Revenge in the Desert

"I could not hold back my armed forces!" shouted President Anwar Sadat on Egyptian TV, furiously pounding a desk for emphasis. "Yesterday and today they gave him a lesson he will never forget." No Egyptian needed to be told who "he" was. After four years of increasingly bitter feuding with Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Sadat last week unleashed his army and air force against Gaddafi's outgunned 30,000-man army.

Tanks and mechanized infantry units of two divisions of the First Egyptian Army, normally assigned to defend the regime in Cairo, pummeled the three brigades that Gaddafi managed to throw into battle. Meanwhile nearly a dozen Egyptian commando and paratrooper battalions dropped behind Libyan lines, and three squadrons of MiG fighter jets bombed and strafed Libyan cities and military bases. The fierce armor and air battles raged for at least three days.

Erstwhile Allies. On Sunday, Cairo launched more bombing raids and claimed that six Libyan planes and several tanks had been destroyed; two Egyptian Sukhoi 20 planes were shot down. Although the exact situation on the battlefield remained uncertain, one thing was clear: the dispute between these angry neighbors and erstwhile allies was close to careening out of control.

The battles began along the sandy Libyan-Egyptian border, 390 miles west of Cairo. In his telecast, Sadat insisted that Gaddafi--"that very strange person"--had ordered his forces to make border raids near Sallum (see map). In one such incursion, the Egyptian President said, the Libyans had taken 14 prisoners. "He felt proud of himself," Sadat said, "but he was playing with fire." The Libyans answered that it was the Egyptians who had been raiding across the border. Whatever the rights and wrongs, the Egyptians apparently reinforced their border forces last week and waited to strike, in order to teach Gaddafi what Sadat called an "unforgettable" lesson.

Along the Sallum escarpment, a narrow, sandy ridge between sea and impassable salt flats where British and German armor fought several World War II battles, tanks and planes rumbled once more. In one battle, claimed Cairo, Egyptian troops knocked out 40 Libyan tanks and disabled 30 other vehicles at the cost of one truck and one wounded soldier. Next day bomb-laden Egyptian jets swept across Libya, inflicting heavy damage on an airbase at El Adem, near Tobruk.

According to Cairo, that was the extent of the lesson Egypt wanted to teach Gaddafi. But at week's end, the Libyan-based Arab Revolutionary News Agency insisted that Egyptian MiGs were striking targets that stretched from the Mediterranean to some 250 miles south of Tobruk. The attacks, charged a Libyan spokesman, were "in preparation for a land offensive on Libya." Boasting that Gaddafi's forces had downed eight Egyptian warplanes, the spokesman then warned: "If this unjustifiable aggression is not stopped, the Libyan forces will retaliate strongly in the depth of Egypt." Officials in Cairo at first accused Libya of inventing "imaginary raids", but then admitted they were taking place. Libya complained to the United Nations about Egyptian "aggression."

The military clashes were a culmination of the long-running feud between the erratic Gaddafi and Sadat. After Gaddafi struck an arms deal with the Soviets in 1975, Sadat concluded that Gaddafi was trying to overthrow him by supporting an Egyptian underground with Libyan money and Russian arms. In early July, when an extremist Muslim sect called the Society for Repentance and Retreat murdered a former Egyptian Cabinet minister and planted bombs in Cairo, the Egyptian government blamed it on Gaddafi. At least four people have been executed in Egypt as Libyan "saboteurs." Sadat is incensed by Libyan propaganda that mocks him and his wife Jehan as "Antony and Cleopatra," living in presidential splendor while poor Egyptians starve.

Good Friend. Gaddafi, for his part, is annoyed that Egypt is becoming a good friend of Libya's alienated southern neighbor Chad. The government of Chad is battling a rebellion in the north; it has accused Libya of backing the rebels. There are rumors that Egypt is planning to give Chad military aid to fight the rebels and, ultimately, Libya.

Arab League Secretary-General Mahmoud Riad called last week's battle "a setback to Arab solidarity." He beseeched both sides to stop fighting, since a war between the neighbors would only benefit the enemy, Israel. Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat shuttled between Cairo and Tripoli to soothe tempers. If it comes to a full-scale war, Egypt's army outnumbers Libya's by about 11 to 1 and is much better trained. But Cairo must worry about 200,000 Egyptians who live and work in Libya to bolster that country's infant economy. They would become hostages of Gaddafi in any serious Shootout.

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