Qaddafi’s next moves
The international coalition’s air campaign is about 48 hours old and in strictly military terms the results thus far are probably exceeding expectations. Western aircraft are flying over Libya and Libyan aircraft are not. Quick air supremacy was widely expected. More notable are the dozens of pro-Qaddafi armored vehicles now burning along the road between Ajdabiya and Benghazi, destroyed by coalition attack aircraft. The successful attack on Qaddafi’s armored column on the road to Benghazi has provided the relief Western policymakers were scrambling for last week.
But this very likely ends the conventional military phase of the campaign. Qaddafi will now attempt to deprive Western airpower of any additional targets by shifting to irregular warfare tactics. He will also attempt to implement a political and media strategy with a goal of cracking support for the intervention. The coalition must reckon with the possibility that its leverage may soon peak. If it does not achieve a quick knock-out of Qaddafi, it will need to fashion a sustainable political and military strategy for a long campaign.
After the destruction of the armored column south of Benghazi, Qaddafi will now attempt to negate the utility of Western airpower by using civilians to cover the movement and employment of his military units. According to the BBC, Qaddafi achieved a success in this regard today, when a British air force strike package had to abort its mission due to the presence of civilians around the intended target.
Qaddafi commanders will attempt to resume the battle for Benghazi by using civilians and their vehicles (upon which cities depend for commerce) to cover the movement of irregular fighters and weapons into the city. Qaddafi would welcome a Western air attack on civilian vehicle traffic, as such an attack would create an opportunity for a spectacular propaganda success.
The cities in eastern Libya are likely to become the key terrain during the next phase of the war. Both sides will value them. Qaddafi’s forces will need these cities for protection against coalition air power. The rebels will value them because they will provide manpower for resistance units, logistics support for those units, and ground-level intelligence on pro-Qaddafi military forces. Each side will have the goal of driving the other out, the loyalists to be bombed while in the open, or the rebels to be cut off from their support base.
Should coalition air patrols succeed in reducing the tempo of ground operations, both sides — as they struggle to control the cities — could revert to urban terror, such as car bombs, in an attempt to gain control over neighborhoods and populations. The result could be the buildup of a large pro-rebel refugee population in western Egypt, especially if such an urban terror campaign spreads to Tobruk and other eastern Libyan cities along the coast road. If the war looks like it will drag on indefinitely, both the rebels and their supporters in the West may quietly encourage this refugee buildup outside Libya. Operating from such a sanctuary, Special Forces advisers could recruit, train, and equip a much better quality resistance force than has been in the field thus far.
Finally, coalition policymakers should expect Qaddafi to step up his strategic communication effort. They should expect Qaddafi to improve his showing at arranging “atrocities” to be blamed on errant Western attacks. Qaddafi will also attempt to exploit for friendly media the burdens economic and financial sanctions are placing on the Libyan economy. Should the conflict drag on, expect a call for an “Oil-for-Food” program. As Saddam Hussein demonstrated before 2003, such a program will present an opportunity for the Qaddafi family to provide bribes to useful outside agents in payment for weakening the support for the coalition.
From a military perspective, the coalition air campaign looks to be ahead of plan — the burning tanks near Benghazi show that. But without a quick collapse of the Qaddafi regime, coalition policymakers haven’t defined a proper end-state and don’t seem to have a theory of success. Qaddafi, on the other hand, does have a theory of success. He will switch to irregular warfare, using civilians to mask his military operations from coalition air power. Libya’s eastern cities are likely to become the key terrain for both sides, both for cover and for support. And coalition policymakers should expect Qaddafi to improve his propaganda skills as he attempts to use the global media and perhaps a new Oil-for-Food program to fracture international support for the intervention. The Libya conflict presents Western policymakers with one more opportunity to fight an irregular war, a skill they have yet to convincingly master.
