Quotes of the Day
Updated: 5 a.m. E.T., March 2, 2011
The sounds of semiautomatic-rifle fire, antiaircraft fire and the occasional odd explosion break up the relative evening quiet in Libya's rebel-held east. It's just youth celebrating, the residents of Benghazi say, celebrating eastern Libya's liberation with their new assault rifles looted from military and security installations in the chaos of February's uprising. But when a convoy of pickup trucks full of young men and mounted with antiaircraft guns moved through the city on Tuesday night, it became increasingly clear that the gunshots are more than just celebratory.
Over the past few days, groups of men have poured into Benghazi's military camps and bases to sign up for the long fight to take down Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and take Libya's eastern revolution to the country's west. At camps scattered across the city on March 1, men ranging from teenagers to retirement age — including at least one man with a crutch — gathered beneath a clear blue sky. They signed their names and blood types to clipboards, learned how to march and practiced firing Kalashnikovs and antiaircraft guns into the sky. "We are preparing ourselves to attack them," says Hakim Abdullah Hassan, an ex-soldier and civil engineer who is training at one of the camps. He's talking about Gaddafi and his stronghold in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. "When our leader in Benghazi tells us to move, we will move."
Indeed, "free" east Libya is readying its forces. The opposition says it has formed a military committee to oversee the fight against Gaddafi. And some say they have already recruited more than 5,000 volunteers for military training. Nevertheless, on Wednesday morning there were reports that pro-Gaddafi forces had retaken the town of Bregga, where a major oil field is located, and residents of Ajdabiya, some 100 miles (160 km) south of Benghazi, said that a plane had targeted an arms dump. Residents in Ajdabiya reported that trucks of armed militiamen were moving toward Ajdabiya from Bregga. (Rebel forces — speaking from Benghazi — have since said that they've retaken Bregga, though that remains unconfirmed.)
In light of Wednesday's developments, even amid the enthusiasm for confrontation that seems to be rippling through the east and patches in the west, it remains unclear who will ultimately lead the push if a march on Tripoli is to occur. A number of high-ranking commanders have spoken authoritatively about the forces, but no one man has been named the commander. "We have a military council at the court, and this council decides the next step," explains Colonel Abdel Salaam al-Mahdawi, who has been busy training volunteers. Asked who heads the council, he says, "Abdel Fatah Younis" — Gaddafi's former Interior Minister, who the rebels say has defected but who has yet to take a public stand with the revolutionary forces.
"No, that's not right," his aide cuts in.
The colonel shrugs. "Well, then I don't know who."
In addition, it appears unresolved what, exactly, everyone is training for. Although most of the volunteers say they are ready to march on Tripoli (and some commanders claim that some 2,000 have already departed), others say their role is purely defensive for the time being. "We are a peaceful people. We just want to defend [the city] for now. Then the other things will come," says al-Mahdawi, as he supervises dozens of volunteers at a Benghazi maintenance base, cleaning and greasing heavy machine guns and belts of ammunition. "Mr. Gaddafi said he will use all the forces he has, so we have to be prepared. He's crazy."
In the wake of several reports in recent days of air strikes or attempted air strikes on weapons depots, pipelines and oil fields around Benghazi and Ajdabiya, local commanders say they are on high alert and have spread their antiaircraft guns out, "because these guns keep the planes flying high," al-Mahdawi says.
On Monday afternoon, airmen and volunteers at the Benina air base attached to Benghazi's airport say they saw two warplanes pass overhead. There are three military camps in the area and witnesses there believe the planes had been sent to bomb their weapons depots. Firing artillery at the planes forced them to divert, the men at the base say, but they're worried they might return. On Monday night, they shot at another plane they feared had gone to bomb them as well; they later said it turned out to be a French aid plane that was forced to turn around.
And on Tuesday, dozens of volunteers readied themselves for the possibility of more air assaults, as men took turns at a row of five antiaircraft guns on the Benina base, shooting them skyward. "These are volunteers to protect the airport because there is no protection," says one soldier, Youssef Saad, who also says he's the media coordinator. The men have started training in light-weapons use for self-defense purposes as well, he adds. The smell of gasoline, used to clean the machines, fills the air. And a man in civilian clothes sprays bullets from an FN 76 into the air. Spirits are high.
Of course, it's unclear just how well armed the rebels are. Commanders there say they would like to have more weapons, but they also claim they're well enough stocked to be targeted.
Within the walls of a grassy compound, where sheep have been left to graze, outside al-Rajmah, near Benghazi's airport, a series of storage bunkers is built into the hillsides. Most of the storerooms were emptied as rebels overran the base and Gaddafi's forces defected, retreated or were killed in the uprising nearly two weeks ago. But, according to locals, there is still enough of an arms cache to warrant armed guards at night — and the constant fear of an air strike. By day, just a handful of young men from the surrounding farmland guard the place; one carries a spear he has fashioned by lashing a blade to a wooden pole with a string of twine. The weapons that remain are far too little to bring down a regime: a cache of explosives in one bunker and stacks of boxes marked "display shells" in another.
But a soldier from the former regime visiting the base with a few journalists says quietly that his unit moved stockpiles of ammunition there during the first days of the revolution. He believes there are heavy weapons buried underground. And a volunteer guard says a nearby camp contains enough missiles and land mines to create a powerful explosion if it gets hit.
Reports of clashes between rebels and government forces in the western towns of Zawiya and Misurata, as well as in the Libyan capital, have continued to reach the eastern rebels by way of relatives, telephone and TV news. But days into a stalemate that keeps the eastern rebels firmly stuck in the mountains and deserts east of Ajdabiya — with no sign of Tripoli slipping from Gaddafi's grip — many high-ranking military officers in the east are also still hoping that the capital will liberate itself. "Tripoli has its own revolutionary people who will finish the job," al-Mahdawi says.
On Tuesday night, the New York Times reported that the opposition's revolutionary council was invoking the U.N. to conduct air strikes on the regime's military installations, an indication of growing frustration over Gaddafi's refusal to give up power. Libyan opposition figures had, until then, consistently asked for no foreign military interference in their revolution.
Meanwhile, at a school near Benghazi's city center, some 200 men are training for the fight. In two or three days they could be ready to march on Tripoli, says Awad Ali, a senior operator at a gas plant and a volunteer for the Feb. 17 Revolution Army. "But I hope by Friday he will collapse, he will be finished," he adds.
Behind him, a ragtag bunch of men — ranging from teens in tight denim and faux-fur-rimmed hoodies (one even listening to a Walkman) to older men with long beards and sagging bellies — march and chant to instructions shouted by a uniformed man with a microphone. "God is great! Libya is free!" the officer yells again and again, and the men repeat, shouting the words, their hands held high in V-for-victory salutes.
Men in the lot behind the colonel are painting "Libyan youth army" on white pickup trucks in dripping red letters. The tricolor pre-Gaddafi flag that has become the flag of the revolution flies overhead. And at the school next door, officers instruct the new recruits to return the next morning with any military uniforms they can find. As the sun sets, more men are still arriving to sign their names to the clipboard.
No one has an exact plan for the march on Tripoli — when it's happening, who's leading it or whether they're well enough trained for it. But, the new recruits shout, they're ready to die for their country, for the martyrs. In the excitement, someone fires a gun into a nearby wall, sending a cloud of plaster crumbling to the floor. "No, no, don't be afraid," says volunteer Awad Ali. "It's normal. Just practice."
- Abigail Hauslohner / Benghazi
- 'Free Libya' has no shortage of enthusiastic volunteers for its fledgling military. But no one seems to be in command. And just what's in the arsenal?