As NATO struggles to break a deepening stalemate in Libya, the British announced on Tuesday that they were sending military advisers to help build up a rebel army that has stumbled against the superior forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The first question the British will face is "Whose army?"
For they will find themselves advising a ragtag rebel force that cannot even agree on who its top officer is, amid squabbling between two generals who both come with unsavory baggage.
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."
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