‘It’s game over, Gaddafi’: Tripoli’s citizens see violent birth of a new Libya

Most residents of the Libyan capital welcomed the rebels, but some had mixed feelings. And where was Gaddafi? For a brief few hours on Monday, Tripoli’s Green Square was a tranquil place. A rebel flag hung above the old Ottoman palace. A few curious locals emerged to take a look around. What they saw was a mess: the windows of the Saleem coffee shop had been blown in; a mangled truck lay next to a municipal pleasure park with palm trees and a pond. One Tripoli resident, Tariq Hussain, 32, said Gaddafi loyalists had fired at the square for four hours on Sunday. At midnight their bombardment stopped. After that people had flooded into the area – quickly renamed Martyrs’ Square – to celebrate the arrival of rebels from the Libyan capital’s western suburbs and the apparent end of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. Hussain admitted to ambivalence about the rebels’ victory. “I’m afraid of them, to be honest,” he said. Others, however, were jubilant. “Forty-two years too much. It’s game over, Gaddafi,” Abdul Mohammad said, as a group of teenagers stomped on a green Gaddafi baseball hat. “There’s no person here supporting Gaddafi,” Nasar al-Fahdi, a translator, explained. “It was just about fear. When someone says you have to support him, and he has a whole army behind him, what can you say?” But a waiter also admitted he had mixed feelings. Surveying the destruction, he said: “There’s not going to be much money around here.” Certainly, most Tripoli residents welcomed the arrival of the rebels, who swept in riding a noisy cavalcade of pick-ups. But some did not. Gaddafi’s loyalists were putting up resistance. By late afternoon what had begun in the morning with isolated pockets of fire had morphed into a full-scale battle, as Tripoli echoed with the rattle of anti-artillery guns and the wumpf of mortars. From high buildings on the seafront – offering a spectacular view of Tripoli’s port and languid corniche – the rebels drilled fire on the old city. There didn’t seem to be any answer. The roads – a few hours earlier home to a tentative light traffic – rapidly cleared. Gaddafi may have disappeared, his long, strange leadership slipping into the realm of history. But his fanatical followers fought on. In areas liberated by the rebels, the mood was euphoric. Locals stood on street corners, flashing V-signs as opposition militia from towns across Libya swept past. Women cheered and whooped from upper storeys; by the afternoon mosques were broadcasting polite requests not to fire in the air but to conserve ammunition instead. Nobody listened. From checkpoints hastily set up, fighters continuously let off a festive pop-pop. In the district of Gurji, householders were sitting on the pavement, smiling and still evidently stunned by the events of the previous 12 hours. “We are with Cameron and Sarkozy 100%,” Walid Margani, a 45-year-old school inspector, offered spontaneously, in comments that will no doubt delight Downing Street. “They helped us in having a new life. For 42 years we’ve had no rights.” Margani was wearing an Umbro England football shirt. The shirt had a Nationwide logo. He was wearing it, he said, to express his thanks to the Nato coalition and its jets, without which Gaddafi would still be in power. But where was Gaddafi? The rumour in Tripoli was that he was hiding somewhere near the Algerian border – or had already crossed it. In a defiant audio broadcast Gaddafi had denounced his enemies – who began their uprising against him on 17 February – as “rats”. “He’s the rat,” Margani said. “We have not seen him on the TV for more than four months. He’s been hiding like a rat underground.” What should happen to him now? “We don’t want to hear his name any more. We want him to be judged and to disappear,” Ahmed Zidan, 45, said. It seems unlikely that Libya’s toppled leader will get this magnanimous treatment, should the rebels catch up with him. Over at the Mahgrab luxury village – an elite compound for expatriate workers – excited opposition fighters were interrogating two terrified prisoners from Chad. The rebels accused the pair of being snipers for Gaddafi. The men were made to kneel, glazed with fear. The first said he was called Mohamad Sala, the second Zane Al-Badine Ali. They were slapped, questioned, as a dozen rebel militia gathered round, one firing a silver handgun into the air. Gaddafi may indeed have hired the men as snipers – much of his army is comprised of mercenaries from African countries. Or they may simply have been employed to tend the compound’s lush gardens. The rebels told us to leave. The prisoners’ fate was unclear. Earlier in the morning, pro-Gaddafi gunmen had taken position at the eastern end of Gagaresh Street, opening fire at any vehicles that came too close. By the afternoon the street was calmer. Most private houses, though, were shut up, their inhabitants too frightened or too uncertain to venture out. There were no shops open. Nor was there any petrol. In the afternoon, electricity that had worked intermittently during this crisis went out. One local, Mohamad Ali Bara, said he was out collecting spent bullets as souvenirs for his nephew in the US. Bara admitted he was a former Libyan ambassador to Kuwait and Switzerland, notching up 37 years in Gaddafi’s diplomatic corps. “I knew him personally. He has a very cruel heart. Up until 1975 he was very good. After that he was like Hitler.” What changed? “Many things. His tribal mentality. He got his family around him. He started appointing ignorant people to be ambassadors.” Bara said there was no mystery why he had managed to stay in power for so long. “Gaddafi is very clever. He could keep Libya under his grip with a lot of security. Salaries are very low. But security people got a lot of benefits.” Bara said he retired from the foreign service in 2007, and had always expected the regime to be swept away by violent revolution. He finished: “I hope now that everybody likes to have real democracy.” This may take some time. Outside Tripoli, the rebels have control over most of Libya, following a spectacular push over the last 10 days from the west, south and east. Only three ago they were bogged down in the city of Zawiya, 30 miles west of the capital, and the scene of a week-long battle; now they are masters of Tripoli’s looping flyovers and its Mediterranean seaside restaurants. They were cruising around downtown commercial districts on Monday; they have the stock market. But before they can establish a new post-Gaddafi state they need to reach some kind of accord with the Gaddafi loyalists who were still fighting on Monday evening. At 5pm the rattle of heavy guns could be heard across the city, reverberating across the port in stately intervals. The regime may be finished but not everybody had absorbed this message. But it is only a matter of time. Teenage spraypainters were hard at work , covering the city’s walls with graffiti proclaiming the victory of the “February 17″ revolution. Clutching a black spray can in his hand, Rade, 22, put it like this: “It’s simple. We’ve won.” Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa Luke Harding guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 22, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.