[ANALYSIS] Gaddafi armor may seek uban shelter, prolonging war

To prepare for that eventuality, Western powers will now want to train and equip the opposition’s lackluster ground forces to enable them eventually to confront his tanks and big guns largely on their own, analysts say.

Many military experts expect Gaddafi to resort to a “human shield” tactic to protect the tanks and artillery that have proved to be the most effective part of his armed might. The gambit is a defensive one. Parking armored vehicles and big guns in government-held residential areas in Libya’s west means they will not be available for use in any advance along the open coastal road to rebel areas to the east.

But sheltering them in this way would preserve Gaddafi’s military muscle, providing him with a degree of leverage he could use in any eventual negotiation on a political settlement. Gaddafi may also hope his heavy armor tempts the West to send in ground forces, producing a Vietnam-style quagmire.

“It’s easy to strike armored columns, when they are out in the open. It’s much harder to do when it becomes urban warfare,” said Barak Seener, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

“What the West needs to do is to follow the French example by recognizing the (opposition) Transitional National Council and offer them logistical support in terms of teaching them how to use heavy artillery, which they don’t really know how to do.”

Glen Howard, president of the Jamestown Foundation, said an apparent attempt by Gaddafi to push forces into the eastern opposition bastion of Benghazi before the air strikes was an signal he was aiming at “human shield” protection for his army.

Risk of long stalemate

“Libya will not be a cakewalk,” he said, adding the conflict’s current phase was reminiscent of the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, which failed to meet expectations it would bring down Slobodan Milosevic within days. “There is still a real risk of a protracted stalemate, with neither side wanting to negotiate. So the endgame remains very unclear,” said Jeremy Binnie, a senior analyst with IHS Jane’s.

Rather than attacking land weapons like tanks, the main targets of the allied strikes have been long-range air defense batteries equipped with SA-5s, SA-3s and SA-2s missiles and command and control facilities.

That job is not yet done.

Stratfor analyst Marko Papic noted Gaddafi still had hundreds of mobile surface-to-air missile systems, SA-6s and SA-8s, and hundreds of shoulder-fired SA-7 missile launchers.

Anti-aircraft artillery had not been targeted because much of it was placed close to civilian areas and was far more mobile and difficult to detect, he said.

“The SA-7s and anti-aircraft artillery will remain a persistent, if low-level threat,” he said.

But as the attention shifts to the tanks and artillery that been decisive against the rebels, commanders may find that that task has been complicated by the deployment of government tanks and big guns next to civilian neighborhoods.

RUSI analyst Shashank Joshi said the “more important portion of Libyan government assets are poised on the periphery of urban areas and capable of causing great damage to civilians”.

Another potential complication is that many of Gaddafi’s forces are using civilian pickup trucks whose military affiliation is not easily identified from the air. Gaddafi may also be using human shields in infantry fighting, and deploying government troops in civilian clothes, according to reports from opposition sources.

In Gaddafi compound, a crowd of human shields

A sign that Gaddafi favors those tactics came from rebel-held Misrata city on Monday, when a rebel spokesman told Reuters that forces loyal to the longtime leader were bringing civilians from nearby towns to use as human shields.

The report from Misrata, the only big rebel stronghold left in western Libya, could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Libyan officials. Residents also said that armed pro-Gaddafi forces had entered the city dressed in civilian clothes and that snipers posted on rooftops were shooting anyone who came within range.

“They are bringing them to Misrata so they can enter the city and control it by using the civilians as human shields because they know we are not going to shoot woman and children and old people,” the rebel spokesman said.

Gaddafi has also allowed crowds of loyalists into his main Tripoli compound as a human shield against possible air strikes.