Speed critical in tracking tyrant
MUAMMAR GADDAFI’S pursuers must act fast to stop the trail going cold or risk prolonging Libya’s war by months, if not years, analysts say. Hunting anyone in a sparsely-populated desert country three times the size of France isa daunting task, let alone a well-connected former head of state with access to gold and guns.
Material resources are not the only factors favouring the fugitive.
Die-hard fighters remain active in several regions, his companions probably include an inner circle of still-feared security men and he can rely on friends among southern Libyan tribes and nomadic communities of smugglers in the Sahel.
Much of the interior, especially the southwest, remains outside rebel control and includes places where locals are either undecided about the revolution or openly hostile to it.
Time is pressing, for the longer his vanishing act goes on, the more an aura of invincibility could grow around him.
“The best time to capture these defeated leaders is immediately after the conflict finishes,” former UN chief in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, said. “The longer it takes the more chance they have of being spirited away to a place which is much more difficult to find, as we saw with Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, (Radovan) Karadzic and (Ratko) Mladic.”
Bosnian war crimes suspects used military contacts, false identities and occasionally disguises to evade detection. Osama Bin Laden hid in plain sight near the Pakistani army’s main academy in a northwestern garrison town. Whether Gaddafi has the scope or ingenuity to adopt any of those tactics is not clear, but rebels won’t want to give him the time to develop expertise.
Gaddafi’s experience of under-mining international sanctions in the 1980s and 1990s will stand him in good stead. In that period he cultivated smuggling networks and overseas financiers who helped move money and weapons around the world.
Graham Cundy, a British military specialist at Diligence, a security and intelligence consultancy, said he expected Gaddafi would use tactics similar to those employed, initially successfully, by Iraqi insurgent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Taliban military chief Mullah Dadullah Lang before they were eventually tracked down and killed.
He lists the essential tasks as:
* Avoid using mobile phones, or phones at all, directly;
* Use trusted gatekeepers to relay messages;
* Avoid overt signs of protection — armoured or large convoys, large bodyguard details that can be seen by drones;
* Consider the use of doubles and misdirection.
Money helps to buy loyalty, weapons and silence. Gaddafi’s former central bank governor Farhat Bengdara claimed he would try to sell part of Libya’s gold reserves to pay for his protection.
Bengdara, who has allied himself with the rebels, told Italian daily Corriere della Sera that an ally of Gaddafi had offered 25 tonnes of gold to his friend “a little time ago”.
Tribes, and the lands they control, will also be important.
Noman Benotman, a former Islamist guerrilla commander, suspects Gaddafi had retreated to a military compound at al-Jufra, south of his hometown Sirte.
An influential tribe in Sebha is the Megarha, whose loyalty remains unclear.
Analysts say Sunday’s public denunciation of Gaddafi by his former number two, Abdel Salam Jalloud, a Megarha, might help to ensure the tribe sides with the rebels.
Gaddafi appeared to suffer another blow to his support on Wednesday when cousin and longtime close associate Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam a member of Gaddafi’s Gaddafa tribe, backed a rebel call to avoid more bloodshed.
NATO is expected to provide a large amount of intelligence to the manhunt in the form of electronic eavesdropping.
But the hunt’s most important asset could be the prevailing political climate, because information about Gaddafi’s location would be easier to obtain if close aides defect.
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