Middle East War Update: Libyan Civil War Back On; Saudis Attack Yemen

Libya:

The key bit of news for Libya is that as of March 20^th, the Libyan civil war is back on in full swing, and Tobruk government forces are quickly moving to surround Tripoli. They seem to have caught Libya Dawn—who has been focused on fighting ISIS—off guard.

A Quick Reminder of the Players:

·         Tobruk Government: the newly-elected parliament (House of Representatives) and Presidential Council. Backed by the army. Generally considered the legitimate government due to having won the most recent elections.

·         Libya Dawn: the greater Islamist umbrella siding with the “New General National Council,” which was the General National Council until they were defeated in elections and refused to step down. Also called just the “Islamist Government” due to being an alliance of Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood to Ansar al-Sharia (and the electorally-defeated New GNC is highly Islamist).

More in my recent post on Libya, here.

Quick 2015 Timeline:

·         January 16^th:  Libya Dawn and Tobruk Government ceasefire. Unity Government talks launched.

Jan 21 Map Post-Ceasefire. From Wikipedia. Red = Tobruk Gov't; Green = Libya Dawn; Grey/Black = ISIS.

·         Interregnum period: lots of fighting with ISIS.

·         Feburary 20^th: Tobruk Government’s House of Representatives votes to cut off talks with Libya Dawn  / New GNC.

March 20^th Map: Greatest Extent of ISIS Control

·         March 20^th: Tobruk government re-launches hostilities against Libya Dawn to take Tripoli

·         March 23^rd: Tripoli attacked under siege

March 22^nd Map With Tobruk Gov’t Assault. Note ISIS Positions Contracting. Note white = Ansar al-Sharia.

The fact that Tobruk Government forces were so quick to make progress to surround Tripoli suggests they were able to conceal the size and position of their forces.

(This is often why military groups are wary of ceasefires, by the way: they give the other side breathing room to regroup, resupply, and reposition. It’s why Ukraine was so bloody upset after Minsk I.)

Despite being beaten back in the past 2 months, ISIS is likely to make a comeback as Libya Dawn and Tobruk focus on each other.

Yemen:

With Iran-backed Shiite Houthis pressing down on Aden (the last major stronghold of elected-government forces), on March 25th Saudi Arabia decided to (at the behest of Yemen’s President) launch a military operation to push the Houthis back and restore the government. They’re claiming currently that they have a 10-country Arab (probably all Sunni-controlled) coalition, and they have amassed heavy weapons and troops along the border, just north of the Houthi’s strongest presence.

The Saudis have launched airstrikes to get things started, likely as they organize for a ground assault with the rest of the coalition. Egypt is sending ships to the area right now for support.

What finally spurred the Saudi intervention was the very rapid advance of Houthi forces towards Aden over the past 4 days--if Aden falls and the President is captured, the government comes very close to being booted out of the war entirely:

 March 22nd. Red = Gov't forces. Green = Houthis. Yellow = South Yemen Separatists. Grey = ISIS/Al-Qaeda.

March 26th

Yemen is the hottest spot right now for the ongoing Sunni-Shiite regional war and the Iranian/Arab regional war, which have very high overlap. Syria’s civil war is the secondary battleground, though outside nations are not committed to invading directly and are wary enough of the strength of ISIS that they are taking a break of sorts. In Iraq, all parties seem so dedicated to beating ISIS that the hottest parts of the Sunni-Shiite fighting have been put aside almost entirely.

Iran will probably not respond militarily here other than to try to beef up Houthi forces; at this point neither the Gulf States nor Iran want all-out war--expect their conflict to continue as a series of proxy wars.

Eastern Ukraine in Full-Scale Civil War

Just a few snippets:

Literally hundreds of pro-Russian insurgents keep attacking bases and border posts:
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/06/02/ukraine-says-insurgents-attack-border-guards

Insurgents from Russia are using occupied border posts to pour through and reinforce eastern Ukrainians. Of course Russia is not really doing anything to prevent this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-fighters-killed-along-with-insurgents-in-eastern-ukraine/

Ukrainian troops are battling insurgents for control over dozens of locations, like border posts, government buildings, and a big airport:
http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/05/hours-after-ukrainian-elections-pro-russian-separatists-seize-airport/371579/

The insurgents are well-armed: having taken some armories and (embarrassingly) APCs, they're doing more than your typical AK-47 wielding civilian. They were even able to shoot down a Ukrainian helicopter:
http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/05/ukrainian-helicopter-shot-down-by-rebels-leaving-14-dead/371789/

The military has the advantage in training and equipment, and killed 300 (probably) insurgents as they close in on Slaviansk. That's a crazy-big number for the kind of war this is:
http://time.com/2821792/ukraine-russia-slaviansk/

Putin of course making matters worse by jacking up prices on Ukrainian gas and cutting off supplies from Crimea. Ukraine refuses to pay the extra fee (but is paying at the old rate), generally considering this extortion. Now, of course, Russia is planning to cut off supplies entirely:
http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/05/putin-speech-ukraine-spief-2014/371491/

NATO's response for the moment is to fund/train Ukrainian forces, increase exercises in Russia's regional waters (Black and Baltic seas), and step up spending on its own military (particularly in Poland, which is probably due for a war with Russia within the next 20 years):
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/nato-to-support-ukrainian-army-report-350521.html
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_110609.htm

Afghanistan's Future in the Face of NATO Withdrawal

The excitement around the Arab Spring, including relative madness in Libya, Syria, and Egypt over the past few years has pluged America's forgotten war (need I mention that it's Afghanistan?) into even deeper obscurity.

Even I know quite little, but a discussion that exposed how little I know prompted me to become a responsible citizen and learn a bit more. I'll share what I've learned (and some of what I knew already) here.

What I must first state is that this post is, for me, far and away my most researched, and most painfully considered, but it shall be far from a triumphant magnum opus. I say "painfully" with literalism. I have found Afghanistan to be inscrutable, and trying to figure out what is truly going on in the country has proven completely elusive. At this point, I can only provide many contradictory leading indications and try to provide some guidance on which ones are most worth paying attention to. I hope it provides some clarity, but I must insist on managing expectations: one is likely to walk away from this post at least as frustrated as one is enlightened.

I mostly wish to answer the following question that my girlfriend sharply engaged me on for the past week or so: "What's going to happen after NATO withdraws from Afghanistan in 2014? Will it all fall apart; was it all for naught?"

After incredible amounts of frustration, spiraling pessimism, blips of hope, and some near giving up, a consensus is building in my mind. I'll state, tentatively, thus: "It won't be pretty, but the Afghan government will hold and the country will move forward."

Let's start digging into why.

Some Key Supporting Facts About Afghanistan

I first want to start by painting some broad brush strokes and then back these brush strokes up with facts (Asia Foundation is source of all polls unless stated otherwise):

1) The Taliban are surprisingly strong, and many are fighting as "nationalists." Despite being outnumbered 35,000 (or so) to 485,000 (of which 380,000 are Afghan National Security Forces [army and police]), the Taliban maintain extensive influence & administrative control over the southeast of the country (but I have found no reliable estimates of territorial control since 2011) and can be found making trouble of some sort nearly everywhere except the  most central and north-central parts of the country. Of the Taliban interviewed by the Asia Foundation, over half said they were fighting primarily to expel foreign troops from the country.

2) The Taliban manage to keep on recruiting. 75,000 Taliban or allied fighters have been killed since 2001--but their numbers have largely grown over time (from some 400 in 2002 to 10,000 in 2004, etc).

3) The people of Afghanistan are shockingly confident in their government and their future. Between 2008 and 2012, the proportion of Afghan poll respondents that believes the country is going in the "right direction" has actually increased steadily from a low of 38% to a recorded high of 52%. Additionally, 93% have a "confident" or "very confident" view of the country's security forces (though we'll see later that this optimism might be a bit unsubstantiated). Survey-reported access to electricity, security (!), drinking water, and education have improved, fueling this optimism. This satisfaction has led to 75% of respondents giving the central government's performance a "positive" assessment.

4) Many parts of Afghan life have improved, but corruption is a major risk for the Karzai government. On the other hand... about 80% of respondents say that corruption is a "major" problem in Afghanistan and over half experience it in their daily lives. Over 1/3 have had to give bribes for various services, including healthcare, justice, employment, and education.

5) Numbers don't tell the whole story on Afghan national security forces--and the rest of the picture isn't very pretty. The Afghan National Army (ANA) has a highly varied level of readiness. Only 14% of Afghan soldiers are literate to a first grade level (Source: GAO), and desertion sits at 30% or so for the year of 2011. Drug use amongst soldiers may be about 50%. There are multiple anecdotes of ANA soldiers fighting well against the Taliban, and many others attesting to whole units being paralyzed by fear and American advisors being unable to rouse them to fire their weapons. Generally, the Afghan National Army, despite being much larger than its Taliban counterparts, is less disciplined, less experienced, less skilled, less hardened, and far less zealous in many patches, meaning that there is a risk that certain brigades of the ANA could be quickly routed by smaller Taliban forces in a post-withdraw civil war.

6) Afghans want the Taliban and foreign troops out of their lives. 81% of Afghans are in favor of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. 65% "oppose" the Taliban and 30% are "sympathetic" to or "supportive" of the Taliban. 75% of the same respondents said they felt fear when meeting ISAF troops--this is about the same percentage as those that are afraid of the Taliban. In 2009 (BBC Poll) only 4% of Afghanis wanted the Taliban to rule the country and I don't believe it's changed much since.

7) Things have gotten quieter in Afghanistan than they've been since 2007. The late fall/winter of 2012/2013 have been the least deadly to ISAF Coalition troops since 2007. February (as of the 17th) has had zero fatalities on record, which would be only the second month in the history of the war (July 2002 being the other) in which no ISAF members died, if the trend continues. (source: icasualties)

8) Afghans are surprisingly liberal and progressive in their politics. 84% of Afghans believe that democratic elections are the most just way of choosing leadership; 83% believe that all people (regardless of ethnicity, religion, or gender) should have equal rights under the law. Almost 90% believe that women should have equal education opportunities (but only 2/3 believe women should be allowed to work outside the home).

Why the Taliban's Strength is So Puzzling

When we think about an insurgency succeeding or failing, we usually think of 2 primary elements:
1) Military capacity/capability
2) Support among the population

In some ways there's a lot more to it than that, but most things are variables under those (like "understanding the terrain," "cash on hand," "determination," etc, might all be a form of military capacity/capability).

As we see in our facts above, the Taliban don't have the military advantage at all (they are vastly outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched across the board by NATO troops and consistently fail quite miserably in open battle). No doubt, their sanctuary in the Pashtun parts of Pakistan has been critical to their ability to organize and avoid destruction at the hands of NATO, but they must ultimately be in Afghanistan in order to have as much influence as they do.

We see also that they're just plain not supported. While some are sympathetic to the Taliban (as they're the primary anti-foreigner/nationalist group in the country), Afghanis don't want them back in charge. Thus they should not have the ability to "swim among the populace" as successful insurgencies in the past have done (China's Red Army, Vietnam's Viet Cong, US Revolution, etc). Given such low levels of support, we'd expect the Taliban to have to exert influence through very overt measures, and through force, and thus be unable to "hide" from NATO/ANA troops.

So the Taliban just plain don't have the usual strengths that contribute to success, even though they've been a persistent and partially successful insurgency. This has bothered me to no end and, sadly, I do not have any silver-bullet answer, but there are a number of unconventional factors and strategies that may contribute to the Taliban's strength.

Key Contributors to Strength

The Taliban fight their war these days largely through targeted killings. Despite their seemingly low support rate, their intelligence is quite good, and they are able to intimidate citizens away from overt government support by credibly threatening to painfully murder them and their families. IEDs are going to be threatening to NATO troops but ultimately won't win the war against the Afghan government, but successfully coercing people to act on their behalf can. To beat this, the Afghan government's police force must become credible enough that people feel much safer reporting intimidation than following its lead.

Geography helps the Taliban rack up lots of "territory" if we look at maps of where they act. Rural areas are incredibly sparse and NATO/ANA forces can't track the Taliban through cave networks/etc in rural areas. The Taliban are able to hide here and exert influence in nearby villages while avoiding patrols whenever possible (and using IEDs to disrupt them). It makes elimination a very difficult proposition... but ultimately, it can keep them around and can drive out foreign troops, but this alone won't allow them to take the country back on its own (as urban centers do count for a significant portion of the population).

Obviously the Taliban have sanctuary in Pakistan--without this, they would have been quickly destroyed in late 2001 and simply never been able to mount a comeback. The US drone program is designed to target this but obviously Taliban leadership like the Quetta Shura (the top leadership council), Mullah Omar, Haqqani, etc enjoy sanctuary there. Additionally, Pakistan allows for the funneling of foreign troops to keep Taliban/ally ranks full. 

Pakistan's ISI is probably funding/supporting the Taliban (though this is a bit of an "unholy alliance"). The ISI's actions seem to be highly self-contradictory (sometimes funding and sometimes attacking/arresting), but if we recall that there are many faces of the Taliban and that it is largely a cell-based organization, the ISI will support some cells and be angered by others. The ISI is very interested in maintaining influence in Afghanistan and in the past did this quite directly through the Taliban. Thus the Taliban has intelligence, training, funding, and other organizational advantages from the ISI that allow it to frequently outsmart NATO/ANA troops.

Determination: the Taliban have an edge in determination that the ANA does not, and this has a chance at being the decisive factor in a 2015 civil war. The Taliban will easily fight to the death, where ANA troops lack the fervor or zeal of religious extremism--and the discipline of Western troops--and thus are prone to give up in a fight more easily.

Finally: the gap between 4% (want the Taliban in charge) and 30% (sympathetic) is large, and is due to some other appeal the Taliban have besides their monstrous form of rule. But statistics above give us the numbers: 75% of Afghanis are afraid of Western troops and over half the Taliban see themselves as primarily fighting against foreign troops. This nationalist appeal gives them some tentative support where they might otherwise have none.

What's Going to Happen in 2015

The Taliban have made clear that they'll negotiate after Western forces withdraw. There are ultimately two scenarios: one in which they fight-and-talk, and one in which they try to take over the country. Let's look at the latter scenario first:

Taliban attempt full takeover: Outnumbered some 11:1, the Taliban would have to fight their way through huge ANA forces entrenched in towns/cities throughout the country in order to make serious headway. The ANA is equipped with some elite offensive capability that should be able to counter-strike against any towns that might fall to a larger Taliban force, so the Taliban would have to move with relative speed. The Taliban would have some major successes, and likely establish a working influence over significant swaths of the country in the south and east. But ultimatley, if they can't suppress the ANA's ability to launch offensives, they may be in trouble. They don't enjoy much support outside of their homelands, and much of the support (and manpower) they have is dedicated to booting foreign troops, who will be gone after 2014. ANA troops will likely be more welcome in a village than Taliban for most of the country, giving them a real leg up. The ANA might even be able to hold on to the vast majority of the country, and relegate the Taliban to the southern 10-20% (like the FATA in Pakistan).

Taliban negotiate: Fighting will continue, along with the fiercest spring offensive yet, but it will be due to the Taliban "going all in" rather than suddenly becoming a lot stronger. They will go all-in in order to maximize bargaining power at the negotiating table. They will likely demand constituational changes in addition to some guaranteed representation. They want Karzai out, but there will have been a new election in 2014, and if that president enjoys lots of Pashtun support (as Karzai did at least in 2004), the Taliban will have trouble convcincing him that he needs to step down. Ultimately, the ANA won't be able to clean up the Taliban (if they can't with NATO support, they certainly won't be able to on their own), so a negotiated settlement is really the only way to end the war. The Taliban know this and also know that they have more tolerance for continued war and death than the citizens of Afghanistan, so they'll have suprisingly strong bargaining power and will likely walk away with a frustrating amount of concessions.

Why The Taliban Ultimately Won't Be Able to Take Over the Country

I decided that, despite many contradictory indicators (on one hand, Taliban strength/wide influence vs ANA lack of discipline; on the other hand, low Taliban support and high optimism for the future), I would give the final say on the likelihood of the future to the people of Afghanistan. At the end of the day, if people feel more secure, it's because the police and military forces are becoming more effective and trusted, which in turn means that they'll be sufficiently integrated with the Afghani population to be able to cooperate in security matters.

Security has improved for Afghanis, and they are becoming increasingly attached to their government, thanks in part to better education, infrastructure, and health, and increasing security (and thus real protection of some basic freedoms and rights). If the Afghani people really buy into their government and work with their police force, the Taliban simply won't be able to take serious root--they don't have the manpower to overwhelm the ANA, even if it is very shaky in many patches. They'll lose recruiting power as foreign troops leave, as many of their fighters just aren't as interested in extremist Wahhabism as they are an Afghanistan free of foreign occupation. The government is actually making progress in "building the state" and creating a "critical mass" of security and support to weather the Taliban storm. 

Afghanistan isn't Vietnam. In Vietnam, the NVA enjoyed overwhelming popular support, the population was fully part of the war (against the South), and the Saigon government was seen for what it was--a  weak puppet. The Saigon government could not have administered the country even if it could have fought off the NVA. In Afghanistan, the picture is different. The insurgents are unpopular, the people of Afghanistan are fairly liberal, and they approve of their legislatures at over 70% (compare that to the 11% of the United States' approval of its own congress). The government risks being a long way from being able to administer large parts of the country, but it doesn't mean the Taliban have a heck of a lot better chance outside of their traditional homelands.

When NATO leaves in 2014, more blood will shed, but the long-term picture for Afghanistan looks... not so bleak. By 2020, there will be many worse places to live in the world (sadly), and I think the territorial control line between the ANA and Taliban will have stabilized enough that the fighting will be minimized, and the Taliban won't be able to run the country.

Some Potential Errata on Turkey & Iran

Two quick potential errata I want to point out from the past few posts I've had that relate to Turkey & Iran (I say "potential" because they are not factually wrong, but run somewhat counter to my recent predictions:)

Turkey: The Kurds of northern Syria have won a great deal of autonomy since the Syrian government has pulled back to Aleppo and Damascus. The Kurds seem less interested in being a key part of the opposition (they make up 9% of the population and likely feel that they would be marginalized in the new government), and more likely are looking to set up an autonomous zone like is found in Iraq. Lots of interesting implications if this happens, including the possibility of those two autonomous zones becoming the beginnings of a de facto Kurdish state.

There is a spike of rebel activity in southern Turkey, likely designed to take advantage of Turkish distractions in Syria and to build momentum for the development of a Greater Kurdistan. Initial thoughts suggest that this rebel activity might cause Turkey to reconsider their involvement in Syria, but they are likely "in too deep" to pull back, and may be hoping to turn a win in Syria into a means of containing the Syrian Kurds further.

Iran: I mentioned that the Arab Middle East is, in general, opposed to Iran's influence, but some recent behavior shows this isn't entirely likely:

• Iraq, which is ruled by its Shiite majority, may be helping Iran beat economic sanctions, which if true would suggest a tentative alliance.
• Egypt's Morsi will be visiting an Iranian conference on Syria (and other topics), suggesting an attempt to thaw relations (a move I don't quite understand, but will think about)

All worth thinking about. Clearly a fairly complicated region. Looking forward to any thoughts you guys have.

The Syrian Uprising: Part III, "Prospects for Opposition Victory"

Today we continue the third installment of our four-part series on Syria: Prospects for Opposition Victory.

First, let's define victory for the opposition. Most importantly, they want Assad gone. Assad is unlikely to step down in any meaningful way without being toppled completely. If we look to Egypt and Yemen, both have changed figureheads, but the regimes have essentially stayed intact (Egypt remains ruled by the Army; Saleh's VP was the only candidate for president in Yemen, and his sons still hold hihg posts in the military). So victory will mean toppling the regime, and ousting a number of powerful individuals who benefit greatly from staying in power.

After that, "victory" gets complicated. The Syrian opposition wants to build a constitutional democracy, and this likely means ousting the current military regime, which (like in Egypt) is different from Assad in the sense that it is loyal to itself and will not roll over if Assad is to go. Great. To actually have that monopoly, the Free Sryian Army (FSA) will need to remain a united force that decisively establishes itself as the monopoly on violent power in the country. In Libya, the NTC military forces have split up into various regional militias that are struggling with each other for power. This stage, "winning the peace," will be harder.

As for the war itself: Syria is not fighting an effective counter-insurgency war. The US learned (the hard way) in long slogs in Afghanistan & Iraq that armed opposition groups must be won over and included in the political process. Paritcularly, it is clear that army defectors and even civilian instigators will be killed if caught, and this means that now, many people's lives fundamentally depend on opposition victory--and these people will fight until the end, unless there is a credible move to provide some reconciliation or amnesty, and Assad likely no longer has that credibility. What Egypt and Yemen learned is that disposing of the "face" of the old regime can be an extremely effective move in (at least temporarily) quelling unrest. Syria is practicing neither of these, and will likely be unable to simply crush the opposition into cooperation.

The way things are going, it looks like the Assad regime has less than even odds of weathering the uprising and sanctions. The biggest risk to the regime, right now, is that its foreign currency reserves are starting to deplete. It's spending its money at a faster rate than it can funnel in through Iran and other allied sources. Sanctions often don't work, but Syria is facing these sanctions with a very small set of allies helping them, as well as an active war that is draining its treasury.

The end-game for the regime, if it comes, would be a high-level defection of some sort--someone with military influence that loses confidence that the path to their personal prosperity is with the Assad regime (or, heaven forbid, has a change of conscience about the shelling of civilians). I'm not sure how likely this is, but again--I'd give it greater than 50%, due to the strength of the sanctions, the persistence of the opposition movement (and their incentive for their lives to continue to persist), and the seeming volume of military defection. The last of which means not only that the opposition will have the guns to continue fighting (and are almost certainly being supplied by allies in Turkey, and possibly the CIA/Mossad/etc) and that the military leaders will be faced with the fact that continuing to kill civilians will sow greater dissent among the ranks.

This high-level defection would bring with it either a straight coup or a more protracted fight. A coup is more likely--Assad will certianly have military leadership doubting him enough that they could want to be at the front edge of a seemingly inevitable new regime, rather than the villain of it.

That said, this coup may well have outcomes similar to those in Egypt, in which power is not wrested from the military regime. The military will _not_ lead a coup only to then throw itself from power. Such a coup would bring reforms, for sure, but many of the opposition would be disappointed. On the other hand, taking down the military regime completely would require a Libya-style sustained insurgency. This is also possible, given in particular a safe base of operations in Turkey, but would absolutely require foreign support in the form of training, serious armaments, and (likely) air support. We'll talk next time about the likelihood of such support.

So, in short: Assad himself is likely not long for his current chains of office. How we define "victory," though, will color our interpretation of the most likely current outcome, which is the military removing Mr. Assad from office.

Implications of the Current Situation in Libya

Short summary of recent events in Libya:

* Rebel and Gaddafi forces face east/west stalemate
* Gaddafi's forces organize and rally, pushing Rebels to Benghazi
* At some point, SAS (and probably CIA) inserted into Libya
* UN approves no-fly zone and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians
* Gaddafi declares ceasefire, declares willingness to talk to opposition, meanwhile moving forces into Benghazi
* Anti-Rebel operations continue in Benghazi (in efforts to "last-minute" end the Rebel forces)
* French strikes begin on land targets (tanks, etc)
* US/UK strikes begin on anti-air, fuel, airport, communication/command sites
* Arab League condemns ground attacks

"All necessary measures" is likely a deliberately vague clause, allowing the West to justify (at least to itself) nearly any military action, while abiding by its post-Iraq rule-following sensibilities.

Of course, the protection of civilians is a political mask over the true intent: regime change in Libya. As much as the Rebels are a bit of an unknown factor (and some of them are clearly Islamist), the West is quite tired of Gaddafi.

The implications are numerous and highly variable.

West-Middle East Relations
The West certainly hopes that its pro-Rebel action will endear it to the new anti-establishment movements and regimes that seem to be sweeping the Middle East. The West gets to claim "we helped without occupying!" when the new governments of the Middle East start making serious decisions. The fact that the Rebels asked consistently for Western help is a good sign that the PR has the potential to be good.

That said, the Arab league is condemning the ground strikes, saying that the West has already gone past its mandate of protecting civilians. Indeed, the "protecting civilians" focus of the UN resolution may be a political crutch to real action. The Arab League, moving towards a popular/ democratic rhetoric, is worried that the air strikes will lead to non-insignificant civilian casualties; these governments thus do not want to be perceived as supporting more Western action in the Middle East that seems to damage Arab/Muslim people.

The two questions as to the PR outcome will be the # of civilian casualties and the outcome of the campaign. More casualties will be tolerated in the short-term if Gaddafi's brutal regime is removed and replaced by something more friendly, but only if the front-line action is driven by the Rebels themselves. The West will need to keep some of its guns in check in order to avoid looking less like humanitarians and more like imperialists.

Commitment
Part of the major risk is scope creep, though it depends on the country.

The United States has already committed to take a back seat after the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) campaign ends, allowing countries like France and Italy to take over enforcing the no-fly zone and preventing ground forces from entering Benghazi en masse.

That said, the risk is creating a stalemate, in which a withdrawal of air forces will allow Gaddafi to succeed, but an endless no-fly zone campaign might quickly frustrate both domestic European opinion and Middle East opinion.

To break that stalemate and seriously cripple Gaddafi's forces (thus giving the rebels the advantage) will require action beyond the original mandate, though this can often be done with enough discretion that only minor objections will be thrown up.

The West's goal here may be to make sure a friendly country, probably Egypt, is committed to supporting the rebels and making sure they can be rearmed, fed, and regrouped during the air campaign, such that they can make a sustained push west towards Tripoli when the initial SEAD campaign ends; Western forces are likely to be able to provide key intelligence to help the Rebels find isolated pro-Gaddafi units and overtake them quickly and decisively, which would further arm the rebels with artillery and armor.

Military Outcome
Likely military outcomes here are either a stalemate or a rebel victory. Gaddafi will struggle to get the forces he needs into Benghazi (and struggle to control them well enough to effectively occupy key population centers).

As a default, military units are now hiding in heavily populated areas, though if they're otherwise paralyzed, it may give Rebel forces there an opportunity to harass the units into a state of unpreparedness for a more sustained Rebel counter-attack.

While a Rebel victory is possible, it's also unlikely. The Rebels lack military leadership, and (unlike Yemen or Egypt) have not had major elements of the armed forces defect and turn their guns against the leadership. Until that happens, the Rebels would have to completely knock out the sizable Libyan army in order to claim victory over Tripoli.


Political Outcomes
If the stalemate persists, the Rebels are likely to keep their alternative government in the east, and a de facto split of Libya would occur. The Benghazi government could garner international support; especially from Egypt (which would want influence over the large oil reserves in that area).

but whether the Rebels win or not, the big question of its political makeup remains a major concern for the West. Clearly, the Rebels are anti-despotic, but what else? Libya had a brutal campaign against extremist Islam for some time--how strong are these influences in the Rebel group? Do the Rebels desire a secular state? Will it be Western-friendly? These are all questions left unanswered, and will largely determine the amount of sustained Western support for the government.

Western Cohesion and Trans-Atlantic Relations
Perhaps most interesting is that the biggest benefit the West is likely to get is its own internal sense of dignity and goodwill. With US-led operations in the last 10 years going militarily poorly and morally questionably, there have been a lot of bad feelings and aimlessness among the West, even with respect to itself. The West's strategic direction is confused and frustrated (especially as Russia seems to be running circles around NATO's internal conflicts). If Libya goes well, the West can achieve a "feel-good" victory like it had in the early 1990s, and a renewed confidence in its ability to be an effective and relatively-welcomed police force.

Western military cohesion will not be that of the early 1990s, but it may improve. Specifically, the US will have an opportunity to act in an effective support role, both improving relations with Europe (by allowing Europe to lead the operation that's most relevant to its immediate periphery), and setting up a system in which the US can limit its engagement. The US has far and away the best logistical/transport capacity and control, as well as the best battlefield intelligence. These two factors make it a perfect candidate to support other Western nations' campaigns against less impressive forces, and the US can benefit significantly by setting up alliances in which it maintains that role.

Lessons from Sri Lanka

The war is over. But a tone of solemnity reigns over Sri Lanka. Many civilians died, and the country remains highly divided.

But there are things to be learned, even right away. Much of this is speculation, but I think it's good speculation.

I believe the Tigers gave up long after they should have, if military was the only factor. In the past few years, the Sri Lankan military became more competent, and the Tigers failed to revert to an effective insurgency--they fought the Sri Lankan military face-to-face, and lost handily. Cornered for months in a tiny, destitute section of the country, starving and out of ammunition, they held on. They dragged the war on. People continued to die.

I believe the blame lies in part with the international community. The United Nations, the EU, and even the US levered increasing pressure upon the Sri Lankans to pay more attention to civilians, to be more cautious. And the Tigers took advantage of this--one of the reasons so many civilians died was that the Tigers hid among them, and the Sri Lankan government had the domestic political capital necessary to largely ignore this. But increasing international pressure over these civilians may have convinced the Tigers that the tactic would eventually force the Sri Lankans to break and fight much more conservatively.

Moreover, the international community began to advocate strongly for a ceasefire, rather than a surrender. And ceasefires seem to be the knee-jerk reaction of the UN and EU (at least--the US is often responsible). It is a fair knee-jerk; we want the fighting to stop, the dying to stop, as we "sort things out." But the Tamils and the Sri Lankan government had had many ceasefires--and often, they are (quoth a great professor of mine, Barry Posen) "the pause that refreshes" for the losing side. If you are getting beat up badly by your adversary, there's nothing you want more than a ceasefire in order to rearm, reorganize, treat your wounded, recruit, etc. The momentum of the winning side falls apart. Both sides move back--which often means the winning side gives up strategic gains. Sometimes, UN peacekeepers show up to make sure that the winning side can't effectively police the losing side and make sure they don't build up. Such a ceasefire was clearly the last hope of the Tigers, and the incessant calls for it by the international community likely bolstered their confidence in a situation where they would have otherwise felt doomed.

Sometimes, wars must end in surrender. In fact, they often must. Ceasefires lead to lasting peace in very few of the circumstances they are implemented. War does not happen for fun, or out of irrational whim--war is a product of rational security concerns, over competition for naturally scarce security resources that often cannot be allocated well for both sides. The Tigers wanted a homeland to protect themselves as a minority; they were willing to fight, bleed, die, kill, and terrorize for it, for a quarter-century. A ceasefire would not have convinced them to lay down their guns and join the Sri Lankans--not without what is called a "hurting stalemate" (in which both sides have suffered enough and have seen few enough prospects for progress in fighting that a compromise eventually becomes compelling), but a UN-imposed ceasefire typically comes long before that.

The lesson in Sri Lanka is that war sucks, but it cannot be ended by pieces of paper and prayer alone. There are real structural factors at work, and sometimes the best way to change those structural factors to the point that the war ends is to let it run. By pressuring the Sri Lankan government with such zeal, the international community prolonged the war, leading to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of Sri Lankans. We must not let misguided altruism become an ally of the scourge of war. We must be more conscientious in our statements, in our pressure, in our policy. We must, always, think.

Sri Lanka Breaking Stalemate With Tigers

Current civil war theory suggests that civil wars are tough to end with negotiated settlements; victory tends to stick better. Attempts to intervene from outside have largely failed to end the 25-year-old Sri Lanka civil war, in which the LTTE (popularly known as Tamil Tigers) have fought for independence from Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's not a big state, nor a rich one--the disruption has been devastating to its population, and quite a thorn in the side of India (who has a large Tamil minority in its southeast). The rebels, who claim a large swath of northern coastal territory in Sri Lanka as "Tamil homeland," are on the US and EU terror lists for their treatment of civilians during the conflict. But to be truly fair, the Colombo government hasn't been much nicer.

The rebels have been surprisingly well-armed during the entire ordeal, able to strike Sri Lankan military installations multiple times in the last year with a fighter-bomber wing that the Sri Lankans have struggled to destroy. But a renewed offensive, in which the Sri Lankan military has taken heavy casualties, recaptured the central-eastern part part of the country and the critical Jaffna Pennensula at the northernmost part of the island. The rebels have been collapsed to a defensive pod (the pink shown in the picture to the right), and have held strong. But a recent three-day battle with heavy casualties has broken the rebel front lines on the north-facing side of the Tamil stronghold.

The territory is jungle, and thus very friendly to the local Tamils, who are likely able to move rather freely throughout the area; this will make fighting here not only tought, but a Vietnam kind of tough. The government may have to resort to seriously heavy-handed tactics througout the last phases of the operation to smoke out the Tigers once and for all--even if this will make reconstruction and reintegration more difficult.

I mean to emphasize that there will not be a quick and easy victory in store for the Sri Lankan military-- but the momentum is certainly theirs, and their casualty-acceptance has gone up significantly as morale increases. The ability of the Tigers to launch air strikes or move in major formations without being hit by Sri Lankan air power has diminished significantly, and the Sri Lankan military should begin to assume flanking operations on one side of the front if it has kept reserves properly ready. It must sieze the initiative.

If it does not, the Tamils may resort to trying to stretch the conflict out through a Maoist insurgency--of the style used by the Chinese Red Army in the 1930's, the Viet Cong in the 1960's. Such a style of asymmetric warfare has a surprisingly high rate of success against local governments when the purpose is to stretch their supply lines, decrease their morale, and generally increase costs.

That said, the likelihood that the Tigers will be able to turn the tide in full at this point is very low. They do not have a large population to continually draw fighters from, and their area of operation has shrunk so low that they will struggle to avoid decisive battles like this most recent one--Maoist-style insurgencies can only succeed if the rebels have the ability to continually retreat and regroup--hit-and-run tactics against patrols between long-term rests in relatively friendly territory are essential in being able to carry out a protracted conflict. The Tamils' ability to do that is quickly shrinking; the Sri Lankan military's superior manpower, training, and resources should bring them victory in the next few months.