Fighting shifting in Kadhafi's favor: US intel

Paramedics try to stabilize a wounded Libyan
rebel fighter brought out from the battle field
© AFP Marco Longari

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The momentum in the Libyan conflict is shifting in favor of Moamer Kadhafi whose forces are “robustly equipped” with Russian weapons and likely to defeat the rebels, US officials said Thursday.

“Initially the momentum was with the other side,” Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told US senators.

“That has started to shift. Whether or not it has fully moved to Kadhafi’s side at this time is not clear. We have now reached a state of equilibrium. The initiative may be actually be on the regime side.”

Pro-regime loyalists have been striking back against rebels, who had seized the initiative when the fighting erupted in February.

But now three weeks on Kadhafi’s son Thursday crowed that victory was in sight against rebels after loyalist forces retook two key towns. They re-captured Zawiyah and were also at the doors of the eastern strategic oil refinery town of Ras Lanouf.

“Over time I think the regime will prevail,” acknowledged James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, at the Senate hearing.

“With respect to the rebels in Libya, and whether or not they will succeed or not, I think frankly they’re in for a tough row.”

Clapper added that he did not believe Kadhafi, who has earned a reputation as a maverick, had any intention of stepping down after more than four decades in power.

“I don’t think he has any intention of leaving,” Clapper said. “From all evidence that we have, which I’d be prepared to discuss in closed session, he appears to be hunkering down for the duration.”

Libyan air defenses, including radar and surface-to-air missiles, are “quite substantial,” Clapper explained.

“A very important consideration here for the regime is, by design, Kadhafi intentionally designed the military so that those select units willed to him are the most luxuriously equipped and the best trained.”

The Libyan arsenal, Clapper said, “is the second largest in the Middle East after Egypt.”

Libyan rebel fighters wait for news
of wounded comrades at the morgue
© AFP Marco Longari

“They have a lot of Russian equipment. There is a certain quality and numbers,” Clapper told the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.

He said there were two special brigades, the 32nd and the 9th, that are very loyal to Kadhafi, and were the most “robustly equipped with Russian equipment to include air defense, artillery, tanks, mechanized equipment.”

However, “some of that equipment has fallen into opposition’s hands,” Clapper said, adding that there was also concern that some of the more portable weaponry runs the risk of “falling into the wrong hands.”

As the West debates whether to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to help the opposition who are taking a pounding from air strikes, Clapper said Libya had some 31 anti-aircraft sites and radar dedicated to protecting the northern Libyan coast where 80 to 85 percent of the population is concentrated.

He said the Libyan forces had a large number of missile launchers, but stressed that only a small part of the Libyan air force was operational with only about 75 to 80 aircraft, a third of which were transport planes and a third helicopters.

Clapper offered hope, though, that despite the sustained air attacks which have caused damage “they have not caused very many casualties.”