“You have the traditional army and you have a parallel army,” said Noman Benotman, a senior analyst at Quilliam, a London counter-extremism think tank, and a former Libyan jihadist. “The army is weak, not a significant power. The parallel units are controlled by the most loyal people, not just to the regime, but to Colonel Gaddafi personally.”
Unlike the Egyptian army, which is a strong and independent institution, the Libyan army has been subject to overweening political controls. Resources have flowed to loyalist units while other sections of the military have been effectively mothballed…
The Khamis Brigade, named after Gaddafi’s youngest son, was reported to be flying in additional mercenaries from African countries as recently as Wednesday, according to Omar Khattaly, a co-founder of the Libyan Working Group, an exile human rights group with offices in Atlanta and Europe. Some of the mercenaries were landing at what used to be the U.S. Wheelus Air Base, near Tripoli…
The exact number of paramilitary forces at Gaddafi’s disposal is unknown. According to one estimate, there is a 3,000-man Revolutionary Guard Corps plus unknown numbers of fighters in the Islamic Pan African Legion, the People’s Cavalry Force and various “people’s militias.”
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