Libya's rebels should stop blaming their woes on Gaddafi because the country's popular uprising has turned into a bloody civil war and the West is reluctant to butt in, remarks Gamal Nkrumah "Libya always bears something evil," poignantly purported Aristotle in his Historia Animalium. Harsh words, perhaps, for one of the most enchanting countries on earth. Its scenic coastline stretches as if for eternity irascibly embracing the Mediterranean. The country is replete with subtle diversities and its inhabitants, predominantly desert dwellers with perplexing conservative cultures and an obtrusive unfamiliarity rarely illuminated for the benefit of outsiders. Yet it has traditionally been the ancient Punic port cities poised precariously on the Mediterranean -- Sabratha, Oea and Lepcis Magna -- that were first founded by the Phoenicians and later settled by Greek and Roman colonists that have governed the length and breadth of the boundless hinterland. Breathtakingly panoramic Cyrenaica, in the east proudly jutting pointedly towards Crete and Greece, has always been the most cosmopolitan, and curiously the most pietistic -- not necessarily in a scriptural sense. Traditionally, Tripolitania in the west shirking away from Sicily and Italy, the political heart of Libya pulsates with power, and the marvels of Machiavellian power struggles. The Gulf of Sirte, site of the principal petroleum refineries and terminals, pronouncedly recoils into the vast expanse of arid deserts where the oil reserves are buried deep inside the endless sand dunes. This empty expanse is the key to the country's economic prosperity and the veritable tribal domain. Last but not least is Fezzan, the gateway to Africa south of the Sahara whose people are no lighter in complexion than their kith and kin in the Black African countries across the artificial colonial borders, states like Chad, Mali and Niger. The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and his people, have since the Fateh Revolution that brought him to power in 1969, striven to dilute the differences between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania in particular. Yet, conventional perceptions rarely disappear overnight. They persist even by those who purport to espouse a new dispensation. Using Gaddafi as a historical gazetteer, the crippling headache of the armed opposition forces is the hypothesis that the country will be split into two: the rebels consolidated in recalcitrant Cyrenaica and the pro-Gaddafi forces hemmed in Tripoli. Mind you Misurata, Libya's third largest city, Zawiya and other Tripolitanian pockets of resistance remain resolutely anti-Gaddafi. Adjouz Al-Shamta, Old Hag, is how Gaddafi derisively refers to Benghazi. The "Old Hag" is on the warpath and this is no music to my ears. A bloodbath of apocalyptic proportions is in the making. So what's new? Benghazi has traditionally been the haughty harbinger of novel ideas in Libya. Zenga Zenga, the musical "hip hop" hit that has taken the Arab world by storm is a comic number with a dark edge. Its creator, Noy Alooshe -- an Israeli journalist and musician of Tunisian Jewish descent, ingeniously uses a spoof of Gaddafi's infamous speech admonishing the Libyan armed opposition forces and threatening them with fearful retribution. The original video is estimated to have more than three million views on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Alooshe's video has gone viral. Forget about Zenga Zenga, Arabic for alleyway in the Libyan dialect, and disregard for a minute the unabashed bragging in his Green Book, but the truth of the matter is that Gaddafi believes that his survival depends on individualism, sheer force and a handful of faithful followers and family members. Gaddafi has no qualms about believing in the reverse of safety in numbers nor has he taken the necessary precautions in the eventuality that should the worst happen and his adversaries prevail the calamity would not take them all -- his family and followers that is. With Aristotle he has navigated his way through the air and the desert as well as through a regime now drawing to its end, if we are to believe the armed opposition forces based in Benghazi. The thrill of empowerment by anti-Gaddafi forces is poised to bravely withstand the superior firepower of the pro-Gaddafi forces. The country is embroiled in a bloody civil war. The ferocity of the war conjures a moving contemplation of what war does to desert dwellers. Gaddafi is pressing ahead to control the country's oil installations. That is the crux of the matter. Oil refineries in Mersa Al-Brega, or Brega for short, is now in Gaddafi's government hands. Tobruk in the east, and Zawiya in the west are under rebel control, even though Gaddafi forces claim that while the city of Zawiya might be considered disputed territory, its oil refinery is firmly under their control. The oilfields of central and southern Libya are undoubtedly in government hands. Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa. The country also has the continent's highest per capita income, even though one might not think so when wandering through the wilderness or watching the desolate wastes inhabited by nomadic tribesmen wandering aimlessly with their goat herds in the shadows of the giant oil installations. The international sanctions, finally lifted in 2004, have taken their toll. Libya's oil is of the world's best quality. But the Western oil companies that flooded into the country after the lifting of the sanctions have had little to show for their Gargantuan investments in the land of the ancient Garamantes. Herodotus of Halicarnassus described in some detail the elaborate irrigation systems of the Garamantes, the ancestors of the present day Amazigh or Berbers of Libya. They used underground water resources, in much the same way as Gaddafi has constructed his controversial Great Man-Made River -- an intricate network of underground tunnels and pipelines transporting water from reservoirs in depths of the Sahara. What is to become of these megalomaniac giant projects if Gaddafi's political demise is executed at the hands of the rebels in the "Old Hag"? This is precisely the problem that Western powers are grappling with today. First and foremost, Western leaders do not know exactly whom they are dealing with when it comes to the leading Libyan opposition figures. Could Gaddafi's ominous omen that the rebels are a ragtag army of runaway Al-Qaeda militant Islamists be true? The bulk of the most high profile leaders of the Libyan uprising appear to be defectors of Gaddafi's own regime, men who have served him well, stood by him at the worst of times and have now deserted him at the best of times. Men like Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, until recently Gaddafi's justice minister and who now heads the provisional government namely the National Transitional Council (NTC) based in Benghazi. General Abdel-Fattah Younis, until recently Gaddafi's interior minister, has now emerged as one of the leading spokesmen of the opposition's NTC. Yet, it is known that many of the so-called youth committees in Cyrenaica and in some of the western Libyan cities held by rebels such as Misurata are inclined towards militant Islamism even though the ideological orientation political Islam is not the overriding philosophy of the Libyan uprising. The tribal question remains a thorny political issue in the civic equation of the Libyan uprising. Gaddafi, and his son Seif Al-Islam, have long threatened to play the tribal card, unleashing the forces of Libya's traditional tribal social organisations and networks. The complicity of Al-Magarha tribesmen with the Gaddafi regime has been a foregone conclusion ever since the release in 2009 of Abdel-Baset Al-Megrahi, a prominent member of Al-Magarha tribe convicted in the 1988 bombing of the Pan-Am airliner over the Scottish village of Lockerbie. The man and his people have since been ever grateful to the magnanimity and largesse of Gaddafi -- in short that they owe him one. The Al-Megraha tribesmen are predominant in the Libyan state security apparatus, as indeed Abdel-Basset Al-Megrahi was himself Libya's intelligence chief at one point. Their tribal leaders have ordered their youngsters to comply with the elders' decision to stand by Gaddafi come what may. Libya's largest tribe, Al-Warfela, with more than a million tribesmen, remains fiercely loyal to Gaddafi. They were ruthlessly trounced for treacherously stabbing Gaddafi in the back and aligning themselves with leaders of an abortive coup in 1993. Like the Al-Magarha, the Al-Warfela elders have cautioned their youth not to be tempted to join the rebels. Democracy's grip on the Libyan people's imagination is unrelenting. The irony is that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi purports to espouse an ideal form of democracy, albeit radically different from the Western-style multi-party democracy many of his people now crave. Leaders like Gaddafi will be loath to cut the value of the country's biggest asset, oil. The Libyan insurgents do not know their enemies, except for Gaddafi and his immediate family and most trusted henchmen. They are battling to control a state long controlled by vested interests and out-of- touch with the populace at large. Whether they have the capacity and the political will to do so is open to question. Unlike the 25 January Revolution in Egypt, or the Tunisian Revolution for that matter, the Libyan uprising has been forced to metamorphose from a spontaneous peaceful uprising to an armed uprising and a race for Gaddafi's strongholds of Sirte and Tripoli. As the struggle for the control of Libya's oil trundles through the desolate wastelands of the oil producing regions and the oil terminals on the Gulf of Sirte, Gaddafi's strategy of enlisting the tribesmen sympathetic to his cause may be crucial in making his long-term plans work. At any rate, it appears that the struggle for the control of Libya will be a drawn-out affair. There are sound reasons for pessimism. The Arab League has officially approved the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. In sharp contrast, the African Union is reluctant to follow suit. Western powers are in two minds. The United States, in particular, is reluctant to get bogged down in yet another aggression against and prolonged occupation of a Muslim country. Russia and China, permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, are reluctant to permit the international community to get embroiled in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation, especially one with which they have lucrative economic and commercial dealings. Gaddafi was recently shown on Libyan state television receiving the ambassadors of China, India and Russia, encouraging the so-called "BRIC" nations to take charge of Libya's energy future in the face of Western-imposed sanctions. He even had time to contemplate the tragic earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. Much will now depend on the Libyan armed opposition groups' talks about a joint programme. They cannot simply form a government on the basis of their dislike of Gaddafi. They must reach consensus on a common political platform. Top Western officials have indicated that US intelligence sources predict a sweeping victory for pro-Gaddafi forces. Sooner or later Gaddafi will overwhelm the rebels. And, even if he does not control every inch, Zenga Zenga, of the country, he will at least tighten his grip on the strategic oilfields and key oil installations. The argument is hard to disprove or disentangle from other factors. Political reform in Libya will be a second big policy challenge. The western cities of Zawiya and Misurata are tentatively in rebel hands. But Gaddafi's forces besiege these pockets of resistance and have a firm grip of nearby airports and oil installations. Brega, the strategic oil terminal southwest of Benghazi has changed hands many times, but obviously the pro-Gaddafi forces have the upper hand. Gaddafi's 18,000-strong air force, with its 13 airbases across the sprawling desert country of seven million people, is still a formidable force. The rebels are short of arms and ammunition and their chances of victory is dictated by whether the West is willing to interfere militarily, a most unlikely scenario. Salafi pietism plays a pivotal role in Cyrenaica the part of Libya that is firmly under rebel control. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, Ajdabiya, a major eastern city and oil port, was on the verge of falling into pro-Gaddafi forces' control. Gaddafi's 100 MiG-25s and his Russian surface-to-air-missiles (SAMs) ensure that troops loyal to Gaddafi will triumph. The rebels are rattled too. The pro-Gaddafi forces are pressing ahead to control oil installations and the rebels are fast loosing ground. The rebels have good reason to worry. The no-fly zone did not stop the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. US bases in Sicily and Crete are unlikely to emerge at this point as spearheading the battle to regain the rebels' lost ground. The city of Benghazi with one million people, if attacked by pro-Gaddafi forces, will witness the bloodiest battle in the current Libyan civil war. Benghazi is 1,000km by road from the Libyan capital Tripoli. The families of the 1,270 Libyans, most of them militant Islamists and many from Benghazi, had been incarcerated and butchered by Gaddafi's henchmen in Tripoli's notorious Abu Salim prison in 1996. These disgruntled elements will not be appeased and cannot be bought off by Gaddafi's largesse.
