For those who might be feeling bewildered by the news reports coming out of Libya, here are a few things to keep in mind, gleaned from observations of its evolving conflict over the past seven months.

Assume Nothing Is as It Seems

When the rebels swept virtually unopposed into Tripoli, Qaddafi’s son and heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, was reported to have been arrested. Within a day, we learned that this was false; not only was he not in custody, he was moving around the supposedly liberated capital, openly flaunting his freedom and taunting the rebels, saying they had been lured into a trap. His father, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen, still at large, and around the city his forces had reemerged and were fighting back—even as, the next day, rebels were entering his compound. Suddenly, Qaddafi’s endgame had acquired a postscript, and it seemed he was writing it.

How was this possible? Next rule:

Qaddafi Is a Desert Fox

In his forty-two years in power, Muammar Qaddafi has presented himself as many things to many people: as a self-styled socialist liberator, as North Africa’s ultimate Bedouin seer; even as the flamboyant, berobed would-be king of Africa. To many, at home and around the world, Qaddafi is a savant and a buffoon, his long rule and global meddling made possible by oil money and a brutish gang of paid-for enforcers. There is some truth in all of these assessments. But more than anything else, Qaddafi is first and foremost a devilishly cunning survivor who, when bribery and co-option have not been possible, has consistently outsmarted his enemies using deceit and treachery. These are his most distinctive trademarks on the battlefield, and they have been present during these last months of warfare.

In mid-March, after two weeks of rapid battlefield gains toward the rebel’s provisional capital of Benghazi, and on the very eve of threatened military action by NATO forces, Qaddafi declared a unilateral cessation of military activity. He appeared on Libyan TV to say how much he loved the people of Benghazi and wanted to do things for them; how, essentially, all he wanted was peace and love. At that same moment, as it turned out, he was moving his armored columns rapidly under cover of darkness to attack Benghazi. By dawn the next morning they had penetrated its western edges, taking the rebels entirely by surprise, and a bloody but fortunately short-lived battle ensued. Qaddafi’s forces were beaten back, and NATO’s planes and missiles finally kicked into action, saving Benghazi, its rebels, and, ultimately, the Libyan revolt, at the eleventh hour-and-counting. But his tactics illustrate the next rule.

Confusion Is Qaddafi’s Ideal Milieu

The way the rebels poured into Tripoli the other day, gleeful at the lack of armed opposition, was characteristically amateurish behavior. In March and April, as the armed conflict got under way, the rebels consistently overshot themselves, charging into Libya’s eastern towns and apparently “chasing off” Qaddafi’s forces, who retreated, only to be eventually stopped in their tracks and bloodied by government troops who invariably appeared—as they seem to have done in Tripoli—“out of nowhere.” And yet the rebels’ seemingly complete heedlessness, at this fateful juncture, was nevertheless astonishing, and underscored serious continuing leadership and command deficiencies that NATO’s remote-control aerial war and its handful of covert special-forces teams (French, British, and Qatari, supposedly) on the ground have clearly not been able to overcome. On the battlefield, knowledge of one’s enemy is key, and Qaddafi knows well the hearts and minds of the Libyan people, and their temperament, too, and has shown himself consistently able to exploit this knowledge to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the fecklessness of the rebels to sow further confusion into their ranks. He may well still lose, but right now, in Tripoli, it is confusion that reigns, and that gives Qaddafi, not NATO (its warplanes cannot easily bomb in a crowded city) or the rebels, a key advantage.

Let Chaos Theory Be Your Guide

If harnessing chaos is one of Qaddafi’s great strengths, chaos is also, seemingly, an unerring aspect of life in Libya; it can be relied upon to make an appearance, and, ultimately, to shape the environment of Libya’s battlefield. It is, in Rumsfeldian terms, a Known Unknown. Put in more practical terms, chaos can be relied upon to kick in whenever, for instance, the rebels seem to gain something on the battlefield. They will inevitably start shooting their weapons into the air, and dancing and singing, regardless of the possibility that their enemy may be waiting just out of sight, ready to open fire and counterattack. In this guise, their response belongs to a Libyan tradition of performance as a key part of war; it harks back to the time in which Bedouin warriors, armed with only swords or perhaps muskets, would charge their enemies across a desert plain, scatter them, and then declare “victory” on the spot.

The Rebels Have Yet to Learn How to Write Their Own Rules

They are still responding to Qaddafi’s game. The lack of leadership among the rebels is in many ways a problem—there is no truly charismatic figure on their side. Whenever there was, Qaddafi found a way to undermine him—as with Fatah Younis, his former interior minister, who defected and was ultimately murdered by other rebels. (Qaddafi sowed confusion by running undated footage of the two of them on television, for example.) Even if they manage, as appears likely, to take control of Libya with NATO’s help, whether they will manage to assemble a unified government for this damaged country should give one pause, whatever one’s hopes. Qaddafi has not only shaped the battlefield: he has shaped the human landscape of Libya for forty years.

Photograph by Imed Lamloum/AFP/Getty Images.