Rebels Arm Tripoli Guerrillas and Cut Resources to Capital
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: June 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/africa/25libya.html?_r=1
ROGEBAN, Libya — Having consolidated control over almost all of Libya’s western mountains, rebel leaders here say they are now pursuing a two-pronged strategy to bring down the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi: starving it of resources while covertly arming a growing guerrilla force within Tripoli itself.
Though the rebels consolidated their hold on most of the Nafusa mountains only about two weeks ago, officials from the opposition stronghold of Benghazi and the operatives from the underground network in Tripoli were all here on Friday night discussing strategies already under way. The mountain rebels showed a reporter an oil pipeline they had recently cut off to Colonel Qaddafi’s last working refinery, in Zawiya.
Now rebels have their sights on Gharyan, a city of about 85,000 that is the last Nafusa mountain town under Colonel Qaddafi’s control. It is widely known as a hotbed of opposition to Colonel Qaddafi and rose up swiftly at the start of the uprising, and if the rebels can take it within the next three weeks, as they hope to do, they will block a crucial supply route from Algeria and the south.
Meanwhile, the rebels say, they have been appealing with increasing success to the Tunisian government to choke off the supply of fuel coming through the Qaddafi-controlled coastal border crossing at Ras Jedir. “It is very painful for the people of Tripoli but unfortunately we need to do that,” said Anwar Fekini, a French-Libyan lawyer and rebel organizer who recently visited Tunis to help press the case, following a visit for the same purpose by the leader of the rebel’s National Transitional Council, Mustafa el-Jalil.
In an interview, a leader of the rebel underground visiting here in the mountains said that the rebels had been smuggling in a growing number of guns as well as C4 plastic explosives, while borrowing a tactic from their mountain allies by making their own crude (and often unsafe) handguns.
In addition to nightly attacks on Qaddafi checkpoints around the capital, he said, the rebels have been plotting more ambitious actions, including an aborted plan to assault the Rixos Hotel in the hope of capturing Colonel Qaddafi’s influential son, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, who keeps a suite there. That plan was called off in part because of the risk it posed to foreign journalists, who are housed in the hotel.
Already, the rebels say, they are in contact with apolitical or disaffected officials in the Tripoli police force, the Interior Ministry and other government departments to make plans to secure the city in the days after a potential ouster of Colonel Qaddafi. “In every ministry of the government we have people who will be going to their offices in the days after Qaddafi falls, so the government will not collapse,” Mr. Fekini said.
Many of the intellectuals and professionals involved in leading the revolt, he said, were worried about the possibility of mobs seeking revenge on anyone implicated in the Qaddafi government — a prospect that he acknowledged may be helping to hold the Libyan leader’s loyalists together. “We don’t want revenge, but it is the problem of popular justice,” he said.
It is unclear what resources Colonel Qaddafi still commands. He is believed to have started the conflict with billions of dollars in foreign currency stashed away. But the rebels say they are counting on his inability to replenish his coffers because of international sanctions and asset freezes, and in interviews last week Tripoli residents said the strains on his resources were already beginning to show.
Gas lines stretch for miles and drivers wait as long as two weeks to fill their tanks. (Bicycles, previously rare in hot Tripoli summers, are now everywhere). Food prices have soared, with the prices of staples like a can of sardines increasing as much as tenfold, some residents said. To preserve cash, residents said, his government has recently restricted the amount any individual can withdraw from the bank — including cashing a paycheck — to the equivalent of about $800 a month.
At the moment, several Tripoli residents said, the shortages, like the fear of revenge, may also be strengthening Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on the city, in this case by giving him scarce commodities to dole out to loyalists. One Tripoli religious leader said last week that conversations with his congregation have convinced him that virtually every car with enough gas to drive on the streets belongs to a Qaddafi informant or member of the secret police. |
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