Too early to draw conclusions

What does the occupation of Tripoli by Libyan rebel forces tell us? Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, said Libya confirms that the role of external actors (in this case, the United States and Europe) can still be decisive in the Arab struggle for freedom.

First, some Libyans that joined Al-Qaida and were then locked up by the United States at Guantanamo Bay joined the rebel forces after release and set up their own semi-independent military groups.

The US knew this. But because overthrowing the Muammar Gadhafi government is a task of top priority for Washington, the US did not demand the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) disarm these fighters. Even though it was reported that Abdel Fattah Younes, the rebel commander, was killed by these people, the US and other Western countries have taken the stance that "yesterday's enemy" are "today's allies".

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the US has assumed a major role in NATO's military strikes against the Gadhafi regime.

At the beginning of NATO's military operations against Libya, the US took command and the first batch of Tomahawk missiles were launched from a US warship. Before long, the US returned military command to NATO with a Canadian general in charge. As a result, NATO's own "problem" was clearly revealed.

As former US defense secretary Robert Gates pointed out, NATO is facing great "budget pressure" in the post-Cold War era. The US covered about 50 percent of NATO's expenditure during the Cold War. However, after the end of the Cold War, while the European security situation eased up, the US' share of NATO's costs rose to 75 percent.

Now, because of the Afghan and Iraq wars, coupled with the 2008 financial crisis, the US has had to heavily cut its military budget and the US asked its NATO allies to share more of the burden.

However, European countries are also facing a financial crisis and budget pressures, and they declined Gates' request.

Gates complained that the mightiest military alliance in history was only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country - yet many allies were beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.

So the US has had to "quietly" assume the major burden of NATO's military operations against Libya, although it did not "reclaim" command and only participates in non-direct military actions, including surveillance and reconnaissance, which depend more on electronic means.

In the face of intense domestic debate over raising the debt ceiling and cutting the budget, the US government doesn't want to play with fire by publicly claiming that it bears the main responsibility for NATO's military operations in Libya.

But the role of "non-direct military operations" in toppling the Gadhafi regime cannot be underestimated.

Electronic or network warfare began to "dominate" the battlefield during the Iraq War and it has had an equally important role in NATO's military operations in Libya.

On the outbreak of the Libyan civil war, the Cyber Security Forum Initiative, a US-based organization specializing in cyber security/warfare, proposed Project Cyber Dawn, suggesting the US infiltrate Libyan cyberspace to incite the Libyan people to insurrection, as the previous "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia had "demonstrated to the world the capacity for abrupt change and the use of the Internet as a powerful agent in that pursuit".

The project outlined ways the US could utilize the Stuxnet worm to sabotage the supervisory control and data acquisition systems of Libyan oil refineries to disrupt their production. However, the Gadhafi regime cut off Internet access at the start of the war and the oil refineries soon suspended operations and the project was never implemented.

Despite that, the use of surveillance aircraft and drones, which can work around the clock to identify targets and intercept enemies, has enabled NATO to make precision strikes and inflict huge losses on Gadhafi's forces. Besides surveillance, the drones are also equipped with air-to-ground missiles and one of Gadhafi's sons and several of his grandchildren were killed in a drone strike.

Confronted with NATO's aggressive attacks, Gadhafi has had to come up with a new strategy. Perhaps, the current plight reminded him of his idol - former Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Nasser, then a young military officer, was trapped in the Falluja pocket by Israeli forces. With supplies cut off and running short of ammunition, Nasser refused to surrender. It was not until Arab countries and Israel ceased fire that Nasser returned to Egypt.

Starting from late August, Gadhafi has switched to "pockets of resistance" - luring the opposition forces into Tripoli and launching street battles. NATO military sources have admitted that the urban environment in Tripoli, a city of about 2 million people, is "far more complex for airstrikes than past targets have been" and indiscriminate strikes would be morally unacceptable to the international community.

On Aug 23, it was reported that Bab al-Azizyah, Gadhafi's compound, was occupied by opposition fighters, although the transitional government took it as a positive sign, analysts seem less optimistic, because Gadhafi's whereabouts remain unknown, and the transitional government has proven to be untrustworthy with regard to the information it releases, as shown by its announcement of the capture of Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, who showed up several hours later to disprove the reports.

When the opposition forces marched in to Tripoli, people asserted that Gadhafi would be captured or killed or else he would surrender. But there is a fourth possibility: that Gadhafi will keep fighting to the bitter end, and use Tripoli's labyrinth-like tunnels to his advantage. Should the opposition forces someday retreat from Tripoli, Gadhafi would be able to stage a comeback and secure his long-craved wish for honor comparable to Nasser's.

For the time being, the Libyan civil war appears to be coming to an end, but it is still too early to draw any final conclusion.

The author is a professor of international studies at China Foreign Affairs University.

(China Daily 08/26/2011 page9)