With much of his army defecting to the opposition that now holds Libya's east, Moammar Qaddafi is notoriously making use of mercenaries from countries to the south in Africa. Recent reports indicate that these prominently include Tuareg fighters from Mali and Niger who flocked to Libya in the 1970s and '80s, recruited into an "Islamic Legion" modeled on the French Foreign Legion. A Tuareg leader in Mali, Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assaleh, said some 16,000 Tuaregs remain in the Libyan security forces. "We've been getting updates from some of them by phone," Assaleh said by telephone. "They say their orders are to protect Qaddafi and they will defend him to the end." (CP, March 1)

The UN Security Council on Feb. 27 unanimously ordered a travel ban and asset freeze on Moammar Qaddafi's regime, and ordered an investigation into possible crimes against humanity in Libya. The council made a new demand for an immediate end to the violence, which it said had been incited "from the highest level" of Libyan leaders. The travel ban and asset freeze in Resolution 1970 targets the 68-year-old Libyan leader, four of his sons, and top defense and intelligence officials. (Middle East Online, Feb. 27)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez expressed his support for embattled Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi in a Twitter post Feb. 25: "Long live Libya and its independence! Qaddafi is facing a civil war!" The Tweet was immediately protested by Venezuela's opposition, which is also demanding that Qaddafi return a replica of independence hero Simón Bolívar's sword that Chávez decorated him with when he hosted the Libyan in 2009.

Fighting in Libya spread to western towns near Tripoli Feb. 25, as cities in the east organized interim governments, raising the old flag from before Moammar Qaddafi came to power in 1969. Dueling rallies were held in Benghazi, where thousands celebrated their liberation from Qaddafi's regime, and in Tripoli, where the dictator himself appeared at the capital's Green Square. Qaddafi called on his partisans to "defend Libya," pledging, "If needs be, we will open all the arsenals." Before the Tripoli pro-regime rally, security forces fired on protesters, leaving several dead. Oblivious to the deadly repression that preceded his address, the strongman appealed to Libya's youth to "dance and sing, Moammar Qaddafi is with you."

In a televised speech from an undisclosed location Feb. 24, embattled Libyan strongman Moammar Qaddafi addressed the elders of a town west of the capital, where he said a drug-crazed mob of youth spurred on by al-Qaeda had killed four police officers. He urged the elders of az-Zawiyah to bring their youth under control. As a popular uprising seizes control of ever more of the country, leaving Qaddafi-loyal forces in only a shrinking ring around Tripoli, the dictator portrays the revolution as an insidious design by the international terrorist network:

The Algerian Council of Ministers on Feb. 22 approved a draft ordinance repealing the country's 19-year state of emergency, delivering on a promise made the week before. The draft ordinance will have the force of law upon publication in the Official Journal of Algeria, which the Council of Ministers said would be "imminent." The state of emergency, which has been in place since a series of decrees in 1992, gave the government power to limit political freedoms and even peaceful protests. Opponents also claimed that the state of emergency gave rise to arbitrary detentions.

Moammar Qaddafi's regime has lost vast swathes of Libya's east to insurrectionists, it became clear Feb. 23. Opponents of Qaddafi appear firmly in control of Libya's coastal east, from the Egyptian border through to the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi, with government soldiers switching sides to join the uprising. Fighting has been reported near the capital, Tripoli.

Veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro in his column "Reflections of Comrade Fidel" writes that "NATO's Plan is to Occupy Libya." The piece is dated Feb. 21—the same day that European diplomats broached the use of NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya. It is unclear if Fidel's piece was in reaction to the diplomats' comments, or predictive of them.