Moammar Gadaffi was looking increasingly isolated midweek after damaging defections by senior regime figures and key military commanders and units as the uprising spread closer to Tripoli.
Malta denied a report that Gadaffi’s daughter, Aisha, was on board a Libyan plane refused permission to land on the island yesterday. But Menas, a respected London Middle East consultancy, said the leader’s wife, daughter, daughters-in-law and grandchildren had left Libya for an unknown destination.
Mass protests erupted in Misurata, a Mediterranean port and the country’s third-largest city, and violence was reported in Sebrata and Zawiya, which are also in western Libya and closer to Tripoli.
Benghazi and much of the east of the country have now been lost to the government. Misurata is near Sirte, the leader’s hometown, where a key tribe has reportedly come out in support of what is being called the February 17 revolution.
Al Jazeera TV reported that tribes in the Azzintan and Nalut areas, also in the west, had come out against Gadaffi. Oil facilities were now under their protection. Libyan and Arab sources said the biggest blow to Gadaffi so far had been the defection of his interior minister and veteran loyalist, Abdel-Fatah Younes al-Obeidi, who called on the army on Tuesday to ‘serve the people and support the revolution and its legitimate demands”.
But the whereabouts of other senior comrades remains unclear. Mustafa al-Kharroubi, a leading figure in the regime’s old guard, is rumoured to have left Tripoli. There are question marks too about another loyalist, Khweildi al-Hmeidi, whose daughter is married to the leader’s wayward son, Sa’adi.
In another blow to the Libyan leader his former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who stepped down this week, was quoted as saying that Gadaffi personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people were killed.
Another was Youssef Sawan, who quit as director of the Gadaffi International Charitable Foundation run by the leader’s son, the supposedly reformist-minded Saif al-Islam.
Libyan exile sources also confirmed the defection of a senior figure in the revolutionary committees, Ali al-Sahouli, who warned that Gadaffi would sabotage the country’s infrastructure, including oil installations, power stations and banks. Scores of Libyan diplomats have also now resigned — taking the opportunity to distance themselves from the regime while there is still time.
Details of the military situation remained sketchy, but the army commander and defence minister, General Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabber, was put under house arrest earlier this week.
Major General Suleiman Mahmoud, army commander in Tobruk, said he was ‘joining the people”, as did units in the eastern Jebel Akhdar area. Analysts say that, although the army has never been a powerful force, Gadaffi desperately needs its support. In one possible pointer for the future, al-Saiqa (Thunderbolt) special forces battalion is said to have attacked Gadaffi’s revolutionary guard in Benghazi.
Gadaffi may also have the support of foreign mercenary units, many of whom are from ex-Soviet bloc countries. Many Libyans say they expect him to go down fighting if the situation continues to deteriorate.
It was unclear whether he would be able to leave his headquarters at Bab al-Aziziyah in Tripoli. ‘He is surrounded by his guards and is too scared to come out,” said one opposition supporter. – Guardian News & Media 2011