Why Libyan rebels' claims should not go unchallenged

As in all wars, people start lying even before they start firing weapons. Propaganda and perception are everything, and in time of war – and this is civil war in Libya – reporters and reported need to keep a space between each other.

So it is that for two weeks of war, rebel forces have repeatedly said they have beaten back government attempts to retake a town they hold.

All such claims need to be treated with the utmost caution.

Past weeks of a lack of scepticism over rebel claims gave the global impression that the regime was in imminent collapse, even though there was abundant evidence to the contrary.

And so it has duly proved. This week there is real danger of fundamentally misreporting the war if we simply take rebel assumptions as fact.

The rebel view of Colonel Gaddafi’s army might be quite right. But it might also be quite wrong, for the following reasons:

1. The rebels do not know what the army’s orders and tasking is – whether they’ve been ordered to “retake” Al-Zawiyah or wherever – or not.

2. So far as I’m aware, the army has given no briefing to the Tripoli press corps regarding its strategy.

3. Neither have civilian regime figures in Tripoli

4. A number of very well connected anti-government Libyans have told me that the army’s instructions are to isolate rebels in certain towns then attack them there to inflict casualties – but not to seek “control” of said towns.

5. There is no military sense in even attempting to control large civilian areas with relatively small numbers of infantry without consent, requisite policing and with soldiers untrained for the job.

6. The past two weeks of warfare show no evidence that the army is interested in wresting territorial control – abundant evidence that it wants to use “shoot and scoot” tactics by air,  land and sea.

The desire of rebels to claim success in foiling territorial warfare should not, therefore, go unchallenged.