There is propaganda on either side, but neither Colonel Gaddafi nor his Nato foes seem to have many new ideas, reports Andrew Gilligan in Tripoli.
Colonel Muamar Gaddafi Photo: REUTERS
By Andrew Gilligan 8:00AM BST 22 May 2011
At 2am last Thursday, it sounded like curtains for Muammar Gaddafi. Enormous volleys of gunfire broke out across Tripoli, and around the hotel where the foreign press is forced to stay. Armed men charged past in pickup trucks, firing their weapons and wildly honking their horns. Was this the "Saddam statue moment" that Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron have been longing for?
But then it became clear that the flags flying from the trucks were a regime-friendly green, and the pictures taped to the windscreens were of a certain colonel only too familiar to Tripoli residents.
Libya's state television informed us that this late-night outbreak of spontaneous public joy had erupted to celebrate a pro-Gaddafi demonstration in the rebel capital of Benghazi. "We are one country again," shouted one of the hundreds of ecstatic loyalists gathered in Tripoli's city centre, as he sprayed the sky with bullets.
The Benghazi "demonstration" was, of course, a complete fantasy – and the scenes in Tripoli were manifestations more of group hysteria than of deep public support for the regime. Yet almost exactly two months since the start of the air war, the signals for Nato and the West remain decidedly mixed.
Contrary to claims by Nato governments, there has been no intensification whatever of the bombing campaign: in fact, quite the reverse. The number of strike sorties flown in the seven days to last Thursday was 348 - fewer than in any previous week since Nato took command of the operation, and 27 per cent below the weekly sortie rate at the beginning of the alliance's involvement.
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Nato's activity is also far less intense than in previous campaigns. Strike sorties in Serbia and Kosovo, where the mission was very similar, averaged 130 a day, more than double the number in Libya. Labour's last Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, says: "We are doing enough to keep the operation going, but not enough to finish it off."
Alliance sources point out that they have better bombs now, so they need to drop fewer of them. The targeting is indeed astonishingly precise. In the early hours of Friday morning, we were taken to see one of the eight naval ships destroyed by the RAF.
No doubt deliberately, it had been moored in Tripoli's civilian port, right between – and within feet of – what looked like two enormous oil tankers.
The warship itself was small. Even the slightest error in the delivery of the attack could have caused a catastrophic conflagration, destroying part of the city. But the accuracy, with a fierce fire burning on deck, was pinpoint.
Many targets, however, are much less important than this. Each day, the alliance issues a list of what it describes as the "key targets" it has struck. These frequently include single tanks or armoured personnel carriers, even military trucks.
Heavily constrained by the mandate to protect civilians, there has so far been little or no Kosovo-style attacking of bridges, power stations, refineries and other infrastructure, despite the calls by Britain's defence chief, General Sir David Richards, for the alliance to do so.
Such attacks would almost certainly be illegal under the UN resolution, not to mention hugely politically controversial. But they could dramatically increase the squeeze on the colonel – which remains, for now, somewhat less than rack-tight.
At Ras el-Jedir, the sole surfaced-road frontier remaining under his control, Gaddafi still has an essentially unfettered route to the outside world. The regime needs to export crude oil – to earn itself hard currency – and import petrol, to make up for a lack of refining capacity. Most of Libya's refineries are in rebel hands, leading to massive fuel shortages, queues stretching for miles at many petrol stations and angry scenes in the crowds of waiting motorists.
Stuck at the Ras el-Jedir border post for two days earlier this month, I watched fuel tanker after fuel tanker cross in both directions to and from Tunisia, mostly discreetly at night. In Tunisia itself, a new trade has grown up, with shadowy middlemen transferring fuel from ship to road tanker, or from one ship to another ship, which then sails the short distance to Gaddafi-controlled Libya.
Other traffic appears to be growing, too. Mohammed Rashid, general manager of Tripoli's port, told journalists on Friday that only eight commercial ships of all cargoes had entered the port since the NATO airstrikes began on March 19. But four of those, he said, had arrived in the past seven days.
Last week, in the first sign of a crackdown on oil movements, Nato warships forcibly diverted the Jupiter, a 15,000-tonne, Maltese-flagged petroleum tanker heading for a port in Gaddafi-held Libya.
In Tripoli, there is still plenty of traffic on the streets. Thanks to Libya's time as an Italian colony, these are a pleasing mixture of traditional Arab souks and Roman-style piazzas, where people still sit in the evenings drinking cappucino and smoking hookah pipes. At least during the day, there are few roadblocks and relatively little security, suggesting that the regime is fairly relaxed about any threat from opponents inside the capital.
But many shops are closed, the souk is operating on less than half-power and motionless cranes stand over deserted building sites, symbols of a prosperous new future snatched away by Gaddafi's misjudgments.
On the Tripoli waterfront stands a brand-new 36-storey Marriott hotel, latest fruit of an investment boom that had some claiming Tripoli as the new Dubai. It was open for just ten days, until the uprising changed life here forever.
In the Nato countries, slow progress is sparking tensions. One senior US official says that contrary to the gung-ho public statements coming from London, Britain is among the most cautious of the allies when it comes to targeting, frequently issuing "red cards" to the annoyance of military commanders.
In a potentially significant sign of weakening resolve, a senior EU diplomat told The Sunday Telegraph that Britain, France and others were softening the line that Gaddafi must leave power before a ceasefire. The timetable for his departure was now "more flexible," the diplomat said, though the Benghazi rebels still refuse a ceasefire if the dictator remains in office.
Yet despite the sense of stalemate, some important things have changed.
Though the volume of attacks is the same, they have become much more focused – with two clear strands emerging. The first is the growing push to consolidate and enlarge the rebel-controlled area around Misurata, with the eventual aim of cutting off Gaddafi's stronghold of Sirte. This appears to be having some early success.
The second military strand is Nato's clear campaign, for all its denials, to kill Colonel Gaddafi. Though they would be lucky to achieve this goal – the dictator popped up on television again on Thursday, the third time in a week – there are signs that this strand, too, is taking its toll.
Over the last week, there has been a steady trickle of, if not defections, then at least departures. The oil minister, Shukri Ghanem, has left the country. A number of other Libyan officials, along with Gaddafi's wife and only daughter, have reportedly crossed the border into Tunisia. The Libyan government insists that all these people remain on-side – but so far none of them, including Mr Ghanem, has yet been seen, nor have they issued any statement of support for Gaddafi.
If the regime does crumble, this is how it will happen: the gradual slipping away of the dictator's inner circle. Nato may be hoping for Gaddafi's world to end with a bang, but it would be just as happy for it to end with a whimper.
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