The technicals strike back

In the fluid tug-of-war that defines this conflict, military movements have been characterised not by well-planned mass movements of armoured columns supported by air power, but by rapid dashes across the desert by lightly armed men in pick-up trucks and SUVs.

Frank Gardner, BBC March 2, 2011

It’s encouraging to see that the Libyan rebels have successfully seen off Gaddafi’s first attempted counter-attack. I don’t know enough about military matters to know whether or not to be further encouraged by the fact that Gaddafi seems to be relying heavily on a strike force of guys in pick-up trucks.

On the one hand, it seems strange. We know he’s got tanks and other armoured vehicles and he isn’t squeamish about slaughtering his own people when he deems it necessary. He’s operating on the sort of open terrain that lends itself to tank warfare (or at least it did when Rommel’s panzers and the Eighth Army were contesting it). Most of the rebels, (other than ex-soldiers) presumably don’t have tanks, or aren’t trained to operate any captured ones. If Gaddafi can’t, or won’t, use his armour he’s throwing away the sort of massive firepower advantage neatly summed up by Hilaire Belloc in The Modern Traveller:

Whatever happens we have got,
The Maxim gun, and they have not

He could be keeping his tanks in reserve for a last stand in Tripoli, but if the rebels break into the city at any point, he’d risk getting into the sort of street fighting where his tanks would become vulnerable to roadblocks and Molotov cocktails.

If most of the guys in the trucks are mercenaries, perhaps Gaddafi has figured his petro-dollars have bought their undivided loyalty, whereas his army tank commanders might feel a tad conflicted about rolling their tanks over friends, family and neighbours.

Or maybe it was just tactics. Assuming that they didn’t have to go off road all the way, I presume that a bunch of Toyota Hiluxes could have got to Brega a damn sight quicker than a column of tanks. If the pro-Gaddafi forces wanted to launch a surprise attack, maybe speed was of the essence. And let’s not forget that your pick-up trucks with big guns on the back (or “technicals” as they’re known in some parts) are cost-effective force multipliers, as western troops in Afghanistan have found to their cost.

If one of Gaddafi’s primary objectives is raiding and destroying any arms, ammunition and fuel dumps in rebel hands, maybe his fleet of “technicals” is the best force for the job – a modern equivalent of the Long Range Desert Group that cruised around the Libyan deserts giving Rommel a serious headache 70 years ago.

So, in the short term, I don’t know whether or not the lack of tank columns is a good indicator that Gaddafi’s losing his grip (on power – his grip on reality went decades ago) ,or just a matter of tactics. In the longer term, I’ve no idea whether the prognosis is good or bad. Salman Rushdie has just given an optimistic talk about the changes in North Africa and the Middle East, pointing out that Islamist militants don’t yet seem to be filling the vacuum left by toppling tyrants.

I really hope he’s right, but the Iranian Revolution was also started by a mixed popular front composed of liberals, communists, socialists, Islamists and everybody else who just hated a corrupt and brutal regime. It wasn’t long before the Islamist faction, the most ruthless, the most disciplined and the most organised element in the revolution took over and started hauling their fellow revolutionaries off to the Shah’s old prisons and torture chambers. As so often, the prize went to the revolutionaries who risked most, pitied least and had the highest boredom threshold:

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

Let's hope that the 2011 revolutions will consign 'the adoration of madmen' to history without moving on to 'the necessary murder.'