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Anti-Gaddafi protesters at the Los Angeles Federal Center on Saturday. About 200 protesters of Egyptian, Libyan, Syrian, Lebanese and non-Arab backgrounds demonstrated for three hours. Photos (c) 2011, Amira Hashim. |
Lying is something the Gaddafi regime has honed exceptionally well over the past four decades. Supposedly factual reports presented by the government media, including economic and other statistics as well the details of routine events around the country, were, to put it mildly, unreliable. Because the truth about everything from the amount of money spent on education to the number of political prisoners held without trials was unavailable, Libya lived off rumors. And while most Libyans knew full well they were being lied to, they only said as much in whispers so as not to perk up the ears of the "greens," the dictatorship's neighborhood informants and ideological shock troops.
While opposition to the government flourished among expatriates and exiles, it was only talked about behind closed doors in Libya itself, almost never in the streets. To speak against Gaddafi, his family and his cronies was to speak against Libya itself. That could get you strung up on a lamppost, as happened in 1983 to students on the campus of Al Fatah University where my wife taught English to nuclear engineers, or murdered en masse, as happened to 1200 political prisoners at Abu Salim Prison in 1996.
This made it tough for those few journalists who were interested enough in trying to get into the country to discover what was really going on. Not only was getting in not easy — Al Jazeera has long been banned — but for the favored few who did get in, prying out the truth was difficult indeed. That's why travel pieces to the Sahara or Phoenician-Roman ruins like those at Leptis were the main kind of reporting that emerged after Libya became the West's new best friend in 2004. About scenery and archeaology, a journalist could tell the truth. About human rights crimes, not so much. These days, however, the lies are not only disbelieved by Libyans in quiet, they are also being openly mocked. And some of the media are taking note.
For instance, after the regime encouraged some outside reporters to come and "tell the truth" about what is happening in Libya late last week, a few did precisely that. They went to Zawiyah to see what their government handlers said was a city under its control. It's hard to imagine how these officials thought they were going to pull off the deception. Because, as the Guardian reported, Zawiyah is surrounded by Gaddafi loyalists, but the city itself is firmly in the hands of the rebels. And they are not unarmed:
"If you go down there you will meet young men with guns," said one of the Libyan government minders. "Please be careful," he warned.
The crossing from the territory controlled by the regime of Colonel Gaddafi to rebel-held land was a short walk, as unexpected as it was bizarre.
Bizarre, because we had been delivered to the edge of the city of Zawiyah by Gaddafi's men, who were supposed to be showing us how far their leader's writ still extended. Instead they let us out of our cars and made no effort to prevent us crossing to the other side.
The "down there" mentioned by the minder was a broad boulevard with barricades across the street. A man with a machine gun came out of a door, ammunition belt across his shoulder. A half hour's drive from the centre of Tripoli and Gaddafi's control had run out. On the walls was anti-regime graffiti. Underfoot lay broken glass and bullet casings. Armed men appeared on balconies, flashing V-signs.
In the distance a crowd and flags were visible. Men waved us forward. A short walk brought into view a tank flying the rebels' tricolour and an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a pick-up.
That's not the only place where rebels are prepared to shoot back at a regime that has shown no hesitation about gunning down unarmed citizens. Growing numbers of anti-Gaddafi rebels have guns and, in some cases, heavy weapons. By cell-phone and email, I've spoken (directly, or through my Libyan-born step-daughter) to dissidents in two such places.
About 150 miles south-by-southwest of Tripoli, in Zintan, one of the first cities in the west to revolt against the regime, residents do not merely control their city, a few of them go out to fight each day. These rebels often bring back weapons they have captured and display them in the public square, according to Essam, who asked that his last name not be published. Because their number includes nobody who is a skilled tank driver, the rebels burned one tank they captured Friday and flipped another on its back, as shown in this photo Essam snapped.
Nine hundred miles across the country in al-Kufrah, a small southeastern city deep in the desert near Egypt as far from Tripoli as St. Louis is from New York, in a studio-produced video emailed to me by Ashraf (who asked that his last name not be published), a man explains what happened in a place that the government tells everyone it controls:
The man is speaking about Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the dictator's son with whom most non-Libyans are most familiar since his fight-to-the-last-bullet speech and other public appearances last week. "Saif" means "Sword" in Arabic. (
The repeated sentence is verbatim, not a translation mistake.)
He is not the Sword of Islam but the Sword of Evil.
[Saif] talked to Al Arabiya channel yesterday and he said that al-Kufrah is under their control. He said this, but al-Kufrah is free from their fascist regime.
Yesterday they [the government] sent an airplane that carried weapons, 18 million dinars and 2000 rifles. The kind is Kalashnikov. We are in complete control of the airport. We are the revolutionaries of 17 February. We are in complete control of the airport. The airplane landed under our supervision. We found in it the 18 million dinars and 2000 rifles.
The 18 million dinars were divided and given to banks in al-Kufrah so that [the money] will go as salaries to people in al-Kufrah. And the 2000 rifles were distributed to the revolutionaries of 17 February. Insha'Allah (God willing), these weapons will be directed at their [government supporters'] chests.
A dozen or so more deliveries like that, and the regime may bring itself down.
Here are two more photos from Saturday's anti-Gaddafi protest in Los Angeles.
[Dates on the photos are wrong because the camera was not properly set.]