead role, at least a visible one. Second, as analysts have pointed out, it was no great success for Nato. Far from it.
Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute, pointed out on Thursday that only nine of Nato's 28 members were prepared to put themselves on the line physically and politically and attack ground targets. "It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Nato emerges from this successful operation weaker than it went into it. The military operation itself created an image of Nato's limitations rather than its power," he said.
Libya has demonstrated that the days of conclusive, concerted, action by large military alliances is well and truly over. Once again, as with Iraq, "coalitions of the willing" are the orders of the day – helped, this time, by some Arab participation.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/25/libya-military-intervention
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