The momentum in the Libyan conflict is shifting in favour of Muammar Gaddafi whose forces are “robustly equipped” with Russian weapons and may well defeat the rebels, US officials said on Thursday.
And US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also warned of the danger that Libya could fracture into separate smaller states, run by different tribal factions including those loyal to Gaddafi.
“Initially the momentum was with the other side,” Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, told US senators at a hearing.
“That has started to shift. Whether or not it has fully moved to Gaddafi’s side at this time is not clear. We have now reached a state of equilibrium. The initiative may actually be on the regime side.”
The rebels seized the initiative when fighting first erupted in February in the wake of similar uprisings in Libya’s neighbours, Tunisia and Egypt.
But three weeks on, Gaddafi’s son Thursday crowed that victory was in sight after loyalist forces re-captured Zawiyah, near Tripoli, and were also at the doors of the strategic eastern oil refinery town of Ras Lanouf.
‘The regime will prevail’
“Over time I think the regime will prevail,” acknowledged Clapper. “With respect to the rebels in Libya, and whether or not they will succeed or not, I think frankly they’re in for a tough row.”
Clapper added he did not believe Gaddafi, who has earned a reputation as a maverick, planned to step down after more than four decades in power.
“I don’t think he has any intention of leaving,” Clapper said. “From all evidence that we have, which I’d be prepared to discuss in closed session, he appears to be hunkering down for the duration.”
Eyeing the future, Clapper said there was a real possibility of “a reversion to the pre-Gaddafi, pre-king history of Libya in which there were three sort of semi-autonomous mini-states”.
“You could end up with a situation where Gaddafi would have Tripoli and its environs and then Benghazi and its environs could be under another mini-state and then there was another,” he argued.
“There’s a lot of history here with the tribes and the tribal dynamics would have to be factored in here. So you could have an outcome where you’d have both parties survive.”
Libyan air defences, including radar and surface-to-air missiles, are “quite substantial”, Clapper explained.
Select units
“A very important consideration here for the regime is, by design, Gaddafi intentionally designed the military so that those select units willed to him are the most luxuriously equipped and the best trained.”
The Libyan arsenal, Clapper said, “is the second largest in the Middle East after Egypt”.
“They have a lot of Russian equipment. There is a certain quality and numbers,” Clapper told the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.
He said there were two special brigades, the 32nd and the 9th, that are very loyal to Gaddafi, and were the most “robustly equipped with Russian equipment to include air defense, artillery, tanks, mechanized equipment”.
However, “some of that equipment has fallen into opposition’s hands”, Clapper said, adding that there is also concern that some of the more portable weaponry runs the risk of “falling into the wrong hands”a meaning al-Qaeda and other terror groups.
As the West debates whether to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to help the opposition who have taken a pounding from air strikes, Clapper said Libya had some 31 anti-aircraft sites and radar dedicated to protecting the northern Libyan coast where 80% to 85% of the population is concentrated.
He said the Libyan forces had a large number of missile launchers, but stressed that only a small part of the Libyan air force was operational with only about 75 to 80 aircraft, a third of which were transport planes and a third helicopters.
Clapper offered hope, though, that despite the sustained air attacks which have caused damage “they have not caused very many casualties”. – AFP