dirk vandewalle most of us never hear very much of this country except reports about moammar gadhafi. fill us in a little bit. where is this opposition coming from? how organized is it? how surprising are these developments of the last few days? >> well, first of all to answer your last question first, these developments are extremely surprising. this is a regime that even seasoned observers would have predicted would be extremely hard to dislodge. in part because georgia kaffe over a 40-year period has very systematically eviscerated any opposition to his rule. he has divided the army along tribal affiliation. he has made sure that there are no opposition that could materialize throughout the country. and in a sense what we've now started to see is that suddenly for all the doubts that anybody had about the ability of libyans to organize, that they have been able to do so and that furthermore if tripoli is kind of the jewel in the crown and green square in tripoli is the symbol of the regime where gadhafi even three days ago, as judy reported, had been showing up and giving speeches,

joining me now are professor dirk vandewalle of dartmouth college and barbara plett of the british broadcasting corporation. professor, let me go to you first, tell me where youhink things are at 5:00 p.m. on monday. >> i think at this point we are at kind of a crucial phase. it seems the demonstrations have started to take place in tripoli and tripoli in many ways is in a sense the big prize. green square in tripoli is really the symbol of qaddafi's revolution. it's where he holds his annual parades. it's where three days ago he still walked around to prove thaefs still in charge. and my hunch is that if indeed these demonstrations continue, particularly around green square but extend beyond tripoli as well and that the kind of fighting we've seen continues, that this may very well be the crucial 48 hours ahead of us that will decide whether or not this regime can stay in power or whether or not it will be overwhelmed by the political energy of all these libyans that have come out in the street and demonstrated against the regime. >> rose: what will the army do? >> there really is no libyan ar

dirk vandewalle is an associate professor of government at dartmouth college and author of, "a history of modern libya." and andrew mcgregor is a senior editor at the jamestown foundation's global terrorism analysis program. beginning with you, mr. vandewalle, as this thing plays out, there are the pro-qaddafi forces and, of course, there are the anti-qaddafi forces. how do they compare just in terms of potential military power going in right now? >> well, we should treat all the information that we're getting right now with a grain of salt. we simply don't know. what we know is that very likely at this point there are two or three groups remaining around qaddafi. first of all his personal revolutionary guard, which is about... estimated at about 3 soldiers. and there are also some units, brigades, from the army that are left loyal to qaddafi. we don't know much about them. some of these units are headed by the sons of qaddafi or by loyal friends. and then we also have a large number estimated at least 2,000, perhaps as much as 3,000 of mercenarys that have been trained by qaddafi, com