By Alex Thomson
Channel 4 News
For pretty obvious reasons I can’t disclose my source’s identity and let’s just call him X.
He can still recall the area of Green Square last Sunday (Liberty Square of pre-Gaddafi days) where he stood as the protesters gathered telling The Colonel it was time to go.
“The police were cool,” he says in fluent English,”the people were handingout sweets.”
And cool it stayed into the night; Green Square becoming to Tripoli what Tahrir Square was to Cairo?
Well no, says X, who watched what happened.
“This is Libya. We could never be Egypt, never Tunisia. We have no teargas in Libya. No rubber-coated bullets. It is straight to lead in Libya.”
It was.
It was dawn when X says “armoured vehicles approached the Square. They opened fire on the unarmed protesters. “They had big calibre guns – like anti-aircraft guns. You could see the shells bouncing off the streets.”
He saw, with his own eyes he says, scores of people mown down. Mention the estimate of dead given by Human Rights Watch at this point of around 270 dead and he simply laughs in a tired way: “We all saw that figure on the TV – we just laughed.”
From then, he says Tripoli has essentially shut down. No businesses, shops or schools function. Colonel Gaddafi has the army here, armed civilian militias on the streets. “There are mercenaries fighting for Gaddafi for sure. You see them, black guys, sub Saharan. But I also saw guys with blond hair and blue eyes in central Tripoli. They were controlling the technical side. They were speaking Russian or Ukrainian. You don’t get near these guys – not ever.”
Anyone who is anyone is in fear of “the call”. And they can come any time of day or night. When they do come they will be armed, pistrols at the very least. “They’ll say ‘are you for us or against us?’ and of course there is only one answer to this question. I know this. It has happened to so many people. Many, many people. That was why I had to leave yesterday. They would call for me. You see?” He takes a pause, a long drag on his cigarette.
“So you say of course and they take you off in their car and you help them. You are told you will use your influence to help the regime however they want.”
“And if you hesitate at all when they come?”
“That’s it. You are also into the car. But it is over.”
“You get shot? ” I ask.
“Wasteground, an underground carpark. Whatever. You don’t come home.”
Since the fighting at Green Square he says the protesters have retreated to their neighbourhoods. Barricades have been attempted but mostly people just stay at home. To go out is to risk being shot on sight, he says, possible during daylight – a near certainty at night.
He says he personally witnessed helicopters firing down on the city on several occasions since that Sunday. He also tells how he watched ‘big helicopters’ with visible guns heading west from the capital.
X is adamant that many Libyans would certainly get out if they could, but it is far from easy. That explains why so few are coming over the official crossing points too.
You’ll appreciate why X can’t give names and locations as he describes a long, nerve-jangling odyssey taking most of the day to cross the 150 miles or so from Tripoli to Tunisia. It’s all about friends, family, safehouse, wait, new vehicle, safehouse, wait and so on.
“If you reach a checkpoint you are in very big trouble. No main roads. Just small roads and tracks. You cross the border miles away from the road. Out in the desert there is no border.” And Gaddafi? Is there any strategy?
Like the people, he cannot go back now. Tripoli is the last stand. He has nowhere. He cannot go anywhere. Even abroad? No – not now.”
“Could he leave Tripoli?”
“His home town, Sirt, is nothing. Just a shell. A concrete jungle. Empty palaces for foreign leaders to meet him. Nobody lives there. He has the army but only in Tripoli.”
Yet there is a strategy. Gadaffi still has arms and support in the capital, it is true. Around it, to the west, the military plan appears to be to allow the rebels to hold towns like Zuara on the coast, but then to isolate them, cut them off, and attack them.
X’s view of the regime’s apparent plans, borne out be what’s happened in the past 24 hours: Zuara calm yesterday but reports of gunfire – the town of Zaweya attacked by forces loyal to the regime yesterday.
Yet the attacks failed. X paints a graphic picture of Gaddafi’s seven sons at odds, with bitter in-fighting: “The eldest is not even considered a real son you know. Each if them ran parts if the country – security, defence, economy – it was just cronyism – or like mafia, a mafia family but with billions from the oil.”
Then X lowers his voice and leans in, even though it’s so late the bar staff have gone to bed: “But f*** the oil. It doesn’t matter now. Blair and then Bush in 2003 they supported this murderer. But there is no going back now for the people here. No going back.”
The end of Gaddafi’s regime and the end of his sons’ kleptocracy would, says X, always be bloody. But he says be prepared – the ousting of the Italians cost thousands of lives.
It is after 2am. A cleaner is sweeping up at the other side of the bar, X makes to leave, then turns, his voice echoing in the empty bar:
“Life post-Gadaffi will not be easy. But this is our chance. We have to take it. We have to go for it. We will not get it again.”
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