Libya’s motley military, a collection of ill-trained conscripts and hired-to-kill mercenaries mostly armed with obsolete Soviet equipment, has an unenviable reputation of combat ineptitude, ill-discipline, miserable morale and thuggish corruption.
At least some Libyan units have disgraced themselves, firing indiscriminately into unarmed crowds of civilian protesters. Some messages out of Libya suggest the massacres were conducted by non-Libyan mercenaries. Unconfirmed reports claim the use of heavy weapons – including rapid-firing, anti-aircraft guns – against civilians.
In sharp contrast to Egypt’s widely respected armed forces, the Libyan army, air force and navy, led by the self-styled Col. Moammar Gadhafi, is regarded as a grim, murderous joke, even compared to other African militaries.
Nothing suggests Libya’s military possesses either the professionalism, the discipline, or commands the popular respect to fill a power vacuum or serve as a transitional structure to civilian government. Ever since the mercurial and increasingly erratic Col. Gadhafi seized power 42 years ago, Libya’s military has been a pawn in his wide schemes and ill-fated international adventures.
Reports of senior air-force officers fleeing to Malta in a couple of the handful of still-flyable Soviet-era warplanes underscores the chaotic mess that pervades the military. The fleeing pilots, seeking asylum, also claimed they had seen other Libyan warplanes used against crowds in Tripoli.
Guinean identity cards seized from Libyan-uniformed mercenaries after two days of massacres in the eastern city of Benghazi will only further discredit and divide the faction-filled military. Fighting there ended only after some military units joined the popular uprisings.
Estimates vary, but most outside military analysts put the size of the Libyan armed forces at about 76,000 personnel – or roughly the same as Canada’s – in a country with a population of only six million. About half are conscripts and another 45,000 serve in a so-called People’s Militia filled with former soldiers.
Col. Gadhafi’s stunning record of grandiose military failures is matched only by his personal outrages. The leader who liked to set up court in a huge Bedouin tent also publicly slapped a military aide who led him to the door at an African summit. His hand-picked personal guards got into fisticuffs at another international meeting.
Libya’s military hasn’t fared any better. Twice in the 1980s combat pilots were sent up to challenge a U.S. carrier battle group in the sprawling Gulf of Sidra – claimed as territorial waters by Col. Gadhafi. Twice they were swiftly shot down before they were aware that U.S. warplanes were even engaged.
Libya even managed to lose a war with Chad, its impoverished southern neighbour that still managed to outfight Col. Gadhafi’s legions of Soviet tanks with the nimble use of pickup trucks with small anti-armour missiles mounted in the back in the so-called “Toyota war.” The loss of large numbers of Soviet tanks, artillery and armoured vehicles poisoned relations with Moscow.
Decades later, hundreds of obsolete Soviet battle tanks and scores of warplanes are unusable for lack of parts, skilled technicians and maintenance. The navy’s single submarine and one of its two frigates are also dockside and unfit to sail.
However, a single brigade of the Revolutionary Guards Corps – estimated at about 3,000 soldiers – is better trained, better paid and supposedly loyal to the aging Col. Gadhafi. Drawn from the Guards is perhaps the oddest force in the militaries of the Arab world, a clutch of female soldiers who serve as the colonel’s close personal protection. They are – facetiously – known as the “Green Nuns” after Col. Gadhafi’s penchant for using that colour to mark ideologically significant elements in the personality cult that he has fostered.
For decades, Col. Gadhafi pursued an expensive, clandestine effort – aided by Pakistan’s rogue scientists along with North Korea and Iran – to develop nuclear weapons. In the aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Col. Gadhafi suddenly owned up to his secret program.
U.S. military planes carried off the results of Libya’s nuclear-weapons effort and, coupled with Libya’s claim that it was out of the terrorist-backing business, the Colonel’s regime and his military managed to foster some relations with the West. British Special Forces elements were reportedly sent to Tripoli as trainers, and U.S. military contacts – albeit on a small scale – resumed.
