‘Keep your positions,” the bearded commander shouted as a group of young men brandishing Kalashnikovs, heavy machine guns and even a butcher’s knife piled into the backs of the quickly accelerating pick-up trucks.
“We have orders not to move, to maintain the defensive line! Stop firing your weapons! We don’t have enough ammunition to fire at nothing!” It was too late. Word had swept through the ardent, inexperienced rebel fighters — many of whom had not handled a weapon until a few days before — that Muammar Gaddafi’s forces were launching a fresh assault on the edge of Ras Lanuf.
They were not interested in orders; they had come to fight. They poured out of the battle-scarred town and towards the front, minutes away. Ambulances wove into the armed convoy, staffed with volunteer doctors heading for their first sight of battlefield injuries.
Libya’s revolution has stalled at the gates of Ras Lanuf, where thousands of young volunteers now provide the bulk of the rebel force that has swept along Libya’s eastern coast, capturing towns, forcing Gaddafi’s army to retreat and, for a few days, offering the illusion that they could march all the way to Tripoli.
As almost all of Ras Lanuf’s 10 000 civilian residents left, the town filled with hundreds of young volunteers. Some stayed; others arrived for the day, packed into saloon cars for what might be called a drive-in war. At dusk they flopped exhausted into the back and headed home to bed. Some would return the next day, some not.
Yasin el Shari was among a score of young fighters who had arrived from Tobruk a few days before, bringing weapons looted from a military post. Few had fired a gun and only one had military experience, so he became their commander. “We’re graduates. We don’t have any experience of fighting,” said El Shari. He was dressed in black with a bayonet fixed to his gun and a bandanna around his head.
On the frontline
The more experienced fighters, often defectors from Gaddafi’s army, sit on the frontline, but the bulk of the rebel force is rotated to back them up. For El Shari and his comrades it was a sobering experience. “Gaddafi has better weapons. We have old weapons from the 1980s,” he said. Gaddafi’s air force has bombed Ras Lanuf repeatedly, cutting off the water supply and destroying housing. On Monday the victims included a civilian, Mohammed Ashtal, killed with three of his children when an air strike hit their car.
The bombing had put the inexperienced fighters on edge and they constantly scanned the sky for planes. Young men swivelled anti-aircraft guns, letting go bursts of shells with a deadening thud, while Kalashnikov bullets popped furiously. After one such false alarm, the young fighters raced out of town towards the front, despite the pleas of their commanders to maintain defensive positions guarding an oil refinery.
It was worrying for Fathi Mohammed, who felt torn between admiration of young men willing to risk their lives in pursuit of freedom and despair at their indiscipline. The 46-year-old former captain in Gaddafi’s special forces has been trying to instil organisation. “They’re not under control,” he said. “Some just took guns from the military camp in Benghazi and came here without anyone knowing what they are doing.”
Rajab Hasan, another former soldier, chipped in: “They need a leader. We don’t have enough leaders.” Mohammed said the rebel army had done well, advancing and staving off attacks by Gaddafi’s forces. But he acknowledged that the rebels could face a problem if its enemy launched a sustained attack.
He would not concede that defeat might be a possibility, even though a rumour had swept through the rebels that Gaddafi was amassing tanks for a frontal assault. “It’s not impossible to get to Tripoli. If God is with us,” he said. Still, Mohammed did not question the courage of the young fighters. “They’re brave. It’s a popular war. There’s a lot of enthusiasm.”
There was courage, too, among other volunteers in Ras Lanuf, not least the doctors who arrived with the advancing rebels and stayed in the town through the bombing. Among them was Salem Langhi (43), who worked in Guy’s Hospital in London and for 16 years in Ireland before returning to Libya five months ago. When the revolution erupted he immediately volunteered.
“Every single Libyan is so surprised,” he said. “We didn’t know we had it in ourselves. We’ve discovered many things about ourselves. We love our country. We love one another. Most of all we have discovered the fear barrier is broken. People aren’t afraid; they don’t have to hide. People look you in the eye when they’re talking.” — Guardian News & Media 2011