Four days after the Western-Arab coalition decided Saturday, March 19 to enforce a no fly zone over Libya, only six Western warplanes - American, British, Canadian and French - are in the sky at any one time, debkafile's military sources disclose. This is barely enough for a no-fly zone just over Benghazi. And so the anti-Qaddafi operation has run out of steam, slowed also by the falling-out between Washington, London and Paris over its nature and goals and the fading away of the Arab component.

debkafile's sources report the claim that Libya's integrated air defense systems were knocked out by Saturday's US-UK-French bombardment was overstated. Muammar Qaddafi had removed his sophisticated hardware - Russian-made SA-5 missiles which can hit medium or high-flying aircraft and his shoulder-launched K38 Igla9 (SA-18) missiles mounted on Italian Ivaco trucks - to hideouts in the south.
The Western-Arab coalition is split over Qaddafi's removal as endgame, while Arab League Secretary Amr Mussa has already criticized the air strikes.

Twenty French fighter jets destroyed a number of tanks in Benghazi Saturday, March 19, in the first shots of the Western-Arab operation authorized by the UN Security Council 1973 against Muammar Qaddafi, soon joined by British jet fighters. After the US stated it would not take part in the first action or send troops, a US submarine and UK warships fired 112 Tomahawk missiles at 20 Libyan targets east of Tripoli, among them the Libyan army's supreme command center.

debkafile's counter-terror sources are increasingly dubious of the imprecise American terror alert for Europe issued Oct. 3 by the US State Department.  They commented Tuesday, Oct. 5, that the blanket US call for US travelers to watch out in public places and tourist sites all over Europe has little relation to their own data on existing terrorist threats. France, where 14 terror suspects were arrested Monday and which is fighting AQIM, is a separate case.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu keeps on vowing that Iran will not be allowed to establish an outpost on Israel's borders, but he has not lifted a finger to stop this menace ensconcing itself in the north - even though this is a gross violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701. Iran's proxy has therefore won the first round of its drive to recover the forward positions lost in the 2006 war and stands ready for the next.

debkafile's sources disclose that President Nicolas Sarkozy will decide in the coming hours whether to follow in Britain's footsteps in punishing Israel for suspicions that its security service forged the French passports used by the assassins of Hamas arms trader Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai on Jan. 19. London expelled an Israeli diplomat although it admitted it had no proof of Israel's culpability, which Jerusalem regards as an unfriendly act in keeping with More...