AHC/WI: Gaddafi wins the Libyan Civil War

[Uhura's Mazda]

As pretty much all of you guys know, 2011 saw a load of Arab Spring rebels overthrow the insane 'socialist' dictator of Libya, Muammar Qaddafi/Gaddafi, and he ended up with a knife in his rectum. The NTC was funded and armed by the West after the early going, and bombing raids by NATO from Italy cemented Gaddafi's downfall, at least in popular opinion. Since then, Libya has had a great deal of unpleasantness, a new civil war with about 5 different sides sparked up last year, and everything is generally terrible - normal people are perhaps even worse off than they were in 2010, but let's not get into that: it certainly doesn't condone Gaddafi's rule, at any rate.

So, at what point did it become impossible for the loyalists to win outright? Could Gaddafi have turned the tide even after the NATO bombings began? What sort of revenge/preventative measures would Gaddafi have taken once victory was assured? How would the Arab Spring in general have been affected? How would the media narrative in the West change once their plucky underdogs had lost? Would NATO have sent in ground troops if things didn't go their way? How would a Gaddafi victory affect foreign policy in Western countries? etc.

Note: I have never been a Gaddafi supporter. I do think that his flag was cooler than the current version, but that's just an aesthetic preference - a bit like thinking that Woodrow Wilson was a bit of a DILF.

 

[hasdrubal barca]

So, at what point did it become impossible for the loyalists to win outright? Could Gaddafi have turned the tide even after the NATO bombings began? What sort of revenge/preventative measures would Gaddafi have taken once victory was assured? How would the Arab Spring in general have been affected? How would the media narrative in the West change once their plucky underdogs had lost? Would NATO have sent in ground troops if things didn't go their way? How would a Gaddafi victory affect foreign policy in Western countries? etc.

I think Khamis Gaddafi summed it up best: "take Misrata or I will kill you myself. If you don’t take Misrata, we are finished." If Gaddafi forces can seize Misrata it frees up thousands of troops which can be sent to reinforce Tripoli or eastward. In regard to the eastern campaign instead of bombarding Benghazi, and threatening a massacre, he should have sped and taken Tobruk, this would have isolated the Benghazi government. Tobruk today is a bastion of secularism in Libya so it might welcome Gaddafi or at least not resist heavily.

After this Gaddafi has got a good chance at containing the rebels and pushing for peace talks. Sort of what Assad is doing now.

 

[Charles RB]

So, at what point did it become impossible for the loyalists to win outright? Could Gaddafi have turned the tide even after the NATO bombings began?

Before the intervention, Gaddafi was advancing and afterwards, he was slowing down - so you need to mess up the intervention or have regime forces advance quicker. It's the French that shot first on 19th March and IIRC that was France acting on its own. If they'd held off - because negotiations on who did what and when are still going on at the time - until all the T's were crossed and I's dotted, armoured vehicles would've attacked Benghazi. So one POD would be Gaddafi has entered the city, preventing Benghazi from being the (relatively) safe centre of everything and turning it into Misrata II. That makes everything harder and kills the momentum for foreign support. Alternatively, NATO negotiations drag out too long and Gaddafi is able to regain the initiative. (Or both)

Alternatively, NATO decides to accept Saif al-Islam's carrot of 'free elections' in July. The political will has drained from the main players - the latest election in US, France or UK has turned out differently or there's a domestic scandal or a plane was shot down/crashed. Once one main player wants out, the others wibble and a deal is taken. The rebels reject it but with their foreign support going away, they find themselves back on the back foot.

What sort of revenge/preventative measures would Gaddafi have taken once victory was assured?

As I recall, lots of people were going to be shot in the head. Mass terror. (If the war's dragged on, a lot of that was done anyway[/i[) He was threatening to sack Benghazi.

The Arab Spring is going to either die or go very nasty - everyone has just seen that if a dictatorship hits back, the rest of the world will either ignore it or won't be able to help and the dictator wins. That will embolden said dictators and scare a lot of dissidents, but it could also lead to said dissidents going "right, if this happens, we're going to have to be ready to commit violence". Would the Syrians cave to avoid becoming a new Libya or will this make the rebels more desperate and sooner?

The West is going to be humiliated if this happens. If it happened due to NATO bickering, NATO's whole existence will be in question: if it does this over Libya, what happens in a Baltic state is attacked, are they gonna drag their heels there too? A number of politicians will be losing their jobs.

 

[Wendell]

Once NATO was engaged in the way that they were in our timeline, Qadhafi was done. Avoiding NATO involvement though might offer some interesting butterflies, however.