THE REBELS

The most critical battle in the Libyan conflict is currently Qawalish, a western village that, if seized by opposition fighters, would allow them to descend from the largely rebel-controlled Nafusa Mountains and advance toward the town of Garyan, which offers access to the main highway leading north to the capital and potentially other key northern towns like Zawiya. But Parsley thinks such an advance is unlikely. Once the rebels come down from the mountains, he explains, they'll encounter flat territory and won't have the "armed transport capability" to battle Qaddafi's superior army. "The only way that they would ever be able to take the capital is if there was a complete implosion of the Qaddafi regime," he states. "The resistance that would be put up to an invasion of Tripoli would be unlike anything you've seen so far." Google Earth shows how the terrain levels out past Qawalish (roads are in yellow):

C.J. Chivers expresses a similar view in a New York Times dispatch today from Qawalish:

Expectations of a swift rebel advance out of the mountains toward Tripoli are unrealistic, barring a collapse from within of the Qaddafi forces blocking the way. The rebel military leadership has admitted this much, too. A force equipped as they are, they say, cannot expect to undertake an arduous open-desert march against a dug-in, conventional foe with armor, artillery, rockets, and more.

In the east, Al Jazeera reports, the rebels in Ajdabiya are planning their first major westward offensive in over two months, but so far they've been unable to seize the eastern oil town of Brega. "They have no ability to invade Tripoli from the east," Parsley says, noting that the terrain is also flat along the coast. "Air support will only take you so far." The path from Ajdabiya to Tripoli is in purple (the rebel stronghold of Benghazi is on the far right):

QADDAFI'S FORCES

In the face of NATO airstrikes, Parsley explains, the Libyan army has ditched its tanks and armored personnel carriers (which were essentially giant targets for allied warplanes) in favor of civilian infrastructure and the machine gun-mounted pickup trucks used by the rebels. Indeed, the U.K. admitted yesterday that it's running out of military targets in Libya. "What are you going to do, keep bombing the sand?" Parsley asks.

NATO ALLIES

To be sure, NATO hasn't abandoned its military campaign. Just today, France announced that the operation will continue through the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins in August, and the U.K. pledged four more warplanes to the effort. But Parsley thinks Western diplomats are now sending out feelers to members of Qaddafi's inner circle and "preparing their respective populations for the negotiations that are going to have to take place at some point. It's always a gradual process. You can't just go from fighting a war against somebody one day to the next day saying let's sit down at the table." He thinks NATO's current strategy ("let's keep bombing them until" the regime collapses, as he puts it), is a weak one. The allies "would love to get lucky and kill Qaddafi," he says, but "it's hard to assassinate somebody from the air."