Anti-Qaddafi Forces Capture, Then Lose, Last Redoubts

[Apulee 10]

TRIPOLI, Libya — In a conflict that has seen more than its share of martial ineptitude, the struggles for the town of Bani Walid and the city of Surt stand out.

 

Not since the fight for Brega, on the coast, have cities been claimed to have fallen so often, well before they did. And not since Ajdabiya, a desert town on the road to Benghazi in the east, have anti-Qaddafi forces repeatedly attacked and fled so frequently, often beginning the fighting day with bravado and bluster, and ending it with a disorderly and sometimes humiliating retreat.

 

That chain of events was repeated again on Friday both in Surt, the hometown of the ousted strongman Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and in Bani Walid, the seat of the country’s most powerful tribe, the Warfallah, known for its support of the old government.

 

On Friday the attackers had pushed almost to the center of Bani Walid when Qaddafi forces counterattacked and gave them such a battering that at least 70 were wounded, and four or more were killed, while the rest fled the town.

 

Tripoli fell nearly a month ago now, with the remnants of Qaddafi loyalists fleeing to four places, which have been under siege by the former rebels since at least the beginning of September (the other two places are the smaller desert oases of Sabha and Hun in the south).

 

By most accounts, the attackers greatly outnumber the defenders; they have apparently limitless ammunition, hundreds of pickup trucks with heavy weapons mounted on the back, and even Russian-made main battle tanks like the T-72. The defenders have Grad multiple rocket launchers, mortars and RPG-7s — all weapons portable enough to hide from the air — but whenever Qaddafi forces wheel out any vehicles or heavy weapons, NATO promptly destroys them in airstrikes.

 

For weeks now, defenders in Bani Walid and Surt have been surrounded by land, and in the case of Surt, blockaded by NATO warships at sea as well, and residents reached by telephone say they have been running out of food, medicine, fuel and water.

 

So what exactly has been the former rebels’ problem?

 

They say they are taking care not to cause civilian casualties. Others admit that after seven months of the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi, they are just plain tired. With life returning to normal in most of Libya, they are eager to enjoy the fruits of their new freedom — and no longer hellbent on dying to sweep away a regime that, in the bigger picture at least, is already history.

 

Add to that their military inexperience and lack of discipline. In the past two weeks, at least 10 former rebels have been killed because of firearms accidents, often with their own weapons, according to Ali al-Kerdasi, a spokesman for Tripoli Central Hospital, the country’s main trauma hospital.

 

Two exhausted fighters, Hamza Bouzeidi and Mohammed al-Naama, outside Bani Walid conceded Friday night that their side had made errors. “We were disorganized,” said Mr. Bouzeidi, describing the waves of attacks by the pro-Qaddafi fighters — first from snipers, then from rockets and finally from a barrage of mortars that had killed a man in their group. Mr. Naama wearily took off his helmet, and described the day. “Advances and retreats. Advances and retreats,” he said.

 

Frustration flared after the retreat, leading to arguments. At one point, a man pointed his rocket-propelled grenade launcher at a fellow fighter.

 

Still, anti-Qaddafi spokesmen on Saturday did what they have done in the past, declaring the fall of Bani Walid and Surt imminent. “Surt will be completely cleared today,” said Anis Sharif, the spokesman for the Tripoli Military Council. “And I believe Bani Walid will not take much longer.” That may prove true, but such predictions have been greatly devalued by their repetition.

 

Like dogs tearing off to retrieve imaginary sticks thrown by their masters, television crews and photographers have repeatedly rushed to the front lines to cover the fall of the holdouts, only to discover that the attackers were merely on the outskirts, and not even planning to stay there beyond dark. In some cases, as happened at least three times in the past week, they actually pushed well into the downtown areas, only to be repulsed.

 

The photographs produced are very picturesque — flames licking the skies from the twin barrels of the former rebels’ 30-millimeter antiaircraft guns — but what is not as clear is that many such pictures are posed, or taken while the former rebels are doing what they seem to do best, or at least most often — firing light and heavy weapons into the sky in celebration of every victory, including imaginary ones.

 

Antiaircraft weapons are notoriously useless in urban warfare because they are indiscriminate weapons that are hard to control when fired horizontally, and mounting them on pickup trucks, as they generally do, does not help their accuracy.

 

It is also unclear how firing into the air has any military value when the only warplanes up there belong to NATO and are bombing their opponents.

 

Such escapades do, however, take a toll. Dr. Othman el-Zentani, the chief forensic pathologist in Tripoli, said so far falling bullets had killed at least 20 people in the city. One was a 10-year-old girl taking a nap in the family’s garden, long after fighting in Tripoli had stopped. Her mother thought she had a nosebleed, but could not rouse her, Dr. Zentani said. A bullet had drilled into the girl’s brain as she slept.

 

Spokesmen for the former rebels concede that the task of taking the regime’s last redoubts has been much harder than they had expected.

 

“The resistance is stronger than we believed it would be in Bani Walid because there are high-ranking regime figures there and they are trying to protect themselves,” Mr. Sharif of the Tripoli Military Council said.

 

Ismail Ibrahim al-Qatani, a commander with the Martyrs of the City Brigade from Benghazi, recalled from his Tripoli hospital bed that on Friday morning he and his men were having such an easy time working their way into Bani Walid that they expected the city to fall completely by 5 p.m.

 

At 6 p.m., pro-Qaddafi forces counterattacked with rockets and sniper fire, he said, wounding 50 of his men, including himself; he was hit by shrapnel in both legs and the neck. Other hospitalized former rebels said they had seen 11 of their fighters killed Friday, though officials reported only four fatalities in Bani Walid (plus 24 in Surt on Saturday, according to the Misurata Military Council, whose fighters were attacking the city).

 

A hospitalized fighter from the Tripoli Revolutionary Brigade, Marwa Mohammed Bin Yalla, said he was one of 20 wounded in his unit. “If only the civilians would all leave Bani Walid, we could get them, but they are too cowardly to fight us in the open,” Mr. Bin Yalla said.

 

“There must be one of Qaddafi’s sons in there, which is why it’s so hard to get to the center,” Mr. Qatani said. Yet he added that he was confident the rebels would take Bani Walid, probably Sunday. “We just need to bring up some tanks.”

 

The New York Times

[Ladoz 11]

 

A hospitalized fighter from the Tripoli Revolutionary Brigade, Marwa Mohammed Bin Yalla, said he was one of 20 wounded in his unit. “If only the civilians would all leave Bani Walid, we could get them, but they are too cowardly to fight us in the open,” Mr. Bin Yalla said.

 

“There must be one of Qaddafi’s sons in there, which is why it’s so hard to get to the center,” Mr. Qatani said. Yet he added that he was confident the rebels would take Bani Walid, probably Sunday. “We just need to bring up some tanks.”

 

The New York Times

 

 

What a couragoeus rat !!!!!!!!!! :mdr::mdr:

 

Very courageous :w00t2:

 

It takes a lot of bravery to "hide" and wait that NATO planes do the "job" !!!!