Interventions

Libyan Rebels ‘a Hapless Bunch’

Britain wants contractors to train them.

Libyan rebels gained some ground near Brega Thursday, but the consensus is growing that they are not prepared to wage war. “The rebel military, as it sometimes called, is not really a military at all,” C.J. Chivers writes in The New York Times. “By almost all measures by which a military might be assessed, they are a hapless bunch.” They lack communication equipment, have no officers, don’t know how to use their weapons, panic easily, and “lack an understanding of the fundamentals of offensive and defensive combat,” Chivers writes. As a solution, The Guardian says Britain is urging Arab countries to use their own militaries or pay private security companies to train the rebels to hold ground and use flanking maneuvers, which could take a month.