The War Between The Libyas

In the east, rebels dream of life without Muammar Gaddafi. In the west, people revere him as a man who has given them dignity

  • Yuri Kozyrev/NOOR for TIME

    The rebels, in Ras Lanuf on March 9, moved from easy victories to fiery clashes with the regime

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    If Gaddafi falls, Mahmud and his fellow loyalists have much to lose: a military salary and pension, free education and health care and heavily subsidized housing, gas, electricity and food, all thanks to the billions of dollars that Libya has on hand from its oil sales. Furthermore, Mahmud insists, "we have had freedom for 41 years. We can do what we want. We sleep with our houses unlocked. There is security."

    In Mahmud's eyes, that security is now under threat, not so much from a popular revolt but from al-Qaeda fighters who he believes have infiltrated Libya in order to tear the country apart. He parrots the message that government officials have drummed into Libyans over the past few weeks. Gaddafi repeats the allegations in speech after speech. In a country where news is tightly censored, Gaddafi's message has huge sway — at least for those who would like to believe it. Mahmud is adamant: "About 90% of those who are fighting are not Libyan. They are al-Qaeda." His charge mirrors the accusation of the opposition, that Gaddafi's military is primed with foreign mercenaries.

    To the Last Bullet
    Both sides believe victory will come when Libyans take up arms to take back their country. "Our plan is simple," says Mahmud's commander, General Abdulrahman Fadah Abdulrahman. "Every Libyan has a gun — old people, women, every person. And those who don't have guns, we will give them guns." A short man in his 40s, with a green felt hat and sunglasses, he is supremely confident of the outcome. Mahmud is too. "I have wanted to be a soldier all my life," he says.

    Back in the rebel east, al-Tahawy also has no doubt about the willingness of his compatriots to fight to the last bullet. He points out that Libyan men have to go through compulsory military service, so the rebels are not complete neophytes. "The big guns we don't know how to use," he admits, "but the civilians are all using the Kalashnikovs and a lot of small guns." He says he tries to counsel the young hotheads against firing celebratory salvos at the slightest excuse. "I told them, 'Stop, stop. Save the ammunition.' But you know, sometimes we have to keep the spirit up." Still, says a doctor in rebel-held Brega, "there are a large number of casualties from friendly fire." At least one person in Ajdabiyah died after his rocket-propelled grenade misfired.

    The desert, however, is an arena where people power plays at a disadvantage. West of the revolutionary strongholds, as the rebels march toward Tripoli, they leave behind the hills, forests and a daisy chain of relatively dense urban centers that have been hotbeds of dissent for years, entering land that flattens out, the white sand of the Mediterranean shoreline giving way quickly to juniper and sage scrub and a seemingly endless expanse of dirt and discarded plastic bags. Towns along the way are small, easy for the military to garrison, spread far apart, located at highway intersections or clustered around oil facilities. And if eastern Libya is guerrilla country, central Libya is tank terrain. Some of the great battles of World War II were fought by Axis and Allied tank commanders over the course of several years in a back-and-forth war along the North African coast. Of course, nothing on the scale of those battles is going to occur in the Libyan civil war. But only the forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime have anything resembling a modern army. And speeding down a straight desert highway with no air support, armor or cover is almost suicide.

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