In fact, some say the former leader’s defeat could
open the door to a more complicated kind of conflict.
For the first six months of the rebellion, there
were two clear sides — Gaddafi forces and the rebels,
with
NATO tipping the scale in favor of the latter. But
as that phase of the fighting draws to an end,
disgruntled Gaddafi loyalists or others who feel left
out of the new government could try to destabilize it,
with insurgents striking in cities or using desert or
foreign outposts as bases.
“Gaddafi for now is providing some sort of unified focus for
resistance,” said Hugh Roberts, who until July was the North
Africa director of the International Crisis Group, a conflict
research organization. Without this focus, he said, Libyans who
don’t feel represented in the new government might rebel. “It
could be more diffuse, but presumably more difficult to cope
with,” Roberts said, “and that’s where the situation starts to
show some parallels to Iraq and Afghanistan.”
There are significant differences between this conflict and
the two wars in which the United States and other Western
nations have been embroiled for the past decade. Libya’s terrain
— a vast open desert — is less conducive to a guerilla
insurgency than Afghanistan’s mountains, though it bears
similarities to Iraq’s landscape. And Libya’s 6 million people,
who subscribe to one sect of Islam, are more homogenous than the
ethnically and religiously diverse Iraqis and Afghans.
Perhaps most significantly, the impetus for the conflict was
different here than in those countries. Here, the war was
sparked by Libyans, who converged from across the country and
abroad to create a ragtag army of anti-Gaddafi ground forces and
a new government-in-waiting.
Although it is not clear how many Gaddafi fighters and
weapons are holed up inside the remaining loyalist towns,
including the southern town of Sabha, which rebels say they have
partially captured, Libyan fighters and their international
supporters say they expect them to eventually run out of food
and ammunition, perhaps within weeks.
“They’re weak, they’re unstructured, they’re suffering to get
supplies through, they’re being targeted very effectively, and
they will run out of arms soon,” a Western diplomat here said on
the condition of anonymity in order to speak more candidly. “The
freedom fighters have excellent communications chains, and they
have the regular support of NATO and other international
support. There’s no question that the Gaddafi forces will be
defeated, and it’s just a matter of time.”