As NATO struggles to break a deepening stalemate in Libya, the British announced on Tuesday that they were sending military advisers to help build up a rebel army that has stumbled against the superior forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The first question the British will face is “Whose army?”
For they will find themselves advising a ragtag rebel force that cannot even agree on who its top officer is, amid squabbling between two generals who both come with unsavory baggage.
The dysfunction was on full display here this week. “I control everybody, the rebels and the regular army forces,” one of the two, Gen. Khalifa Hifter, said in an interview on Monday. “I am the field commander, and Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes is chief of staff. His job is to support us in the field, and my job is to lead the fighting.”
The rebels’ civilian leadership, the Transitional National Council, has insisted, however, that General Younes remains in charge of the military. “This is not true,” an official close to the council said Tuesday when told of General Hifter’s claims. “General Younes is over him, this is for sure, and General Hifter is under him.”
Pointing fingers
General Hifter made it clear that he viewed General Younes as an officer who was serving in a support or logistical role, and he explicitly blamed him for a string of humiliating retreats by rebels along the seesawing front line between Brega and Ajdabiya, most recently on Sunday, when seven rebels were killed during a counterattack by government forces that turned into a near rout.
“All of what happened there resulted from the command of Abdul Fattah Younes,” he said. “That’s why I came back to take charge, and in the next couple days I will take charge of every unit, not one unit. I am getting ready to lead the forces from now on.”
From the beginning, the NATO military effort has been hampered by the rebels’ disorganization and lack of training, equipment and experience, which have left them unable to capitalize on the damage NATO airstrikes inflicted on Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. The British mission is aimed at addressing those shortcomings, improving the rebels’ organization, communications and logistics.
In recent weeks, as Colonel Qaddafi’s forces have adapted to the air attacks, using camouflage and mixing with civilian populations, it has become increasingly difficult for NATO pilots to hit their targets without killing civilians — precisely what the United Nations sent them there to stop.
In the ensuing standoff, as the Qaddafi forces shell the rebel-held city of Misurata, killing hundreds of civilians, NATO’s credibility is suffering, with critics saying it risks looking weak and ineffective — particularly in comparison with the blistering American-led attacks in the first weeks of the air campaign.
The Western powers have been looking to the rebel fighters to break the logjam, hoping they can be built into an effective fighting force. But the continuing disorganization and infighting within the rebel leadership is an obstacle; even countries that have expressed support for the rebel cause are balking at arming them, at least in part out of concern over the disarray.
All of which casts doubt on the ability of Britain’s advisers to create an effective rebel military, if the rebel leaders cannot stop fighting among themselves.
'We don't know who is in charge'
The first concrete report of weapons from foreign donors reaching the rebels came Tuesday, but significantly, that shipment, 400 AK-47 rifles, did not go through either of the two generals claiming to be the leader of the rebels. Instead, they went directly to a civilian, Fawzi Bukatef, a petroleum engineer who has been training other civilians.
Mr. Bukatef said he had just sent 400 freshly armed volunteers to the front with the new weapons he had received from the unnamed donor — widely believed to be Qatar, which has freely acknowledged its intention to send weapons to the rebels. He knows both generals, he said, and feels let down by both.
“These guys are making a problem for us on the front because we don’t know who is in charge,” Mr. Bukatef said. “They are not coordinating with each other, and I don’t think they even like each other.”
On Tuesday, a compromise of sorts was suggested by Col. Ahmed Bani, the official spokesman for the Libyan rebel forces. “They are both at the same level, and both answer to Omar Hariri, the minister of defense,” he said. But that held little promise of resolving the situation.
General Hifter claimed that his new authority over the forces in the field came from the Transitional National Council, and he said it was not true that the council had removed him from military command after a contentious meeting in late March and handed the top position to General Younes, Colonel Qaddafi’s former interior minister.
“That was only a wish on their part,” he said.
A high-ranking officer on his staff said the civilian officials did not dare to remove General Hifter. “If they so much as thought of doing that, the people would kill them,” he said.
General Hifter is widely popular among rebel fighters as a hero of the Chad war, when he was a colonel in charge of Libyan troops who invaded their southern neighbor in an expansionist war that Colonel Qaddafi eventually lost. Later he fell out with the colonel and went into exile in the United States for 20 years, returning about a month after the rebellion began and appointing himself field commander. When his removal from command was announced late in March, scuffles broke out involving his supporters angry at the council’s action.
General Younes, on the other hand, was Colonel Qaddafi’s friend and interior minister until he defected to the rebel side on Feb. 22. “Younes spent his whole life behind Qaddafi,” said an officer close to General Hifter.
Unclear leadership role
The rebels’ civilian leaders see matters differently. “To tell you the truth, Khalifa Hifter arrived a little late,” said a civilian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the subject. “As far as we’re concerned, he is just one of the field commanders.”
Other rebel leaders would demote him even further. “Khalifa Hifter is a Libyan citizen,” said the former rebel spokesman, Mustafa Gheriani, on April 16. “He doesn’t appear on the Transitional National Council organizational chart.”
“He was only made a general two days ago,” added the official close to the council, who also spoke anonymously because of the political sensitivities of the issue. “Younes has been a general much longer.”
The Transitional National Council’s leadership role has also been diffuse and unclear. A self-appointed body that claims to have 31 members from around Libya, the group has formally divulged the names of only 10 of its members, claiming a need to protect them and their relatives from retaliation by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. For the same reason, council members say, their meetings are held in secret.
That has led to repeated confusion, however, in the council’s decisions on crucial issues like the leadership of the rebel forces.
The Obama administration maintains that the rebels are making progress, albeit slowly, toward creating a coherent chain of command. “It was a group of disparate individuals that has formed in the face of Colonel Qaddafi’s onslaught and oppression and has done a good job, frankly, at coalescing, at forming a leadership, at creating certain values and communicating those values and ideals,” a State Department spokesman, Mark C. Toner, said Tuesday. “We’re encouraged by what we’ve seen.”
For many here, that remains to be seen. The interview with General Hifter was held at the well-guarded Benghazi offices of a Libyan oil company, where he has established his personal headquarters. He also expressed concern that he had had no contact with American representatives since he arrived in Libya, although he said he had often talked to the Central Intelligence Agency while he lived in exile in suburban Virginia.
“I thought America was going to help Libya’s citizens, but I’m displeased with what they’ve done so far,” he said.
The United States has sent an envoy to the Transitional National Council, working out of a hotel here, but General Hifter says they have never met.
The general also said he wanted NATO to make a greater effort to coordinate its airstrikes with rebel advances on the ground. “I need air support from NATO,” he said. “When I lead, I want NATO to defend my front line so we can move forward.”
While NATO’s mandate calls for protecting civilians, not aiding rebels, General Hifter said the best way to protect Libya’s citizens was to assist rebels in liberating those cities that were still controlled by Colonel Qaddafi.
This article, first appeared in The New York Times.