In my previous link I expressed suspicion that the rebels harbor a non-Libyan hard core of professional soldiers. Yesterday then British newspapers came out with the fact that “for several weeks” British special forces have been on the ground aiding rebels, and played a key role in coordinating the march on Tripoli.

Today various Middle East Newspapers furthermore report that when Aug. 20, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, NATO's Canadian commander in Libya, gave the signal for the advance on Tripoli, Special Operations units had been standing by in safe-houses around the city; weapons, ammunition, food and water had been cached at dozens of points close to the action, at the international airport at Ben Ghashir 34 kilometers south of the city center and around Tripoli port.

As a result rebels in Tripoli were able to successfully seize Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound Aug. 23. Yet Gadhafi, his family and what is left of his inner circle remain at large. There have been constant rumors about the locations of all of these individuals, ranging from parts of Tripoli, to Sirte, Sabha, Algeria and the southern desert. 

Gadhafi has made three statements broadcast on radio stations loyal to him since the rebel entry into Tripoli. Rebels searching the Bab al-Aziziya compound Aug. 25 discovered an intricate system of tunnels and bunkers believed to lead to various exit points outside the compound’s walls; unconfirmed reports allege that the system contains at least one tunnel that extends more than 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) beyond the compound’s walls. Reports that some rebel fighters encountered small arms fire within the tunnels indicates Gadhafi loyalists have been using them to escape the compound.

Reuters reported that Gaddafi might try to sell part of Libya's gold reserves to pay for his protection and sow chaos among tribes in the north African country.

Hence not until Gadhafi is in custody or dead will the Libyan war be over.

It is expected that the rebel Transitional National Council will soon move from Benghazi to Tripoli. Even when the odds on the flare-up of civil and tribal warfare at the moment there still is only a 50/50  chance of the TNC being able to make good on its pledges to establish stable governing institutions and call Libya's first ever general election in eight months time.

With help of NATO the new regime will start out with an army and police force at its disposal and most likely establish its seat in Gadhafi 's old stronghold, the Bab al-Aziziya compound, which will assume the character of the US-Iraqi- controlled Green Zone of Baghdad.

To safeguard this area of some six square kilometers in the heart of Tripoli, NATO will need at least one armored division along with aerial surveillance units, special operations forces trained in urban combat, engineering forces and intelligence units – including field intelligence and electronic surveillance.

Given the rebels now, not only, receive help from British special forces, it is to be expected that they will conquer Tripoli within a week. And if the deposed ruler is caught within a few days, which the British and French think is possible, his support system may founder with him. But not if the hunt drags out for long. Because if so, that would mean he has the administrative machinery for continuing to rule parts of Libya in the south and west. The forces stationed outside Tripoli during the city's fall remain in control of the region around his tribal hometown of Sirte east of Tripoli and the Fezzan area in southwest Libya, where most of the Libyan oilfields are located. And Gadhafi will meanwhile rally the tribal chiefs, first to secure their own territory and second to put up recruits to fight under his flag.

Outside the capital there are ongoing clashes near the Ras Ajdir checkpoint at the Tunisian border on the western Libyan coast, including the Aug. 25 death of a Tunisian fisherman by a stray bullet fired during a minor naval skirmish between pro-Gadhafi forces and rebel fighters, have led the Tunisian government to close the border there. The major town in this region is Zuwarah, the site of an army base the rebels reportedly took Aug. 24. Pro-Gadhafi forces are still fighting throughout the area after being cut off from the capital by the rebel seizure of Zawiya on Aug. 18.

The only area where Gadhafi’s forces have actually gained territory since the rebels entered Tripoli on Aug. 21 is on the far eastern front. After retreating to the town of Bin Jawad earlier in the week, pro-Gadhafi forces regained ground Aug. 25 when they pushed rebel fighters back to the port town of Ras Lanuf. This back-and-forth on the eastern front happened often in the early days of the Libyan war, but the inability of rebel forces in the east to make significant progress despite their recent momentum of rebel forces elsewhere has left Gadhafi’s home region of Sirte untouched by anything other than reportedly sporadic NATO bombing. The rebel fighters on this front have publicly expressed surprise that Gadhafi’s forces did not fold after the public entrance of rebel fighters into Tripoli and have also begun to express concerns about supply lines necessary to make an effective push on Sirte. Rebel fighters that have extended their front southeastward from Misurata also have not been able to reach the outskirts of Sirte.

Forces loyal to Gadhafi continue to control the central desert town of Sabha, which has a population of more than 200,000, rivaling Zawiya in size. Like Sirte, Gadhafi also has ties to Sabha, having attended secondary school there, and the Libyan army maintains a base in the city. Though reports began to trickle out Aug. 25 that rebel fighters had seized a main street in Sabha, this is unlikely, as it is located extremely far from any of the other rebel positions in northern Libya.

However rebels are rumored to now travel towards the Ras Ajdir border crossing between Libya and Tunisia, and if the rebel's would win there, it should help open supply routes, to bring in much needed aid  to the capital of Tripoli.

What next with Libya?

With the end of the Gadhafi regime seemingly in sight, we need to look at the reality of what next with Libya. As Libya enters this critical juncture and the National Transitional Council (NTC) transitions from breaking things to building things and running a country, there will be important fault lines to watch in order to envision what Libya will become.

In fact it has proven to be rather difficult to build a stable government from the remnants of a long-established dictatorial regime. History is replete with examples of coalition fronts that united to overthrow an oppressive regime but then splintered and fell into internal fighting once the regime they fought against was toppled. In some cases, the power struggle resulted in a civil war more brutal than the one that brought down the regime. In other cases, this factional strife resulted in anarchy that lasted for years as the iron fist that kept ethnic and sectarian tensions in check was suddenly removed, allowing those issues to re-emerge.

One of the biggest problems that will confront the Libyan rebels as they make the transition from rebels to rulers are the country’s historic ethnic, tribal and regional splits. While the Libyan people are almost entirely Muslim and predominantly Arab, there are several divisions among them. These include ethnic differences in the form of Berbers in the Nafusa Mountains, Tuaregs in the southwestern desert region of Fezzan and Toubou in the Cyrenaican portion of the Sahara Desert. Among the Arabs who form the bulk of the Libyan population, there are also hundreds of different tribes and multiple dialects of spoken Arabic.

Perhaps most prominent of these fault lines is the one that exists between the ancient regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The Cyrenaica region has a long and rich history, dating back to the 7th century B.C. The region has seen many rulers, including Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, Italians and the British. Cyrenaica has long been at odds with the rival province of Tripolitania, which was founded by the Phoenicians but later conquered by Greeks from Cyrenaica. This duality was highlighted by the fact that from the time of Libya’s independence through the reign of King Idris I (1951-1969), Libya effectively had two capitals. While Tripoli was the official capital in the west, Benghazi, King Idris’ power base, was the de facto capital in the east. It was only after the 1969 military coup that brought Col. Moammar Gadhafi to power that Tripoli was firmly established as the seat of power over all of Libya. Interestingly, the fighting on the eastern front in the Libyan civil war had been stalled for several months in the approximate area of the divide between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania.

While the NTC is an umbrella group comprising most of the groups that oppose Gadhafi, the bulk of the NTC leadership hails from Cyrenaica. In its present state, the NTC faces a difficult task in balancing all the demands and interests of the various factions that have combined their efforts to oust the Gadhafi regime. But many past revolutions have reached a precarious situation once the main unifying goal has been achieved: With the regime overthrown, the various factions involved in the revolution begin to pursue their own interests and objectives, which often run contrary to those of other factions. 

In most of these past cases, including Afghanistan, Somalia and Nicaragua, the internal fault lines were seized upon by outside powers, which then attempted to manipulate one of the factions in order to gain influence in the country. In Afghanistan, for example, warlords backed by Pakistan, Iran, Russia and India were all vying for control of the country. In Somalia, the Ethiopians, Eritreans and Kenyans have been heavily involved, and in Nicaragua, contra groups backed by the United States opposed the Cuban- and Soviet-backed Sandinistas.

Outside influence exploiting regional and tribal fault lines is also a potential danger in Libya. Egypt is a relatively powerful neighbor that has long tried to meddle in Libya and has long coveted its energy wealth. While Egypt is currently focused on its own internal issues as well as the Israel/Palestinian issue, its attention could very well return to Libya in the future. Italy, the United Kingdom and France also have a history of involvement in Libya. Its provinces were Italian colonies from 1911 until they were conquered by allied troops in the North African campaign in 1943. The British then controlled Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and the French controlled Fezzan province until Libyan independence in 1951. It is no accident that France and the United Kingdom led the calls for NATO intervention in Libya following the February uprising, and the Italians became very involved once they jumped on the bandwagon. It is believed that oil companies from these countries as well as the United States and Canada will be in a prime position to continue to work Libya’s oil fields. Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates also played important roles in supporting the rebels, and it is believed they will continue to have influence with the rebel leadership.

Following the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, British, American and Italian oil companies were very involved in developing the Libyan oil industry. In response to this involvement, anti-Western sentiment emerged as a significant part of Gadhafi’s Nasserite ideology and rhetoric, and there has been near-constant friction between Gadhafi and the West. Due to this friction, Gadhafi has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Soviet Union and later Russia, which has supplied him with the bulk of his weaponry. It is believed that Russia, which seemed to place its bet on Gadhafi’s survival and has not recognized the NTC, will be among the big losers of influence in Libya once the rebels assume power. However, it must be remembered that the Russians are quite adept at human intelligence and they maintain varying degrees of contact with some of the former Gadhafi officials who have defected to the rebel side. Hence, the Russians cannot be completely dismissed.

China also has long been interested in the resources of Africa and North Africa, and Gadhafi has resisted what he considers Chinese economic imperialism in the region. That said, China has a lot of cash to throw around, and while it has no substantial stake in Libya’s oil fields, it reportedly has invested some $20 billion in Libya’s energy sector, and large Chinese engineering firms have been involved in construction and oil infrastructure projects in the country. China remains heavily dependent on foreign oil, most of which comes from the Middle East, so it has an interest in seeing the political stability in Libya that will allow the oil to flow. Chinese cash could also look very appealing to a rebel government seeking to rebuild — especially during a period of economic austerity in Europe and the United States, and the Chinese have already made inroads with the NTC by providing monetary aid to Benghazi.

The outside actors seeking to take advantage of Libya’s fault lines do not necessarily need to be nation-states. It is clear that jihadist groups such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb see the tumult in Libya as a huge opportunity. The iron fist that crushed Libyan jihadists for so long has been destroyed and the government that replaces the Gadhafi regime is likely to be weaker and less capable of stamping down the flames of jihadist ideology. There are some who have posited that the Arab Spring has destroyed the ideology of jihadism, but that is far from the case. Even had the Arab Spring ushered in substantial change in the Arab World — and we believe it has resulted in far less change than many have ascribed to it— it is difficult to destroy an ideology overnight. Jihadism will continue to affect the world for years to come, even if it does begin to decline in popularity. Also, it is important to remember that the Arab Spring movement may limit the spread of jihadist ideology in situations where people believe they have more freedom and economic opportunity after the Arab Spring uprisings. But in places where people perceive their conditions have worsened, or where the Arab Spring brought little or no change to their conditions, their disillusionment could create a ripe recruitment opportunity for jihadists.

The jihadist ideology has indeed fallen on hard times in recent years, but there remain many hardcore, committed jihadists who will not easily abandon their beliefs. And it is interesting to note that a surprisingly large number of Libyans have long been in senior al Qaeda positions, and in places like Iraq, Libyans provided a disproportionate number of foreign fighters to jihadist groups.

It is unlikely that such individuals will abandon their beliefs, and these beliefs dictate that they will become disenchanted with the NTC leadership if it opts for anything short of a government based on a strict interpretation of Shariah. This jihadist element of the rebel coalition appears to have reared its head recently with the assassination of former NTC military head Abdel Fattah Younis in late July (though we have yet to see solid, confirmed reporting of the circumstances surrounding his death).

Between the seizure of former Gadhafi arms depots and the arms provided to the rebels by outside powers, as pointed out above, Libya is awash with weapons. If the NTC fractures like past rebel coalitions, it could set the stage for a long and bloody civil war — and provide an excellent opportunity to jihadist elements. At present, however, it is too soon to forecast exactly what will happen once the rebels assume power. The key thing to watch for now is pressure along the fault lines where Libya’s future will likely be decided.

 

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