Tuesday, August 23
Abdallah slides his finger across the map of Tripoli. “They’re still fighting here, in Abu Salim. And in Bab Al Aziziya, of course: that’s Qadhafi’s stronghold. And over there, around the airport. Oh, and I was just talking to a friend in Sidi Khalifa yesterday; she said there was heavy shooting in her neighborhood.”
It has been three days since rebels entered Tripoli but intense fighting persists in the capital, while outside of it Qadhafi soldiers continue to stalk Western Libya. At the Tunisian border, nearly every car is heading out of the war-torn country. Apart from a Red Cross truck and a few dozen journalists busy filming each other, only a few Libyans are heading the other way. One of these is Abdallah, who says that, after having been involved in the Egyptian revolution, he would not miss this one for the world: “It’s my country now. I want to be there when Tripoli falls.”
In Nalut, the first city on the road from Tunisia, the shelling ended more than a month ago but schools and businesses are still closed. The few open shops have half-empty shelves and petrol is in short supply — a liter now costs $2.50, whereas before the war it was cheaper than water. Like the capital, this city is still living the war and so are its people.
“There must be war,” affirms Khamis Birgig, a 35-year-old rebel who garnishes every other sentence with a “boom-boom!” and skillfully maneuvers the gearshift with what remains of his right arm. “Just a few more days and we’ll be rid of Qadhafi,” he says, as the car heads towards the capital.
Khamis clearly took some psychological hits when he lost his right arm, eye and part of his knee to a Qadhafi rocket early in the uprising, though he does not seem overly fazed about his physical disabilities: he can still shoot with his good arm and is confident that when the new government arrives his sacrifices will be rewarded. “They will respect human rights and take care of me. But first we have to catch Qadhafi, so that we can put him in front of the international court, where he has to tell the world what he has done.”
Khamis, like most of the rebels, speaks about freedom and democracy when asked why he rose up. But when pressed, out come the complaints about a lack of work, income and opportunities. “Under Qadhafi there was nothing,” he says. “Just poverty.”
With the sun setting over the Libyan desert, Khamis is asked how long the ride will be. “I have no idea,” he replies cheerfully to Executive. “It depends on whether or not we run into Qadhafi soldiers.” He looks to the side with his one eye, points to the Kalashnikov on the seat and smiles hopefully. “Boom-boom!”
Wednesday, August 24
The capital of a disintegrating state is a strange place to be. Since the rebels entered Tripoli a few days ago, the city has been alternating between sounds of celebration and the booms of Qadhafi soldiers’ last-ditch efforts to stave off their own impending demise. Car horns honk incessantly while bored rebels light up the night sky with tracer fire. The streets are strewn with the burnt-out wreckage of cars and dumpsters, improvised roadblocks set up by the new authorities, most of whom are younger than 20.
Some residents have a hard time getting used to the new status quo. In one incident in the neighborhood of Dahra, young fighters pounce on a taxi driver after he takes exception, with a swing, to their demands to open the trunk. As the struggling man is dragged away from his car, one rebel lands a punch squarely on his face before elderly residents intervene and the driver is allowed to leave. “Idiot. Should have opened the boot when I told him to,” the boxing rebel shrugs, before turning his attention to the next car.
Incidents like this one are rife within the city, but thus far the local councils secretly put in place to take over the day-to-day running of the city after Qadhafi’s departure have done well: looting has been kept to a minimum and, apart from the occasional resident happily jogging through Qadhafi’s former stronghold with a painting under his arm, very little plundering has been reported. No stores ransacked of flatscreen televisions, no looting of abandoned homes. But their control is slipping.
“No government, so no water,” says a smiling teenager to a foreign journalist scavenging the city for food and drink. A few days after the rebels all but took over the city, it has begun to break down. A lack of milk, vegetables and petrol may be manageable for the moment, but with drinking water increasingly scarce and tap water and electricity on the cusp of running out, one cannot help but wonder how long until the residents of Tripoli start pining for the good old days.
Thursday, August 25
“Watch out, sniper!” yells a rebel, before a deafening firefight explodes in the streets of Abu Salim. Through the black smoke tears a truck with thundering anti-aircraft guns on the back. From the besieged building, snipers open fire on the rebels. A wooden garden door is shredded on impact. Two rebels drop while their comrades in full sprint empty their Kalashnikovs at the flashes from the building down the road. The sharp smell of cordite and burning asbestos drifts over the streets. While the rest of the city has been enjoying relative calm, rebel fighters have been trying to clear this working-class neighborhood of the remaining Qadhafi loyalists for several days now. When a rumor that Qadhafi may be hiding in one of the buildings starts to buzz, Abu Salim turns into a full-fledged war zone.
After the dust settles, three bloodied corpses lie on the streets: two rebels, one loyalist. No Qadhafi. The deposed dictator’s location is still a mystery, and the search continues.
“When we finally get Qadhafi, the resistance will die out by itself,” says 25-year-old Abdallah Masoud, still shaking from narrowly escaping a sniper’s volley. “But as long as he’s free, the fighting will continue.”
In a few days, Abu Salim will be cleared of Qadhafi loyalists, while the fighting will go on in other neighborhoods. Some parts of Libya, notably the cities Sirte and Sabha, are still under Qadhafi control.
But a return of the dictator is now out of the question. It is “game over” for him, says Majid Fituri, a 47-year-old rebel leader from Misrata, while wandering around the rubble of Qadhafi’s former stronghold of Bab Al Aziziya.
He looks back at the ruins behind the famous statue of the clenched fist crushing an American fighter jet. Qadhafi left intact the concrete skeleton of the building, destroyed by American bombs in 1986, to serve as a reminder of the West’s wickedness.
“Look at that,” Fituri says. “That used to be a museum in the form of a ruined building: a propaganda tool for Qadhafi.” He turns around and smiles. “Now, it’s just another ruined building.”
