It increasingly looks like the rug is being pulled tug by tug from under European and American hopes that Muammar Gadaffi’s main supporters might abandon him to avoid further punishment from US and NATO warplanes and naval missiles. The risk has increased that Libya may turn into a new quagmire for the US because it is the pivotal power in that alliance.
Of course, predictions deserve large pinches of salt in such a volatile environment where the fog of war is especially dense. But fear is growing in Europe that the Western allies and their hesitant non-Western supporters may have wandered into a tribal war driven by medieval mind-sets instead reasoned thinkers who place their nation’s welfare above their clan enmities. So the Western intervention may be trapped into becoming more than just a limited humanitarian foray to protect civilians.
Over 40 years ago, a young Muammar still in his late twenties took power on behalf of his own Gadhadhfa (or Gadhafa) tribe and the larger Warfalla and Magarha tribes. They broke the power of the large tribes of the Benghazi and Ajdabiya regions and several others in the East. Then, they ensured that the opposing tribes stayed disunited and excluded from the spoils of power.
The Western hope seems to be that the disaffected tribes will rise up in pockets around the country (Libya’s around six million people are divided in about 140 tribes) while key figures from the tribes loyal to Gadaffi will defect. Several events since the uprising of February 15 are cited to back this hope. Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the opposition’s eastern-based leadership council, is a Warfalla; Foreign Minister and former intelligence chief Moussa Koussa, a close friend of Gadaffi, has defected to the British; close advisor Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, a cousin of Gadaffi, has fled to Egypt; Saleh al-Zewi a loyal militia commander has switched sides to join the opposition.
In the next few days, we may discover that these defections do not mean much in terms of Libya’s internal politics and conflicts. Gadaffi’s sons, Khamis, Muatassim, and al-Saadi lead the militias attacking those trying to oust him. The opponents are much weaker and less cohesive than the so far fiercely loyal sons and their handpicked tribal militias. Influential Europeans are now worried that the opposition forces, even if protected from the air and sea and adequately armed by the West, are no match for the disciplined and well trained militia soldiers fighting to uphold tribal honor.
The Libyan situation changes by the hour and can be analyzed to suit any agenda or set of presumptions. But the conviction is growing in Europe that the only way to avoid a long drawn out quagmire for Western forces in Libya is to find ways to divide the sons and erode their loyalty to the father. That is a tall order in a close knit tribal society isolated from the progressive trends for nearly five decades.
But the hope remains worth holding on to for another week or two following recent reports that various personalities are making soundings for peace, including one of Gadaffi’s sons, Seif el-Islam who reportedly travelled to London last week to make a peace overture. Seif is the one who addresssed the people before Gadaffi in the rebellion’s early days to threaten a blood bath if the rebels did not stand down. But things change.