Gaddafi unyielding in unrest

Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt's Hosny Mubarak, the president of Yemen and king of Bahrain all opted for a police crackdown as well as talks with the opposition when popular uprisings broke out in their countries.

This two-pronged strategy is not Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi's style, though. The colonel from Sirte immediately sent heavily armed troops into the midst of the rebels.

Forty-two years after the coup that gave him power, Gaddafi still carries the title "Leader of the Revolution" and is firmly convinced, "I am the revolution."

Although Gaddafi holds no official government post, there is no way round him and his clan in Libya. His sons al-Saadi, Mutassim and Khamis, on whom he is now leaning in his hour of need, occupy positions high in the security apparatus.

At the outset of the uprising, Gaddafi dispatched al-Saadi, a former professional footballer whose eccentricity is almost equal to his father's, to the eastern city of Benghazi, where the Gaddafi clan is particularly despised. The anti-government opposition then reported that al-Saadi was encircled in a hotel there. But just a day later, the dictator's son appeared at a pro-Gaddafi rally bounding about excitedly and waving a green flag.

In a telephone call to the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on Saturday, another member of the clan said that Gaddafi had ordered all of his relatives staying in Europe to return to Libya. "We're all determined to die in Libya," he said.

Meanwhile, at this crucial juncture for Gaddafi, little has been heard of his son Saif al-Islam, who has sought to make a name for himself as a political reformer in recent years. Gaddafi is said to trust his other sons more than Saif, who is fond of giving interviews to European reporters and has publicly taken his father's Old Guard to task.

While Libyans' dissatisfaction with the regime is generally high, they had mostly kept quiet up to now, often criticizing it only after fleeing the country. They knew that any reproval of "Brother Leader" and his ideology of rule by General People's Committee would land them straight in prison.

Thanks to Libya's large oil and natural gas deposits, Libyans' economic lot is far better than that of their revolutionary neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt.

But many are aware that corruption and mismanagement eat up a large portion of state revenues. What is more, Libya is among the Arab countries with the least freedom of expression, comparable to Syria or Iraq under Saddam Hussein. And devout Muslims are unhappy with Gaddafi's unorthodox interpretation of Islam.

Experts consider the Islamists to be Libya's best-organized opposition group. During demonstrations in the cities of Benghazi and Misurata, they have shouted, as the Egyptians did before them, "The people want the regime to fall." Unlike the demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia, however, many religious slogans can be heard in Libya, too, including, "God is great" and "Moamer is the enemy of God."