Will Libya be partitioned?

On ground, the rebels, have not been able to make any progress towards recapturing the cities that they lost

The end of the misery that the Libyan people are suffering does not appear to be in sight. So far, some 439,000 people have fled Libya and roughly 6,000 people are fleeing the country every day.

On the ground, the rebels, or revolutionaries, have not been able to make any progress towards recapturing the cities that they lost to Qaddafi’s forces, despite the continuing air strikes by the coalition forces under Nato command. Nato fact sheets maintain that their air attacks against Qaddafi forces, found to be attacking civilians, are continuing, and that 30 per cent of the regime’s ground forces have been destroyed. Rebel leaders, however, say that since the Americans handed over to Nato, “there’s a delay in reacting and lack of response to what’s going on the ground”. Admittedly, some of the air operations were delayed by weather conditions and, more recently, Nato officials have claimed that the efficacy of the Nato effort has been reduced because the Qaddafi forces have used civilians as cover. The net effect has been reduced rebel morale.

The Americans have stood down and this has meant that their fearsome C-130s, with mounted machine guns for use against infantry and A-10 aircraft, specifically designed to provide the precise firepower to attack enemy tanks even when they are close to civilian targets, is no longer available. The American position is, of course, determined by US President Obama’s strongly held belief that the Libyan operation must be seen as an international effort to enforce UNSC resolutions 1970 and 1973, and not an America dominated effort. Given the distrust of America and America’s intentions that pervades the Middle East and the Muslim world, this makes sense.

It is, however, the American envoy, now in Benghazi, whose assessment of the Transitional National Council, and other opposition groups, will ultimately determine whether the Americans, and by extension Nato, will decide to provide training and weapons to the rebel forces, and whether the $32 billion in Libyan funds, currently frozen by the Americans, can be made available to this council to meet both its humanitarian and military needs. Will this come about and, if it does, will it help bring an end to the raging conflict?

The Libyan military forces are not really a military at all. They are, in the words of an American correspondent, less an organised force than the martial manifestation of a popular uprising. As if this were not bad enough, the Transitional National Council appointed head of the army, Younes, is at loggerheads with Hatfar, a veteran soldier who returned to Libya after 25 years in the US and is now regarded, by himself and many others, as the rightful head of the ragtag motley army.

The resources available to the rebels are also limited. The rebel controlled oil field at Misla, which could produce 100,000 barrels a day, has been put out of commission, the rebels say, by Qaddafi forces, while Qaddafi’s deputy foreign minister asserts that the oil field was damaged by British warplanes intent on destroying Libya’s assets. Be that as it may, the rebels currently say that they will export some one million barrels that they have in storage, but beyond that they do not believe they can rely on oil exports that the Qataris have agreed to market. This suggests that it will be many months before the Benghazi-based council will be able to secure control over the 75 per cent of Libya’s oil resources that lie in the east of the country.

It is clear, therefore, that the rebels have neither the military nor the economic strength to overcome Qaddafi, who has at his disposal a trained, albeit depleted, military force and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold bullion valued at more than $6 billion.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2011.