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.