A quarter of a century after that attack, he clings stubbornly to power. Despite the destruction of his military at the hands of British, French, and American air power, he told the crowd brought to the compound to act as his human shield that he would never surrender. “We are ready for the fight, whether it will be a short or a long one,” he declared.

Such swaggering defiance is the trademark of the cornered tyrant. Yet it also underscores an uncomfortable truth facing an international community desperate to see the end of Colonel Gaddafi’s rule: tyrants are often hard to remove.

With his amazon female bodyguard, elaborate outfits and incoherent diatribes, it is easy to dismiss Col Gaddafi as just another dictator who has let power go to his head. But mere megalomania does not explain his survival since he took power by force in 1969. Those who have met him speak of the razor-sharp focus, manipulative style and instinctive understanding of how to wield power that has carried him through attempted coups and assassinations.

While western military action might have consolidated Col Gaddafi’s remaining political support base, however, it has emboldened others too – not just in the rebel-held east but also in government strongholds. In Tripoli, dissatisfaction with the regime appeared to resurface this week as the effects of air strikes and sanctions were felt. Five weeks after the protests started residents could once again be heard murmuring their opposition to Col Gaddafi, telling foreign journalists that they would attempt to stage fresh protests.

Even in the tribal heartland that has traditionally supplied army officers and civil servants for the regime, the people are wavering. On a government-led tour of Bani Walid, a town about 150km southeast of Tripoli, journalists were this week presented with the usual spectacle of flag-waving, pro-regime crowds. But there, too, some heard whispers of discontent.

Bani Walid is the stronghold of the Warfalla tribe, perhaps Libya’s most powerful and the one that played the role of kingmaker in the 1969 revolt. It appears to remain a backbone of the regime; journalists went to see the home of a military captain killed in a French air strike outside the rebels’ eastern bastion of Benghazi last weekend. But the Warfalla are not necessarily united. One sheikh declared last month that the tribe had defected: “We tell the brother Gaddafi – well, he is no longer a brother,” Akram al-Warfalli told Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab television channel.

Col Gaddafi, it seems, is fighting a losing battle. The best outcome he can hope for is to rule a stump of western Libya with a regime hobbled by sanctions and facing collapse. Alternatively, if intervention triggers turmoil within the regime, it could prove terminal.

“Whether there are major defections, further major defections within his own ruling circle, whether there are divisions within his family, there are a variety of possibilities, it seems to me,” said Robert Gates, US defence secretary, this week.

The colonel’s days could also be numbered if Tripoli, his last major base of support, musters the courage to rise up in mass protests. Three weeks ago, the capital was rocked by riots that were put down with brutal efficiency. Dozens are thought to have been killed as police fired on crowds.

Now, with security services observing, detaining and “disappearing” dissidents, living conditions are becoming more desperate. As international sanctions hit the economy, freezing access to assets, they are starting to provoke shortages of bread, foreign currency and fuel. Petrol queues 500m long were forming in Tripoli yesterday, even as state television urged viewers not to panic.

Meanwhile in Benghazi, attacked by regime forces last Sunday, the pessimistic mood palpable only a few days earlier has given way to renewed hope.

Following Sunday’s air attacks on regime forces outside the city, the rebels jumped on to pick-up trucks and sped along the desert highway towards nearby Ajdabiya, the strategic town where pro-Gaddafi forces with tanks and artillery were still positioned at the main gates.

“I’m going to the front line ... and will be there until the last drop of my blood,” says Bakr Fayad, a rocket launcher and three grenades slung over his back as he saunters through the crowd, wearing the rebel fashion of sunglasses and black bandana.

Even among the Tripoli elite that has prospered under Col Gaddafi, many would prefer not to go down with their leader. It is perhaps the colonel’s fear that Tripoli will fall – whether to a coup or an uprising – that has kept him hunkered down in the city. “I am staying here, my home is here, I am staying in my tent,” he told supporters on Tuesday.

According to US officials, some close to the Libyan leader are already putting out feelers to outsiders and asking what they should do – though this might be more wishful thinking than fact.

Those who recently abandoned Col Gaddafi say it is not impossible for someone to move against him. They acknowledge, however, that the regime is so bound up with his family and certain tribes that the chances of removing him from inside should not be exaggerated.

“You still need to do a lot of political work to attract people who are under pressure and make them take decisions against Gaddafi,” says one defector. “And you have to remember that people who might want to defect can’t leave the country now, they would be stopped at the border.”

Confident that he retains a support base, Col Gaddafi is not giving up the fight, whatever the cost. He appears to be thriving in his latest confrontation with the west. He has begun arming the tribal population, a vote of confidence in their loyalty and a preparation for what the government says will be a march on Benghazi.

In Beni Walid, one of the dead captain’s brothers brandishes a new Kalashnikov assault rifle at journalists. “They gave each family a weapon,” he says. “Muammer Gaddafi is arming us to defend the country against terrorists.”

Forced out of Benghazi, the special brigades Col Gaddafi has built as a counterweight to a weak, ill-equipped army that has fragmented during the rebellion have kept up their shelling of the western city of Misurata, besieged for days by the government and deprived of water and electricity. After air strikes destroyed tanks on the outskirts on Thursday, others rolled back in. Regime snipers, meanwhile, continued to terrorise residents.

Nor have loyalist forces fled Ajdabiya. A day after rebel fighters rushed back there, the volunteers could still be seen on the outskirts milling around a checkpoint and hoping for support from Benghazi or further western air strikes.

When the uprising erupted in mid-February, the advance of the rebels, many of them civilians with battle experience, had momentum and made swift territorial advances. Now their disorganisation and weakness are becoming increasingly apparent, and many expect the conflict to drag on.

While the western air campaign and the no-fly zone that is being enforced have provided significant protection, without weapons, training and organisation, the rebels are outgunned by regime forces and could find themselves stuck in their eastern stronghold.

Outside Ajdabiya one day this week, when artillery was fired at the rebels, sending clouds of smoke into the air, there were scenes of panic as fighters piled on to their trucks and beat a hasty retreat back to safety.

“We have no plan, we are just going like this,” said Masoud Bwisir, a volunteer fighter who used to run a car wash and a café before the uprising. “It’s not a good thing, but we have no choice. We are fighting to win or die.”

In Tripoli, as in Benghazi, the dramatic ups and downs of recent weeks are slowly giving way to a realisation that the battle for control of Libya could be long and protracted.

Some residents admit that, while at least some in Tripoli might be waiting for Benghazi to liberate them, in reality Benghazi is waiting for the capital to join the uprising and rid Libya of Col Gaddafi.

“The rebels will never reach Tripoli because he [Gaddafi] is well armed and the rebels are still not organised,” says Saleh Najem, a Benghazi resident. “We are really disappointed in Tripoli, people there are scared.”

But amid fears in east and west of a stalemate that in effect partitions the country between a rebel-held east and a Gaddafi-controlled west, politicians in Benghazi are keeping up the bold talk.

“We are preparing ourselves for the big battle – how to liberate Tripoli,” says Col Ahmed Omar Bani, the opposition’s military spokesman. “Our hearts are there, but our bodies are here.”