By mid-July, the front lines of the war had hardly changed at all since mid-May. There were three fronts: Rebel kata’ib were still fighting to break out from Ajdabiyah, strike west from Misrata toward Zlitan, and push east from the Nafusah Mountains into Zawiyah and toward Tripoli itself, where they had been furtively preparing for an uprising. The rebels now had satellite phones that allowed them to coordinate more effectively across the disparate fronts, as well as radios that enhanced their coordination at the tactical level, but progress was still painfully slow and it was beginning to look like the war might drag on indefinitely. After initially overestimating how quickly Qaddafi would fall, many observers were now predicting a long battle ahead. Some reporting claimed Qaddafi had a “suicide plan for Tripoli,” and officials in Washington were concerned about how far he might go to keep his grip on power. An editorial in the Financial Times warned that “an all out assault on Tripoli . . . would almost certainly result in a bloodbath among rebels, regime supporters, and civilians. The seeds of vengeance and anarchy would be sown.” Signs of fissures among the thuwwar were furthermore raising concerns about possible violence in the aftermath of a rebel victory.

To make matters worse, having destroyed most of the regime’s command and control, bunkers, air-defense, and other fixed systems, NATO did not have much headroom to intensify the pressure on the regime. NATO spokesman Col. Roland Lavoie explained the situation as follows: “Pro-Qaddafi forces are losing their ability to conduct massive offensives. This does not preclude them, however, from operating in covert locations in agricultural, administrative, or even residential facilities or schools from where they command and conduct attacks.” Concerns were growing that further air strikes would just be “pounding sand” to make it look like the operation was still achieving something. There was a shift, however, to smaller and smaller targets, as Figure 5.4 indicates, just to keep the pressure up, but the air operation was coming up against the problem of diminishing marginal returns.