10:51 GMT 28th September 2011
Despite the mighty firepower of the western alliance, the success of the war was anything but certain and, at times, seemed doomed to fail as opposition forces struggled for months to breach Gaddafi's defences.
After a prolonged stalemate in which the battle lines moved very little one way or the other, Nato stepped up its sorties allowing the rebels to finally march into the rubble of Tripoli on August 22 and overrun Gaddafi's sprawling residential compound, Bab al-Aziziya, in the heart of the capital.
The whereabouts of the Libyan leader, who initially said in an audio message broadcast on TV that his withdrawal from Bab al-Aziziya was a 'tactical' manoeuvre, were unknown. Aware that they could not declare a complete victory as long as Gaddafi remained at large - as he has troops very loyal to him and willing to fight for him to the bitter end - opposition forces placed a bounty of nearly $2m on his head and promised an amnesty to anyone in Gaddafi's inner circle who captures or kills him.
As the net appeared to be closing in on Gaddafi, members ofthe embattled leader's family fled to neighbouring Algeria. Algerian authorities confirmed that two of Gaddafi's sons, Muhammad and Hannibal, and his wife and daughter crossed the border into Algeria on the morning of August 29. Algerian officials said Gaddafi's daughter Aisha, gave birth to a baby daughter shortly
after crossing the border.
The rebels described Algeria's decision to offer refuge to members of Gaddafi's family as an 'act of aggression' - saying that they will seek their extradition for trial in Libya. The Algerian ambassador to the UN said that his country accepted to take in the members of the Gaddafi family on humanitarian grounds, adding that Algeria was bound to honour the sacred tradition of hospitality observed in the Sahara Desert. Algeria also says it has observed a policy of ' strict neutrality ' over the course of the conflict in Libya. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's administration is the only North African state that has not yet recognised the TNC.
The rebel leadership offered a temporary ceasefire for the celebration of the Eid festival marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, but gave pro-Gaddafi forces an ultimatum to surrender by September 3. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the chair of the Transitional National Council (TNC) and Gaddafi's former minister of justice, vowed that, if the loyalist forces refused to surrender by the deadline 'we will decide the matter militarily'. There was no indication that the pro-Gaddafi forces would capitulate and the rebels were preparing for an all-out assault on Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte.
Sirte, the Libyan leader's birthplace, was emerging as an obvious stronghold for the loyalist forces and rebel attempts to encircle the city were met with stiff resistance despite Nato's airpower softening the ground beforehand.
To unite the two halves of the country now under their control, the rebels need to secure Sirte, located in the middle of Libya's main east-to-west transnational highway. Rebel commanders said they opened talks with local elders in an attempt to secure a peaceful surrender of the city, but there was no indication that the talks would succeed and there were fears that a siege on Sirte may prove lengthy and bloody. The rebels said they were also in talks with elders in the other main remaining loyalist strongholds of Bani Walid, near Tripoli, and Sabha, deep in the Sahara Desert.
The Associated Press reported that it received a phone call from Gaddafi's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, who said the fugitive leader was willing to start talks with the rebel leadership to form a transitional government. Ibrahim said that Gaddafi 's son, Saadi, was going to lead the talks. A few a days earlier, CNN reported that it received an email message from Saadi saying he wished to negotiate a ceasefire to save his city, Tripoli, and its two million residents from becoming immersed in a 'sea of blood' and being ' lost forever'.
Having all but won the military campaign to dislodge Gaddafi, the task of securing the peace lies ahead, which may prove still harder than winning the war. Following the fall of Tripoli, Jalil summed up the situation this way: '[Libya is] on the threshold of a new era ... of a new stage that we will work to establish the principles that this revolution was based on, which are freedom, democracy, justice, equality and transparency.' However, deep divisions are already emerging among the various elements that make up the opposition forces, as well as claims from numerous quarters that the US and its European allies are attempting to install a puppet regime.
Critics of Nato's intervention point out that it violated the UN's original mandate to take 'all necessary measures ... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas ' by seeking regime change early on. In doing so it has provided arms and 'advisers' to the rebel forces and rejected overtures from Gaddafi for a ceasefire or outside bodies like the African Union (AU).
South African President Jacob Zuma has said that the AU's initiative to end the crisis in Libya early on in the conflict could have saved many of the civilian lives Nato was claiming to be protecting. He lamented that its bombing campaign robbed Africa of a meaningful role in the efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Libya.
'Those who have the power to bomb other countries have undermined the AU's efforts and initiatives to handle the situation in Libya,' Zuma said at a press conference. 'We could have avoided a lot ofloss of life in Libya.' He added that the powerful nations behind the Nato-led military intervention abused the UN resolution 'to further interests other than to protect civilians and assist the Libyan people'.
Those fighting to oust Gaddafi are a disparate collection offorces, including prominent defectors from the Gaddafi government, royalists still smarting from Gaddafi's overthrow of King Idriss in 1969 - hence the prominence of the red, green and black monarchical flag - tribal leaders who harbour traditional animosity towards Gaddafi, and Islamists, many of them with links to al-Qaeda. The assassination in July of Abdel Fattah Younes, the opposition forces chief of staff and Gaddafi's former interior minister, is a reminder of how fractious and disunited these elements are.
Many of the armed bands that seized control of Tripoli have voiced contempt for the collection of ex-Gaddafi ministers, like Jalil, CIA and other Western intelligence agency assets, and tribal politicians based in Benghazi. One rebel military commander is Abdelhakim Belhadj, described by the Arabic daily Asharq AI-Awsat as 'a former Emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was banned internationally as a terrorist organisation following the 9/ 11 attacks'.
Belhadj began his career as ajihadist fighting alongside Osama bin Laden with the CIA-backed Islamist mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1988. He returned to Libya in the 1990s, founding the LIFG and launching an armed insurgency against the Gaddafi government.
Meanwhile, protests broke out in the city of Misrata late August after the TNC announced a decision to install a former general in Gaddafi's army, Albarrani Shkal, as chief of security in Tripoli. Hundreds poured into Misrata's Martyr's Square, chanting that the appointment ofShkal represented a betrayal of the 'blood of the martyrs'.
Before defecting to the anti-Gaddafi side in May, Shkal is believed to have been a senior officer in the 32nd Brigade, commanded by Gaddafi's son Khamis, which played a leading role in the siege of Mis rata. According to the British Guardian, 'Misrata's ruling council lodged a formal protest with the NTC, saying that if the appointment were confirmed Misratan rebel units deployed on security duties in Tripoli would refuse to follow NTC orders.'
After more than six months of fighting, the humanitarian situation in Tripoli is dire. The TNC leadership made an urgent appeal for $5bn in immediate aid to avoid a humanitarian crisis. It said it also needed the funds to pay public sector employees and restore basic services like water and power. Medecins Sans Frontieres reported that hospitals in Tripoli were overwhelmed, with large numbers of wounded civilians. The group said it was facing shortages of medical supplies and personnel. In one district of the capital, more than 200 decomposing bodies were found in an abandoned hospital. Injured patients were apparently left to die as doctors and nurses fled for their lives.
To secure the cash they urgently needed, the rebels were seeking emergency grants and loans, but more importantly they wanted access to $170bn of Libyan assets seized overseas, $37bn of it held in the US, $20bn and $10.5bn held in Britain and Germany respectively. Having seized the assets, these countries are now in charge of how they will be disbursed. Italy, Britain, Germany and France have said they would release some of the money and, following an emergency session, the UN agreed to release up to $1.5bn Libyan assets for immediate rebel use.
The gruesome discovery across the capital of scores of bodies - among them more than 50 charred bodies found in a burned warehouse in Tripoli - raised the spectre that summary executions are being carried out. The western press blames most of these deaths on Gaddafi's forces. 'Nato has developed a peculiar terminological twist for Libya, designed to absolve the rebels of any role in perpetrating crimes against civilians, and abdicating its so-called responsibility to protect,' wrote Maximilian C Forte in the online journal Counterpunch.
'Throughout the war, spokespersons for Nato and for the US and European governments consistently portrayed all of the actions ofGaddafi's forces as "threatening civilians", even when engaged in either defensive actions, or combat against armed opponents.'
They have been mostly silent on the number of black Libyans and those from other parts of Africa, that have been murdered by opposition forces, who claim they are mercenaries. 'The [TNC] seems to be confusing black people with mercenaries,' AU chair Jean Ping said on August 26. 'If you do that, it means [that the] one-third of the population of Libya which is black [are] also mercenaries. They are killing people, normal workers, mistreating them.'
Summary execution of prisoners undermines the new administration's ability to administer justice and discredit its professed commitment to due process of the law. It has often been remarked that the Libyan opposition have no more in common than their mutual desire to end more than four decades of Gaddafi rule. But once the dust settles, there may well emerge diverging views for the new Libya which, according to some analysts, could lead to years of political instability. Given that Libyan society is tribal-based, some analysts have gone as far as comparing what might happen in Libya to what happened in Somalia following the collapse ofthe central government in 1991.
If serious divisions within the opposition emerged, the fact that all factions are armed may prove explosive and deadly. Decommissioning and collecting the staggering number of weapons now in circulation in Libya will be among the rebel leadership's most urgent tasks.
Even before the guns fell silent, the scramble began in earnest to secure a slice of Libya's lucrative oil market. The sprawling North African state is the world's 12th largest oil producer and has the largest known reserves of oil and natural gas on the continent, ahead of Nigeria and Algeria. Oil is Libya's largest foreign currency earner but oil production dwindled to a trickle during the conflict. Italy, Libya's largest trading partner, has already sent a team to the rebel headquarters of Benghazi to work on plans to restore oil and natural gas production to pre-war levels. Italy's energy group, ENI, is the largest producer in Libya and expected to retain that status, according to Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini.
BP is also eager to secure a significant share of the Libyan oil market. In 2004, then British prime minister Tony Blair flew to Tripoli and signed a deal with Gaddafi that opened up Libya for UK businesses. BP subsequently signed an agreement with the Gaddafi regime to explore oil fields in the western Ghadames Basin as well as to drill offshore in the Sirte Basin.
The competition to secure a foothold in the new Libya will not be limited to western powers. China, with its emerging economy's insatiable appetite for energy and raw materials, has been very active in Africa in recent years and will, no doubt, want to make important inroads into the Libyan oil and natural gas market.
There was also much clamouring in western capitals for securing reconstruction contracts from the TNC. After more than six months of and heavy bombardment, the country's infrastructure, especially in the capital, has sustained significant damage.
Jalil admitted that Gaddafi was 'not finished yet'. The extraordinary resilience of the Gaddafi regime and the continued resistance of loyalist forces are testimony to the fact that the long-time leader enjoys strong support from large swathes of Libyan society. But Nato spokesperson Col Roland Lavoie said that it remained fully committed to the military campaign in Libya to keep 'the pressure on the remnants of the Gaddafi regime until we can confidently say that the civilian population of Libya is no longer threatened.'
The Nato-led military campaign in Libya raises the spectre for increased foreign interventions in Africa. 'Africans need to reflect on the fall of Gaddafi and, before him, that ofGbagbo in Cote d'Ivoire,' states an opinion piece posted on Aljazeera's website, co-written by Mahmood Mamdani, professor at Makerere University in Kampala, and Herbert Lehman, professor at Columbia University, New York. 'Will these events usher in an era of external interventions, each welcomed internally as a mechanism to ensure a change of political leadership in one country after another?'
The article adds: 'One thing should be clear: those interested in keeping external intervention at bay need to concentrate their attention and energies on internal reform.' Brian Becker of the anti-war coalition A.N.S. W.E.R. Coalition said that Nato represented the new 'colonisers' who had assigned noble names to their military mission such as 'protecting civilians'.
He added that according to WikiLeaksreleased State Department cables from November 2007 and afterwards, the US has been preoccupied with who should control Libya's vast oil reserves.
Washington was worried that Libya would nationalise its resources. 'Those who dominate Libya's political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardise efficient exploitation of Libya's extensive oil and gas reserves,' the November 2007 cable states.
A popular uprising against Gaddafi and the opening of a civil war in mid-February, gave the west a perfect pretext to overthrow the Libyan regime and place in power a government that would serve as a client regime, he said.
Additional reporting by Rita Hernandes
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