Rebel forces on March 28 bore down on Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, a key government stronghold where a brigade headed by one of the Libyan leader’s sons was digging in to defend the city and setting the stage for a bloody and possibly decisive battle. The opposition made new headway in its rapid advance through oil towns and along stretches of empty desert highway toward the capital, Tripoli.
The rebels took control of the eastern half of the country early in the uprising that began a month and a half ago, setting up their capital in the country’s second-largest city of Benghazi. Much of the fighting between government supporters and opponents has been along a coastal road that heads out of Benghazi and west through a couple major oil ports, toward Sirte and beyond that, Tripoli.
Meanwhile, there was growing criticism from countries like Russia that the international air campaign is overstepping the bounds of the UN resolution that authorised it. The complaints came at a critical transition in the campaign from a US to a NATO command. That threatens to hamper the operation, as some of the 28 NATO member nations plan to strictly limit their participation to air patrols, rather than attacks on ground targets.
The Obama administration, facing skeptics at home, is energetically trying to explain the necessity of a US role in another war in a Muslim nation while drawing a line on its involvement in the surge of other uprisings stretching all the way to the Persian Gulf and now stinging Syria’s repressive regime in the heart of the Arab world.