From the BBC News Website: Who's Propping up Gadaffi? by Frank Gardner

Unlike in Egypt or Tunisia, it is not the conventional military that holds the balance of power in Libya.

Instead, it is a murky network of paramilitary brigades, "revolutionary committees" of trusted followers, tribal leaders and imported foreign mercenaries.

The actual Libyan Army is almost symbolic, a weakened and emaciated force of little more than 40,000, poorly armed and poorly trained. It is part of Col Muammar Gaddafi's long-term strategy to eliminate the risk of a military coup, which is how he himself came to power in 1969.

So the defection this month of some elements of the army to the protesters in Benghazi is unlikely to trouble Col Gaddafi. Not only can he do without them, his security apparatus has not hesitated to call in air strikes on their barracks in the rebellious east of the country.

So, who is propping up his regime and allowing it to stay in power while two of its neighbouring leaders have fled amid a massive momentum for regime change throughout the Middle East?

Internal Security
Like many countries in the region, Libya has an extensive, well-resourced and brutal internal security apparatus.


Col Gaddafi is usually flanked by his personal guards when he appears in public Think East Germany's Stasi or Romania's Securitate pre-1989, where no-one dared criticise the regime in public in case they were reported to the feared secret police, and you can see the similarities.

During my own visits to Libya I have always found it hard to get ordinary people to speak freely on the record to a journalist, as government "minders" are always watching and noting who says what.

Some of Col Gaddafi's own sons have worked in internal security but today, the key figure in Libya's security apparatus, both internal and external, is Gaddafi's brother-in-law, Abdullah Senussi.

A hardliner with a thuggish reputation, he is strongly suspected of being the driving force behind the violent suppression of protests, notably in Benghazi and the east of the country.

As long as he keeps advising Gaddafi to tough it out there is little chance of his stepping down.

The Paramilitaries
Libya has a number of "special brigades" answerable not to the army but to Gaddafi's Revolutionary Committees.

One of these is believed to be commanded, at least nominally, by one of Col Gaddafi's maverick sons, Hannibal, who clashed recently with Swiss police in Geneva after allegations he abused hotel maids there.

The paramilitaries, sometimes known as the "People's Militia", have so far been largely loyal to Col Gaddafi and his close circle known in Arabic as Ahl al-Khaimah - "People of the Tent".

If the paramilitaries changed sides and joined the protesters en masse this would seriously undermine Col Gaddafi's ability to survive.

The Mercenaries
This has been one of the darker and particularly disturbing facets of the Libyan uprising.

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“
Start Quote
Libya-watchers are now speculating whether Col Gaddafi's regime will carry out its own self-fulfilling prophecy of civil war ”
End Quote There are persistent reports that Col Gaddafi's regime has been making extensive use of hired African mercenaries, mostly from the Sahel countries of Chad and Niger, to carry out atrocities against unarmed civilian protesters.

Libyan witnesses say they have been firing from rooftops into crowds of demonstrators, in essence carrying out the orders that many Libyan soldiers have refused to obey.

Col Gaddafi has long fostered close relations with African countries, having turned his back on the Arab world some time ago, and there are an estimated 500,000 African expatriates in Libya out of a total population of six million.

The number of those serving as pro-Gaddafi mercenaries is thought to be quite small but their loyalty to his regime is said to be unquestioned and there are reports of extra flights being laid on to bring in more in recent days.

The Tribes
Libya, like the other Arab revolutionary republics of Yemen and Iraq, is a country where your tribe can help define your loyalties, but in recent years the tribal distinctions have blurred and the country is less tribal now than it was in 1969.

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Do Libya's tribal ties matter?
Col Gaddafi himself comes from the Qadhaththa tribe. During his 41 years in power he has appointed many of its members to key positions in his regime, including those for his personal safety.

Just as Saddam Hussein did in Iraq and President Saleh has in Yemen, Col Gaddafi has been adept at playing off one tribe against another, ensuring that no one leader risks posing a threat to his regime.

Libya-watchers are now speculating whether Col Gaddafi's regime will carry out its own self-fulfilling prophecy of civil war and deliberately arm the tribes loyal to the regime to put down the protest that has already seen it lose the eastern half of the country.

Muammar Gaddafi:method in his 'madness' by Brian Whitaker, Comment is Free

"People of Libya!" the broadcast began, "In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your incessant demands for change and regeneration ... your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all. At a single blow your gallant army has toppled these idols and has destroyed their images ... From this day forward, Libya is a free, self-governing republic."

It was 1 September 1969, and the young army captain seated at the microphone to announce the coup was Muammar Gaddafi – then only 27 and a fervent admirer of the Nasserist revolution in neighbouring Egypt. Yesterday, he was again broadcasting to the nation and this time the tables were turned. It is no longer the "decadent regime" of King Idris under attack, but that of Gaddafi himself.

In the four decades since he came to power, Gaddafi's behaviour has shocked and amused the world in roughly equal measures – from his bizarre sense of fashion to his appearance on Monday leaning out of something resembling a popemobile and holding a white umbrella. As a Jordanian psychiatrist once told me while we watched Gaddafi's televised performance at an Arab summit: "I meet people like him every day in my hospital."

But mad as they may seem, his actions usually have some kind of logic, even if it's a logic that others, not attuned to the Gaddafi way of thinking, fail to recognise. When he drove through Africa throwing money out of his car window, he was making a serious point: foreign aid is often misused or ends up in the wrong hands, so why not just let ordinary people pick it up off the street?

It was the same on Monday with the popemobile episode. In answer to claims that he had fled the country, he posed for the cameras outside a building that every Libyan would recognise – his former home in Tripoli (the one the Americans bombed in 1986, killing his daughter).

He was back at the bombed-out house on Tuesday, suitably dressed in khaki and declaring himself "a fighter". It was an angry, defiant speech – and mercifully short by Gaddafi's standards, lasting only an hour or so. It was also, in a strangely malevolent way, an honest speech. Gaddafi let rip, talking of "honour" and expressing all the feelings that Ben Ali and Mubarak would probably like to have expressed in their last presidential broadcasts, if only they hadn't been wearing a suit and tie and trying to look dignified.

Gaddafi, of course, doesn't see himself in the Mubarak/Ben Ali mould. He doesn't see the uprising as a mass rebellion against his leadership but as a flare-up of old tribal rivalries – a reactionary movement bent on destroying the revolutionary spirit of the world's first and only people's jamahiriya.

These rivalries are a constant undercurrent of Gaddafi's rule but have usually been played out in the mosques and football stadiums rather than on the streets. Just over 10 years ago, for example, shortly after Gaddafi's football-mad son, Saadi, became captain of the Tripoli team, the city of Benghazi – long regarded as a centre of opposition to the regime – suffered a series of humiliating defeats on the pitch.

In one match, in the summer of 2000, Benghazi was leading 1-0 at half-time, but in the second half the referee dutifully awarded two penalties to Tripoli along with an offside goal. The Benghazi players walked off in protest but Saadi's guards ordered them back and the match ended with a 3-1 victory to Tripoli.

Shortly afterwards, Benghazi played al-Baydah (the home town of Saadi's mother). Following another suspect penalty, Benghazi fans invaded the pitch and the game was abandoned. Arriving back in Benghazi, the fans set fire to the local headquarters of the Libyan Football Federation (chaired, of course, by Saadi) and the authorities retaliated by dissolving the Benghazi club and demolishing its premises.

Given the history, it's not surprising if Gaddafi sees the current insubordination as more of the same (though on a much more serious scale) and, moving on from bogus penalties, is determined to suppress it with whatever force may be necessary to preserve the "historic march" of his revolution.

One of the key points in Tuesday's speech, emphasised by its symbolic setting, was that his regime had withstood bombing "by 170 aircraft under the leadership of nuclear countries like America, Britain and Nato" – implying that where they failed local rebels cannot succeed.

He also explained why – unlike Ben Ali and Mubarak – he cannot resign. Technically, this is correct since Libya has no president. Gaddafi constantly asserts that he is just an ordinary Libyan citizen (though of course very little happens without his approval). His title, "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution", is not a public office but a description of his historical role. Thus, it can never be taken away from him or bestowed on anyone else.

But Gaddafi does have one very important thing in common with Ben Ali and Mubarak. By continuing to bask in the glories of 1969, he has lost touch with his people. Most Libyans alive today have no recollection of King Idris or the revolution that overthrew him. For them, it's part of Libya's past. But not part of its future.

The Colonels

Abu Musa al-Ash'ari said, "I visited the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, with two of my cousins. One of them said, 'Messenger of Allah, give us authority over some of what Allah, the Mighty and Exalted, has appointed you over.' The other said something similar. He said, 'By Allah, we will not appoint anyone over this matter who asks for it nor anyone who is eager for it." [Agreed upon]

Colonel Ghaddaffi's eagerly awaited speech, which Libyans were no doubt hoping would herald his departure,was short and given in his usually inimitable style. This time, rather appropriately given his Leninist inspired ideals, he was in a Soviet era looking van and was holding aloft a huge umbrella. He told of how he wasn't in Venezuela, but in Libya, and that he'd been talking to youth in Green Square.


Clearly, he was trying to present himself as a kindly "grandfather of the nation" figure and the uprising (for which mosques throughout Libya have been broadcasting the call, "Come for Jihad")as nothing more than a falling out and nothing that a chat with the youth down on Green Square couldn't sort out.

And in other news:
The use, by the government of Bahrain, of foreign citizens (mainly Jordanian and Pakistani) to oppress Bahrainis is not just limited to the armed forces. It appears that the torture of Bahraini's was, at one point, overseen by a British policeman by the name of Colonel Ian Henderson AKA The Butcher of Bahrain.

This wouldn't have escaped government attention- the contined good relations between the UK and Bahrain, in spite of clear evidence of the Khalifa families use of torture, certainly makes the "humanitarian" mission in Afghanistan sound all the more ridiculous.