Libyan's capture will not end resistance, while rebel resources and manpower would better used securing Tripoli airport
'Gaddafi, we will hunt you down – zenga zenga!" That was the promise of one rebel outside Muammar Gaddafi's ransacked compound. The phrase was an ironic and triumphal echo of Gaddafi's own threat to quell the uprising alleyway (zanqa) by alleyway.
Others agreed on the importance of finding the escaped ruler – members of the SAS, who had been training his forces only a few years ago, were deployed to switch from arranging air strikes to assisting the manhunt. Two businessmen from Benghazi stumped up a $1.3m (£798,000) reward for the colonel's capture, and rebels surrounded an apartment building near Bab al-Aziziya on suspicion that he lay inside.
All of this is a spectacular misallocation of resources. There is no doubt that the person of Colonel Gaddafi is the single most important symbol of the old guard, and that his evasion from capture is giving hope to many loyalists who continue to fight around Tripoli and all over Libya.
But he is not the only such symbol, and to place such overwhelming emphasis on one man is to misunderstand the nature of revolution. The focus on the head of the beast raises vital questions of where, in both territorial and conceptual terms, political authority resides. The rebels have overrun the heart of the regime, the Bab al-Aziziya compound. They have filled Green Square. And, as if moving down the well-worn checklist of a textbook coup, they have seized state television. None of this has brought order to the streets. More importantly, none of it has produced the impression or practice of new authority. This is not just a problem of independent and proliferating militias; it is about acting like a government.
The $1.3m would be more usefully directed to paying the salaries of regime policemen. The UK defence secretary, Liam Fox, who confirmed that Nato forces were supplying intelligence and reconnaissance to the hunt, would be better advised to redirect those drones, aircraft and satellites to the ongoing battle for Sirte and the entrenched pockets of resistance in many parts of the city. And why are British special forces joining the chase when some of the most sensitive parts of Tripoli remain contested? These resources, and rebel manpower, could be securing the airport and its links to the city. Though the National Transitional Council has begun moving ministries from Benghazi to the capital, what is needed is a secure base of operations from which the real task of running a country can be undertaken.
It is naive to think that resistance will simply dissolve upon Gaddafi's capture. Saif al-Islam's dramatic reappearance makes him another viable figure around which loyalists might seek to reconstitute themselves, and the revolution cannot be placed on hold until the entire family is mopped up.
Sirte, Gaddafi's hometown, has been mooted as a possible base of loyalist insurgency. But this is hundreds of miles from Tripoli, and there's the slight problem of rebel-held Misrata lying on the coastal road in between.
Sirte has not capitulated in part because it is afraid of what awaits it on surrender; credible promises of fair treatment are more likely to bring an end to its defiance. Gaddafi's recovery from a hole, or his demise in a hail of bullets, would not necessarily do so.
The sight of Hosni Mubarak being bought to trial was a landmark moment for independent Egypt. Libyans are understandably eager for their own moment of catharsis. This, however, should not distract from their overarching task: to step into the breach before it is filled by something worse.
Shashank Joshi is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/25/catching-muammar-gaddafi-not-priority
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