The struggle for power in Libya appears to be entering a new phase. Each side is embarking on a longer-term strategy, which is as much a propaganda war of images as a military conflict.

Language and images were, of course, an intrinsic part of the battle between Muammar Gaddafi and the rebels from the beginning. The protesters and rebels continue to describe their uprising as an intifada (a term synonymous with a liberation struggle) and themselves as revolutionary rebels (thuwwar). Libyan state TV, meanwhile, refers to the uprisings as fitna (a term meaning discord but with resonances of a painful, scandalous division within a community) and the rebel leaders as Al Qaeda agents and spies.

Now, a new phase has begun. The rebels are learning to be more cautious in their dealings with embedded journalists. The latter have clear sympathies with them but were also broadcasting details of moods and plans that must have been as useful for their enemy as it was to boost morale among their supporters.

Col Gaddafi’s forces, meanwhile, have continued to strafe and run bombing missions against the rebels but with such striking inaccuracy that questions have been raised. Is it a sign of startling military incompetence? A sign of pilots finding a middle way between obeying orders and not killing fellow Libyans? (Yet, two pilots of a downed aircraft were mercenaries.) Or a deliberate strategy, the bombing’s aim being to stop rebels in their tracks without causing a massacre, thus avoiding the triggering of international military intervention?

Whatever the reason, Col Gaddafi appears to have decided he needs to play for time while the rebels have realised their strategy to maintain the initiative must encompass goals that are broader than military advances. Each side is now engaged in defining what is the new normal for Libya.

For Col Gaddafi this has meant, first, using state TV to reinforce his version of events. Last week, there were images of truck containers – intercepted at night in the coastal town of Zliten – packed with pills with mind-altering side effects, together with a truck driver testifying he had been told he was carrying women’s make-up. Every day, reporters tour Tripoli shops and schools, getting shoppers and pupils to avow (after giving the day’s date, to show the footage is up to the minute) that life is normal.

Second, Col Gaddafi has been at pains to show he is conducting business as usual. Many foreign commentators are keen to write him off as a delusional case and so dismissed his three-hour speech on the March 2 anniversary as “rambling”. But that was its very point: that, despite any troubles, the leader had three hours to spare, during which he also announced mundane administrative boundary changes for local government.

Another prong of the strategy has been to ease consumption, especially in Tripoli.

Some goods have been heavily subsidised. Families have been awarded a grant of 500 Libyan dinars – with footage of the money collected at the banks being broadcast on TV. House loans have been made readily available.

A third prong has been to appear to ignore certain centres in the western interior that have declared themselves against him – like the mountain town of Nalut, the southwestern town of Zintan and the oasis city of Ghadames (all with films uploaded online). The sheer geographical size of Libya makes such towns – often several hundred kilometres away from Tripoli – irrelevant in the short term, as long as their people do not march towards the capital.

Attention can be given to them later. It is not delusional to describe them as local problems. In military terms, that is exactly what they are at the moment. Such “local problems”, in the past, have been resolved with a return to “normality”.

Perhaps because until three weeks ago some of them were close allies of Col Gaddafi, the rebels have recognised the strategy better than the international commentariat, which is why they have begun to take the battle over imagery further.

The step taken to address the European Parliament on Tuesday is of a piece with the strategy apparent on the English-language website of the “Transitional National Council of the Libyan Republic” ( http://ntclibya.org/english/ ).

Here it is asserted that the language and paraphernalia of the Libyan state belongs to the Council. Acquiring recognition on international bodies for its representatives would mean that Col Gaddafi’s claims to represent the country will become ever more ghostly.

To bolster its claims for statehood, the website contains filmed and translated pledges of allegiance by various towns, in the west and east.

The attempt is to give these pledges a constitutional reality. The map of Libya is represented in terms of areas that have been “liberated”, others that have been liberated but under attack and others still are under “Gaddafi control”. Like any map, it is not neutral: it portrays “liberation” as the new normal and the presence of Col Gaddafi’s forces as an attack from outside the organic whole.

Neither side in this war of images has its argument fully rooted in actuality.

The situation is still too fluid for that. But the war of images is an important part of the struggle to reconstitute the facts on the ground.

ranierfsadni@europe.com