Retreat for Rebels; Libyan Foreign Minister Quits
Bryan Denton for The New York Times
A rebel rested Wednesday on the outskirts of Ajdabiya, where anti-Qaddafi insurgents halted their eastward retreat for the night.
By C. J. CHIVERS and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: March 30, 2011
BREGA, Libya — Libya’s foreign minister defected to Britain on Wednesday, dealing a blow to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government even as his forces pushed rebels into a panicked retreat and seized valuable towns they ceded just days ago under allied airstrikes.
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Bryan Denton for The New York Times
A man in Ajdabiya tried to get his family out of the city on Wednesday as government forces drew closer. Fleeing residents filled the road north to Benghazi.
Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Rebel fighters retreated from Ras Lanuf to Uqayla, 12 miles further east, on Wednesday as forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi overran the key oil town.
The government advance appeared to return control of eastern Libya’s most important oil regions to Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, giving the isolated government, at least for the day, the east’s most valuable economic prize. The rout also put into sharp relief the rebels’ absence of discipline and tactical sense, confronting the United States with a conundrum: how to persuade Colonel Qaddafi to step down while supporting a rebel force that has been unable to hold on to military gains.
But the defection of Moussa Koussa, the foreign minister, showed that at least one longtime confidant seemed to be calculating that Colonel Qaddafi could not last. The news of Mr. Koussa’s defection sent shockwaves through Tripoli on Wednesday night after it was announced by the British government. Mr. Koussa had been a pillar of his government since the early days of the revolution, and previously led the fearsome intelligence unit.
Although American officials suspected him of responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Mr. Koussa also played a major role in turning over nuclear equipment and designs to the United States and in negotiating Libya back into the good graces of Western governments.
Presumably, he is now in a position to talk about the structure of Mr. Qaddafi’s remaining forces and loyalists. What is unclear is whether his defection will lead to others. “We think he could be the beginning of a stream of Libyans who think sticking with Qaddafi is a losing game,” one senior American official said. “But we don’t know.”
Having abandoned Bin Jawwad and the oil port of Ras Lanuf on Tuesday, the rebels fled helter-skelter before government shelling from another oil town, Brega, and stopped for the night at the strategic city of Ajdabiya. As the rebels retreated in disarray, a senior rebel officer, Col. Ahmaed Omar Bani, pleaded for more weapons. He conceded that rebel fighters had “dissolved like snow in the sand” but framed the retreat as a “tactical withdrawal.”
Vowing that “Ajdabiya will not fall,” he claimed that rebels were still fighting on the east and west sides of Brega, suggesting that pockets of resistance persisted even if the main force had fled.
He acknowledged that the rebels had no answer to the artillery pushing them back unless foreign governments provided parity in arms. “The truth is the truth,” he said. “Even if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, released a statement responding to a report of a presidential finding authorizing covert support for the rebels. It said: “No decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition or to any group in Libya. We’re not ruling it out or ruling it in.”
Whether more weapons or longer-range weapons would make a difference is an open question, however. Leadership and an appreciation for tactics were noticeably missing in the rebels’ battle lines.
Faced with fire, the rebels seemed not to know how to use the relatively simple weapons they had in any coordinated fashion, and had almost no capacity to communicate with one another midfight. Throughout the spontaneous retreats on Wednesday, not a single two-way tactical radio was visible.
The rout put civilians to flight as well. By Wednesday evening, Ajdabiya’s hospital patients were evacuated and a long stream of vehicles packed with forlorn residents filled the road north to Benghazi, the rebel capita
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