AS MY colleague notes below, Muammar Qaddafi's troops are holding out pretty well against rebels on the road to Sirte. But his officials, the people who actually staff his government and belong to his ruling elite, are defecting one by one. Why is that?

Here's one tiny window into what might be going on. The European Union imposed sanctions in late February that froze Libyan assets across the continent. As one example, Libya's national investment authority and national oil company are co-owners of a company called Tamoil that owns refineries and gas stations across Europe. The company is still operating, but it may not be for long unless it can cut its ties to Libya. And when you look into the registration documents of the holding company that owns Tamoil, the sole company director, a Libyan fellow, lists his residential address as a condo in Monaco.

This is the Libyan elite that forms the backbone of Mr Qaddafi's regime. That's very different from the people who form the backbone of, say, the Iranian or Yemeni regimes. The governing and business elites of Libya (and in all likelihood as in most commodities-based developing countries it's basically the same people) want to own condos in Monaco and send their kids to the London School of Economics. If Muammar Qaddafi's regime survives, they won't be able to do that anymore. They'll lose their Netherlands-based holding companies, they'll be blocked by no-fly lists when they try to disembark in Paris, and their bank accounts in Frankfurt will remain frozen. These concerns don't matter much to clerics in Qom, which is partly why the Iranian government is not likely to be terribly vulnerable to economic sanctions; for all its faults, it's unfortunately stable because it's based on a genuine grassroots revolutionary movement. The Libyan regime is more of a corrupt consumerist kleptocracy. For the moment, that makes me cautiously optimistic about the chances of a rapid departure for Mr Qaddafi.

(Photo credit: AFP)