Muammar Gaddafi's purported Long March from Benghazi to Tripoli, which began on Friday, was cut short on Tuesday as his army routed and then - almost as if carried by inertia alone - chased the rebels back across a few small towns along the Mediterranean coast. The opposition performed so poorly in its advance on his town of birth, Sirte (which it claimed - falsely - to have captured on Monday), that Gaddafi did not even get to use the full gamut of asymmetric warfare tactics he had in store.
As he struggles to hide his considerable forces from increasingly powerful coalition air attacks but nevertheless holds sway on the ground, the Libyan leader is very likely to be spicing up the long hours of hiding by brushing up on legendary Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong's experiences in using mobile warfare against the Kuomintang and the Japanese.
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Where did the army go? A few days earlier, it had posed an urgent threat to Benghazi, a city of over 500,000 inhabitants and full of rebel fighters. "People coming along the coastal road from Sirte said Gaddafi forces were gathered around 60 kilometers outside the city, positioned in trees," al-Jazeera reported on Monday.
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Mobile warfare, Mao's specialty, can be loosely interpreted as a cross-breed between positional warfare (defense and conquest of territory, what regular armies usually do) and guerrilla warfare (hit-and-run tactics; small units that melt into the civilian population or disappear into the surroundings).
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Thus, when Gaddafi fights "on his own turf," the efficiency of the air strikes against him is reduced, and this has a similar effect to that of overextended supply lines in ground operations. It is pretty clear, moreover, that the Libyan leader has a "turf": in a recent report, Reuters quotes rebel fighters as saying that residents of the town of Nawfaliyah had fired at them, and that the population of some towns near Sirte had formed local militias allied with the government forces.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC31Ak03.html(Five days ago, right when Gaddafi's army withdrew/was pushed out of Ajdabiya, I said "Gaddafi forces would be wise to withdraw to Sirte. They would be smart to only engage in mobile warfare in areas east of that... It's too much territory with long supply lines required... Asymmetrical warfare is required for both sides given the conditions." It seems like this is exactly what's happening. I don't think Gaddafi's forces are nearly so foolish and ham-handed as those of Saddam Hussein. This war will not be largely a positional one, but a mobile one, with employment of asymmetric tactics. What are the strategic implications?)
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