The Battle of Tripoli and the Siege of Tobruk

Swiss and French radio news reported today that the freedom fighters of the Libyan National Transition Council are close to surrounding and sealing off Tripoli. The Swiss report included an interview with a staff member of the journal Young Africa, stationed at Benghazi, who said that Tripoli is now without water, that there is no fresh food entering the city and that electricity is severely rationed. The escape and supply route once held by Qadhafi from Tripoli into Tunisia to the west is now sealed off and he is more or less trapped in Tripoli.

There was agreement among the reporters that the Battle of Tripoli will soon begin in earnest.

It made me think of Tobruk, that great World War II siege carried out by the Nazis under Field Marshall Rommel in 1941 against the Australian troops stationed there, who held on for five months before being relieved by British, Polish and Czech troops, and later, the American 8^th Army. The siege lasted 240 days. The breaking of the siege of Tobruk marked the first time that Rommel’s Panzers were beaten by the Allies in the North African campaign.

Tobruk was important because it was the only large port between Benghazi farther west and the Egyptian border. Holding the city was crucial to the Allied effort in North Africa because if it had fallen into Nazi hands their supply lines would have been shortened. The siege also kept Rommel from threatening the important Allied hubs at Alexandria and Cairo farther east.

So, we now await another siege in the desert of North Africa, this time not between the Allies and Nazis but between the despot Qadhafi and the NTC freedom fighters. It would be wrong to say that the stakes are small by comparison, because if the NTC forces hold their positions and break Qadhafi’s grip on Tripoli, it will mean the end of his regime and the beginning of the real effort to reform and democratize Libya.