Libya Analysis: Explaining the Uprising --- "Libyans Have Written Their Own Epic" (Osborne)

Photo: ReutersMatt Osborne offers a detailed explanation for what does --- and does not --- lie at the heart of the uprising against the Qaddafi regime in Libya: 

"Two myths should be put to rest. First, the idea that Libya’s war originated as anything but a native conflict is nothing but paranoid speculation. Indeed, freedom fighters have systematically ignored international sanctimony and calls for a cease-fire. Libyans fought, and appear to have won, their own war, following their own plan. That they had help — from the sky, or via Egypt, or by sea — does not detract from the sacrifices of Libyans who refused to stop fighting and dying. They own their victory.

"Second, the image of “ragtag revolutionaries” is also false. Freedom fighters have in fact been consistently clever and creative. While still undisciplined tactically, they have demonstrated good operational discipline and planning, and in fact have done a very good job of coordinating with air power despite the challenges. Never wavering in determination, Libyans have written their own epic, and it is a good one. All the allies did was help."

See also Libya (and Beyond) Special: Paradigm Shift --- What the Experts Get Wrong Tells A Much Bigger Story
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Libyans have written their own story, and it is a good one. After nonviolent protesters were massacred across the country in February, a widespread uprising finally coalesced into victory yesterday. Benghazi became the geographic center of rebellion on February 20th; using social media, Libyans there immediately cried out for international intervention. That assistance arrived in the nick of time, with NATO establishing immediate air and sea supremacy. The next six months saw freedom fighters and their international allies organize an AirLandSea campaign of combined arms, maneuver, and insurgency. 

CAUSES

The Chomskyan narrative frame of empire and power has little real application to the outbreak of conflict in Libya. I have written before about the causes, but the most important single thing to understand is that about seventy percent of the North African diet is bread. Climate-change driven drought in Russia last Summer raised global wheat prices across the region over the Winter. In a region with sluggish GDP growth, that has created social alarm.

Food insecurity is a common cause of conflict and the most common cause of conflict in the region (see: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Chad). Wars rarely solve food insecurity, however, and the conditions that brought conflict to the North African maghreb have only intensified since February. We live in interesting times.

The tribal structure of Libyan society also plays a role. Moammar Ghadafi has been playing the tribes against one another for four decades, and it has finally caught up with him. On this map, you can see one of the disaffected Berber tribes to the southwest of Tripoli, along the Nafusa Mountain escarpment. They are among the most persecuted minorities in the country:

In this map, you can see the location of another tribal group: the powerful Warfalla, centered around the city of Bani Walid, has also played a key role in the Libyan story. Ghadafi came to regret massacres in Bani Walid; despite his attempts to woo them back to his side, tribal leadership wavered throughout the Spring and turned against him during the Summer. Located between the rebel stronghold of Misrata and the Berbers of Nafusa, they would later play an important part in cutting off Tripoli.

One more cause needs to be named: water insecurity. Water rights have been a major source of Ghadafi’s tribal power system. Advancing desertification (again, climate-change driven) has compounded both tribal resentments and food insecurity. Ghadafi’s much-ballyhooed 26-year long water project is unsustainable. By draining a nonrenewable supply of fossil water, the project promises the same long-term outcome as Saudi Arabia’s fossil water project: after three decades of self-sufficiency in wheat production, their water is running out — and the kingdom has switched to importing wheat again.

These insecurities set the stage for the Arab Spring in North Africa. The spark in Tunisia spread to Cairo, then Libya, because these countries were tinder-dry powder kegs waiting to be lit.

OBJECTIVES

Of course, oil figures large in the conflict — but not as a cause. Indeed, the oil industry can expect to spend at least months, if not years, ramping production levels back to prewar levels. The conflict has not served the hydrocarbon industry in any appreciable way. However, gasoline figures large in military logistics: tanks and trucks need fuel to bring firepower within range of the enemy. Rommel’s Afrika Corps lost their war in this same stretch of desert when they ran out of fuel.

Naturally, Libya’s petroleum infrastructure has provided many of the war’s primary objectives and battlefields. The capture of the refinery at Zawiya last week proved the fatal blow to regime power in Tripoli, as gasoline supplies in the capitol were already low and forces could no longer be motored to the fight.

Below, a map of oilfield distribution within Libya. With most of the country’s pumps in the Eastern half, the Transitional National Council began the conflict with a working refinery at Tobruk and most of the nation’s oil resources either in hand or within reach.

This situation produced a raiding style of warfare in the East, but it also limited Ghadafi’s ability to maintain offensives. He proved unwilling to destroy these contested wells and pumps; instead, the raids were about denial — leaving the infrastructurebooby-trapped instead of damaged. Ghadafi was more than willing to attack and destroy fuel infrastructure firmly within rebel territory, while NATO planes have unapologetically targeted his supplies of gasoline.

Objectives often determine the forces. Most of the war has been fought with “technicals” — converted pickup trucks. While these vehicles have been the object ofadmiring reportage about a “ragtag” army, in fact the technical was invented by Chadians during their Toyota War with Ghadafi in 1986 — outrunning and outmaneuvering his very expensive Russian-built tanks to attack them with shoulder-fired rockets. The open desert rewards fast movement, so technicals have proven the mainstay weapon of the war for both sides.

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