By Steve Hynd
Following the news reports from Libya, I find myself thinking that the debate still raging over whether the US and its allies should intervene militarily there may very soon be mostly moot. The rebels cannot possibly stand for long against Gaddafi's military on the field of conventional warfare and the civil war must swiftly degenerate into a prolonged counter-insurgency fight.
The BBC has a useful interactive map that illustrates the sticky situation Libya's rebels find themselves in. In the East, Gaddafi's largely still loyal military is advancing, and is currently attacking along a wide front from Misrata through Sirte to Ras Lanuf. AP reports that "Gadhafi appeared to be keeping up the momentum he has seized in recent days in his fight against rebels trying to move on the capital, Tripoli, from territory they hold in eastern Libya" with an attack on a major oil refinery at Sidr and the BBC reports that heavy armor and artillery is being employed along with airstrikes.
West of the capital, Tripoli, the Libyan military is reported to have seized back control of the key town of Zawiyah, again using around 50 tanks and heavy artillery. "We can see the tanks. The tanks are everywhere," one rebel fighter told Reuters.
The rebels have almost no heavy weapons with which to reply and its doubtful they have the expertise to use them effectively even if they did. IPS has a rundown of Gaddaffi's extensive arsenal, built up with oil money during the 80s.
Besides Soviet-made Sukhoi Su-24, Tupolev Tu-22 and MiG-25 fighter bombers, Libya is also armed with French-made Mirages, Dassault Falcon trainers and Aerospatiale helicopters.
The Italians supplied Libya with over 120 SIAI-Marchetti trainers, the French with Crotale surface-to-air missiles, the United States with Lockheed C-130 transport aircraft and the British with Centurion battle tanks and Saladin and Ferret armored personnel carriers.
The weapons from Europe also include assault rifles from Belgium, howitzers from Sweden and the Artemis anti-aircraft air defence system from Greece.
...The Brazilians provided over a 1,000 Cascavel and Urutu fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers delivered in the early 1980s (and which could be used against civilian demonstrators)....At the 25th anniversary celebrations of the military coup that brought Gaddafi to power, over 1,000 Soviet-made T-62 and T-72 battle tanks were on public display during the September 1994 parade in the streets of Tripoli.
Although there had been an arms embargo in place for a decade or so until 2004, leading some to wonder just how well maintained that arsenal might be, Libya has no shortage of oil money and oil-rich states usually find few problems in getting parts by various routes. And since then a whole new arsenal has been added - including advanced suveillance aircraft - while many of the older weapons systems have been updated and refurbished.
While it remains true that a Western military intervention would cut through Libya's military and attrit its arsenal quickly, that massive imbalance of forces also hold true for Gaddafi's military as it fights the rebels. Without tanks, artillery or air support the rebel forces are at a massive disadvantage in conventional combat and the current phase of the civil war, with rebels holding towns and fielding (ill-equipped) armies will quickly end, to be replaced by the fall-back of all rebels who suffer such disadvantages: insurgency and guerilla warfare.
Those calling for the West to simply arm the rebels must understand that it cannot possibly provide the heavy equipment and training the rebels would need to prevail. So unless substantial portions of Gaddafi's military defect with their equipment what they are advocating is arming for a long, bloody insurgency in which even more Libyans would die. Democracy is certainly worth fighting for, and even dying for, but a decades-long counter-insurgency campaign by Gaddafi and his heirs on their own people is in no-one's best interest.
Update: And just as I post this, Al Arabiya tweets: "White House says UN arms embargo on Libya contains enough flexibility to allow arming of rebels if such a decision is made". Oh dear.
I actually rather doubt you�ll see a long-term insurgency take root in Libya. Insurgencies depend on the state being less than genocidal in their attempts to suppress the insurgents. In cases where the state can deploy significant secret police and military assets to rooting out, imprisoning, torturing, killing, and otherwise stamping out even the barest hints of resistance in the population, insurgencies can�t take root. Mao said that insurgents are the fish swimming in the ocean of the people, and that works unless you have a leader willing to massacre the people to get to the fish, and Qaddafi seems more than willing to do so in the areas he�s not popular in. If the rebels can�t hang on to some territory to maintain a safe haven to build their strength from, I doubt many will survive the crack-down that follows Qaddafi�s re-assertion of power.
ReplyDeleteFurther to that, I suspect the more bloody the crackdown, the more pressure the West will feel to intervene. If the rebels can hold out for another week or two, I�d be willing to bet we�ll see a �no-fly� zone at the very least.