#libyan protests

Libyan rebel nabs Gaddafi's hat

This rebel made out like a bandit, scoring Muammar Gaddafi's hat during a raid of the likely-soon-to-be-deposed leader's compound. A pretty good memento, if you ask us. The interview gets bittersweet midway through, when the rebel starts recounting the deaths of his friends. The whole thing is worth watching, if only to hear a first-hand account of the rebel experience.  source

Seems things aren't getting much better in Libya. I've been watching streaming news all morning. There are Humanitarian camps in Tunisia, but the struggle for refugees to get there isn't an easy one. They're being robbed at gunpoint by the Libyan army, and some have died from stress and strain. Rebels have kidnapped British Secret Service members who were attempting to reach opposition leaders. Unlike before, it's now definitely being called a civil war, and experts have said this could go on for months before any kind of resolution can arise.

In Egypt, where things are supposed to be getting better, rebels are still causing problems, storming buildings and whatnot.

I haven't really heard much about Tunisia, aside from the aide camps along the Libyan border. And, you know, that along with Egypt, they're giving Libyan rebels hallucinogenic drugs? Or, so Gadhafi claims.

Because of all this, the price of oil is through the roof. Those increases have seen drastic increase in the price of groceries, especially grains and sugars. Experts are trying to reassure us that we're not going to experience a food shortage. It seems likely that they're right, but what about the people who now won't be able to afford their groceries as easily or at all, because of these increased prices?

And as much as they're blaming the increased prices on oil, are we sure any of these prices are going to go back down once things are "fixed"?

Our world is a mess.

By Leila Fadel and Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, March 5, 2011 BENGHAZI, LIBYA--Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi escalated their fiercest counterattack yet against the opposition on Saturday, laying violent siege to a rebel enclave by shelling residential neighborhoods and rolling into the city with tanks.

A government campaign unleashed on Friday was continuing unabated, with a ruthless assault on the strategic western port city of Zawiyah. Rebels, who were still managing to hold the city, described a "massacre" with dozens dead and hundreds wounded.

The lethal force of the government offensive raised the stakes for Washington and its Western allies. They have threatened military intervention if the Gaddafi government crosses red lines including the systematic endangerment of defenseless civilians or if the battle for Libya evolves into a long-term, bloody stalemate.

Yet if anything, the fresh wave of attacks underscored Gaddafi's ability to press defiantly ahead with a brutal campaign to reclaim land lost to the rebels and squelch dissent within bastions of government control. The government appeared to be trying to secure a buffer zone around Tripoli and target areas vital to the country's oil industry, taking aim at cities and ports that have given the rebels a foothold close to the capital.

The White House expressed renewed alarm, saying that President Obama is "appalled by the use of force against unarmed, peaceful civilians." Obama is being briefed on Libya three times a day, and "we're not taking any options off the table," said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.

With thousands of refugees stuck on the Tunisian border with Libya, two U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes flew in humanitarian supplies for them Friday and planned to return Saturday to pick up Egyptian refugees and fly them home.

The fiercest attack fell on the opposition-held city of Zawiyah, home to one of Libya's largest oil refineries and situated 27 miles west of Tripoli. Official Libyan media said the government had retaken the city, though the rebels there denied it. As of early Saturday, the city remained under siege.

Gaddafi loyalists armed with tanks and heavy machine guns and reportedly led by his son Khamis Gaddafi launched the offensive around midday Friday, rebels said. Forces loyal to Gaddafi entered the city from several directions, using tanks, sport-utility vehicles and trucks armed with heavy machine guns, witnesses said. They also laid siege to the city with mortar fire.

On Saturday, the Gaddafi loyalists were still pressing their counterattack on the city. At 7 a.m. local time, tanks rolled into the city accompanied by heavy shelling and machine-gun assaults, with witnesses reporting great plumes of black smoke bellowing from various neighborhoods. Yet the rebels succeeded, witnesses said, in driving Gaddafi's forces out of the town center after blowing up two tanks with hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. Hundreds of opposition forces were still hunkered down with machine guns, defending the town square as the shelling of the city continued.

Although details were impossible to verify, witnesses in Zawiyah said dozens were dead and hundreds were wounded, with a senior rebel leader reported to be among those killed. Some reports put the death toll at well over 100. Rough video clips uploaded to the Internet showed people falling to the ground in the city's main square amid the sound of gunfire.

In Tripoli, meanwhile, Gaddafi again moved swiftly against his opponents, who witnesses described as largely unarmed protesters attempting to demonstrate in various parts of the clamped-down city.

Early Friday, Gaddafi loyalists had erected checkpoints in the restive suburbs, searching vehicles ahead of what was expected to be the first large anti-government demonstration there in days. As hundreds of protesters took to the streets after Friday prayers, government forces moved in with tear gas and opened fire with live ammunition, according to witnesses and reports.

On a day when Gaddafi's forces appeared to be on the offensive, the rebels claimed at least one significant victory.

In eastern Libya, rebels attacked a pro-Gaddafi military base on the outskirts of Ras Lanuf, about 410 miles east of Tripoli, in an attempt to capture the oil terminal on the Mediterranean. Gaddafi's forces fought back with fighter jets and ground troops, killing at least four rebels, according to Mohammed Sultan, a rebel fighter.

But just after dark Friday, the band of rebels said they had taken Ras Lanuf, with some loyalist forces hoisting a white flag of surrender. The rebels, armed with surface-to-air missiles, antiaircraft weaponry and other aged weapons, were pushing forward into Bin Jawad despite being severely outgunned.

By Kareem Fahim and Robert F. Worth, NY Times, March 3, 2011 BREGA, Libya--From the feeble cover of sand dunes, under assault from a warplane overhead and heavy artillery from a hill, rebels in this strategic oil city repelled an attack by hundreds of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's fighters on Wednesday, but air strikes were reported to have resumed on Thursday.

The daylong battle was the first major incursion by the colonel's forces in the rebel-held east of the country since the Libyan uprising began. Arab diplomats, meanwhile, weighed reports of a peace plan proposed by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, an ally of Colonel Qaddafi.

Reuters quoted witnesses as saying a warplane renewed attacks on Thursday on this eastern oil terminal town, a day after loyalist troops launched a ground and air attack on the town that was repulsed by rebels.

But details of the target and impact of the air strike remained sketchy, with some reports saying it had been aimed at an airfield close to oil installations.

The battle for Brega began at daybreak on Wednesday, when government fighters stormed the airport and the area around the city's oil refinery.

By the early afternoon, hundreds of men from this city, wielding Kalashnikov rifles and knives--joined by confederates from neighboring cities with heavier artillery--fought Colonel Qaddafi's men, who were backed by air power and mortars.

As night fell, the government fighters were on the run and the rebels were celebrating in Brega and all along the road north to Benghazi, the seat of rebel power, where fireworks lighted up the sky.

The attack seemed to spearhead a broader effort by the government of Colonel Qaddafi to reassert control over strategic oil assets in the eastern part of the country, which have been seized by rebel forces. And what appeared to be a victory by the rebels continued a string of recent successes in beating back those attacks, as they did in the western city of Zawiyah earlier this week. But the rebels have not been able to shake the colonel's hold on power.

That quandary was apparent as the fighters celebrated their victory in a Brega square: the warplane reappeared and attacked the gathering.

"Yes, they won," said Iman Bugaighis, a spokeswoman for the rebel governing authority, which asked Western nations to conduct airstrikes against Colonel Qaddafi's strongholds on Wednesday. "We don't know how long it will last. He's getting stronger."

Eastern Libya, where opposition fighters forced out Colonel Qaddafi's loyalists 10 days ago, remains chaotic. Rumors come and go, with fears of fresh airstrikes and advances by pro-government forces, followed by bold but so far empty talk of a final assault on Colonel Qaddafi's Tripoli stronghold. The military here is leaderless, the towns governed by ad hoc councils.

In Cairo on Thursday, the Arab League Secretary General, Amr Moussa, was quoted in news reports as saying a peace proposal by President Chavez was "under consideration" but he gave no details of it.

By Kareem Fahim and David D. Kirkpatrick, NY Times, March 2, 2011 BENGHAZI, Libya--Amid reports on Wednesday that forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi have carried out bombing raids and are poised for counterattacks in areas held by his opponents, rebel leaders here are debating whether to ask for Western airstrikes under the United Nations banner, according to four people with knowledge of the deliberations.

They spoke shortly before news reports emerged that loyalist forces in trucks had overrun the lightly-defended rebel-held town of Brega, an oil-exporting terminal on the Libyan coast around 500 miles east of Colonel Qaddafi's stronghold in the capital, Tripoli. But, in the confusion of the fighting, there were reports, too, that rebels were trying to retake the town.

The reports also spoke of an aerial attack on the town of Ajdabiyah, around 50 miles from Brega, where rebels have taken control of a large ammunition dump. The town lies on the western approaches to Benghazi, the rebel bastion, where dozens of semi-trained young volunteers stormed out of a military base on Wednesday, clambered onto a truck and said they were heading--unarmed--to the frontline.

Libyan state television showed Colonel Qaddafi at an indoors event, waving clenched fist salutes towards supporters doing the same as an aide chanted slogans.

The developments on the ground came against a backdrop of debate in Western capitals about how to maintain pressure on Colonel Qaddafi after the imposition of international sanctions. Two American warships were reported to be sailing through the Suez Canal on their way to the Mediterranean on Wednesday while, on Libya's western frontier with Tunisia, an exodus of migrant workers from Libya has reached "crisis point," with tens of thousands of migrants, many of them Egyptians, unable to travel home.

The notion of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya has failed to draw support from either the United States or Russia and Libyan rebels say they are opposed to foreign intervention in a home-grown uprising against more than four decades of iron-handed rule by Colonel Qaddafi and, increasingly, his sons.

But, by invoking the United Nations, a council of opposition leaders here made up of lawyers, academics, judges and other prominent figures is seeking to draw a distinction between airstrikes and foreign intervention.

"He destroyed the army; we have two or three planes," said a spokesman for the council, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga. He refused to say if there would be any imminent announcement about such strikes, but he wanted to make it clear: "If it is with the United Nations, it is not a foreign intervention."

That distinction is lost on many people, and any call for foreign military help carries great risks.

The antigovernment protesters in Libya, like those in Tunisia and Egypt, have drawn broad popular support--and great pride--from their status as homegrown movements that have defied autocrats without outside help.

Any intervention, even one with the imprimatur of the United Nations, could play into the hands of Colonel Qaddafi, who has called the uprising a foreign plot by Western powers that seek to occupy Libya.

There was no indication that the United Nations Security Council's members would approve such a request, or that most Libyans who are seeking to topple Colonel Qaddafi would welcome it. Among the Security Council's members, Russia has dismissed talk of a no-fly zone to curb strikes by the Libyan Air Force still under Colonel Qaddafi's control, and China usually votes against foreign intervention.

By Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor, March 1, 2011 Benghazi, Libya--Muammar Qaddafi is ringed by financial sanctions. The United States and European powers say they are mulling further steps, including extending a no-fly zone over the country to protect the uprising against his rule. The country is split, with large swathes of territory out of his hands and opposition forces closing in on the capital.

Yet Mr. Qaddafi, still clinging to power in the capital, has now faced down more external and internal pressure than Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali combined. His country's situation is more chaotic, and as a percentage of the population, he has killed more of his own people in an effort to put down the democracy uprising.

So how is he hanging on? Two main reasons: Libya's divided armed forces and Qaddafi's apparent tolerance to see his country torn apart by civil war.

Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, where the militaries have a tradition of loyalty to the state and to the armed forces as an institution, the regular Libyan military has been kept deliberately weak and divided by Qaddafi--who seized power as a 28-year-old Army captain with a few hundred confederates in 1969.

The best-trained and equipped forces in the country are paramilitaries commanded by his friends and family members, who answer directly to him. There is quite simply no general with the power to tap Qaddafi on the shoulder, tell him "time's up," and have the whole military stand behind him.

"We simply don't have the forces to go to Tripoli and confront him," says a former officer in his Air Force, who's helping to organize the defenses around liberated Benghazi, Libya's second largest city. "There's been lots of talk of sending people against him but we don't yet have the weapons, the training, to really get through."

While there are some well-trained troops who have technically rebelled, it's unclear if they'd be willing to take offensive action against Qaddafi.

For instance, Interior Minister Gen. Abdel Fatah Younis was dispatched to Benghazi with a unit of special forces to put down the armed protesters who eventually overwhelmed the Benghazi barracks. He immediately defected from the regime and said he refused to shot protesters.

But many of the youth fighters in Benghazi who sparked the uprising say he also provided safe passage out of town to regime loyalists, who have reinforced Qaddafi's supporters in Tripoli and his hometown of Sirte.

As much as Mr. Ben Ali or Mr. Mubarak resisted their departures, they seemed to take seriously concerns about plunging their countries into a civil war.

But almost since Day 1, Qaddafi has not only warned of civil war, but also seemed to invite it. He has consistently described democracy protesters as drug addicts, terrorists, and tools of foreign powers in moves that seemed practically calculated to turn his own people further against him.

Qaddafi and his sons have had an "up is down" take on events in Libya in their public statements, leading some to question his grip on reality.

In interviews with the BBC, ABC, and the Sunday Times yesterday, Qaddafi asserted there are "no demonstration at all in the streets" and that "all my people are with me, they love me."

Challenged on the uprising that wrested control of Benghazi from him, he dismissed most of the demonstrators as "Al Qaeda" though he allowed that some youths on "hallucinogenic drugs" may have also joined the alleged Al Qaeda members.

He's also accused the US and the foreign reporters who entered the country illegally from the eastern border with Egypt of working with Al Qaeda.

"I guess we're all Al Qaeda now," laughs Omar al-Jetlawi, who works at the main radio station in Benghazi. "But really, that man is mad."

Of course, many Libyans in and around Tripoli have benefited from Qaddafi's rule, and probably fear what's in store for them if he falls.

Yesterday in Tripoli, Qaddafi's son Saif Islam, who has a PhD from the London School of Economics and has sought to position himself as a reforming successor to his father, led a rally with hundreds of supporters, appearing to urge them to crush the rebellion.

"You'll get all the support you need … facilities and weapons," Saif told a cheering crowd, who chanted "only God, Muammar, and Libya" in response. "You will be victorious," he told them.

By Christopher Bodeen, AP, Mar 2, 2011 BEIJING (AP)--Tens of thousands of Chinese workers are scrambling to escape the chaos in Libya, highlighting the risks taken by Chinese businesses piling into unstable African countries in search of oil, gas and other resources.

Beijing is taking unprecedented steps to aid with the evacuation, sending charter flights and ferries along with military transport planes and dispatching a navy frigate to provide security for its nationals in Libya, where increasingly violent clashes are threatening to transform a 15-day popular rebellion into a civil war.

About 32,000 Chinese--most working on construction projects or providing oil field services--had been whisked out of Libya as of Wednesday, with another 3,000 waiting to be airlifted out of the desert in the country's deep south, according to China's Foreign Ministry.

The fighting between rebel forces and loyalists of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi isn't expected to have an impact on China's burgeoning economic links with Africa, but analysts say it serves as a reminder of the need for contingency plan when working in unstable or politically repressive countries where conditions can turn dramatically desperate.