"A contra-style group based in the United States called the Libyan National Army.”

BENGHAZI, Libya — Khalifa Hifter thought he'd be America's man in Libya.

He'd spent the last 24 years living under what he calls U.S. government protection in suburban northern Virginia. Before he returned to Libya last month, State Department and CIA officials sought him out for meetings. He delivered to them wish lists of weapons and vehicles to bolster the fight against Moammar Gadhafi.

To his frustration, however, U.S. officials haven't contacted him since. They've ignored his pleas for direct military support while the rebels steadily lose ground to Gadhafi's better-equipped forces.

"The United States is a second home to me," Hifter said. "They should be cooperating with me to help the Libyan people."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/12/112071/libyan-rebel-chief-with-us-ties.html#ixzz1OUupR2Ur

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...“Whose army?”

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The dysfunction was on full display here this week. “I control everybody, the rebels and the regular army forces,” one of the two, Gen. Khalifa Hifter, said in an interview on Monday. “I am the field commander, and Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes is chief of staff. His job is to support us in the field, and my job is to lead the fighting.”

The rebels’ civilian leadership, the Transitional National Council, has insisted, however, that General Younes remains in charge of the military. “This is not true,” an official close to the council said Tuesday when told of General Hifter’s claims. “General Younes is over him, this is for sure, and General Hifter is under him.”

General Hifter made it clear that he viewed General Younes as an officer who was serving in a support or logistical role, and he explicitly blamed him for a string of humiliating retreats by rebels along the seesawing front line between Brega and Ajdabiya, most recently on Sunday, when seven rebels were killed during a counterattack by government forces that turned into a near rout.

<snip to the NYTime article: As British Help Libyan Rebels, Aid Goes to a Divided Force>

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On the military front, the rebels have reined in the young men who had at first been recklessly rushing up and down the coastal road to virtually no effect. A clear line of command has at last been laid down, with Colonel Qaddafi’s former interior minister, Abdel Fatah Younis, as commander-in-chief and General Khalifa Haftar, who previously claimed the top spot on his return from many years in the United States, politely sidelined. A civilian, Jalal el-Digheily, has been appointed defence minister in the National Transitional Council (NTC), a fledgling government.

NATO says that co-ordination with the rebels has also improved, enabling targets to be hit with increasing accuracy. Colonel Qaddafi’s forces are also coming under increasing pressure in the Nafusa mountains, a Berber-populated area to the south-west of Tripoli; rebels now control the main nearby crossing-point to Tunisia, though the Libyan regime still holds the coastal one. Though some members of the Western coalition against Colonel Qaddafi have qualms, the British in particular are stretching the definition of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which lets the coalition take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, to include any target, including infrastructure as well as command-and-control points, that could be of value to the regime in its attacks on rebel-held towns (see article).

On the political front, the rebels have tidied themselves up too. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, a former justice minister under Colonel Qaddafi, is proving a consensual chairman of the NTC, while Mahmoud Jibril, who ran the colonel’s economic development board until he defected and has a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, is in effect the prime minister heading an “executive team”. He and his closest ally and deputy, Ali Essawi, who also held senior economic posts under the colonel, have forged close ties with several Gulf states, especially Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Ali Tarhouni, a former professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, is handling the oil portfolio with aplomb. There are inevitable mutterings that the emerging administration, which stresses its transitional nature, lacks accountability. But foreigners in Benghazi say it has begun to function a lot better.

<snip to much more at link from the Economist>