You are in the 246th Witness Revolution diary, bearing witness to pro-democracy movements in North Africa, the Middle East and beyond. This is a special edition to cover the unfolding events in Tripoli, the last stand againstof the Gaddafi Forces. (see links to previous diaries for this event at the bottom of the diary.) (h/t Athenian for pointing out that the grammatical error.)
UPDATE:
Quick update from what I know:
Gadaffi's whereabouts are still unknown. FFs are coming into Sirte from two directions, while trying to negotiate a non-violent handover. Zuwara is crying out for help, as G's forces continue fierce fighting there. It is reported that a huge cache of food and medical supplies was found amongst Gaddafi's labyrinthine compound in Tripoli, even saw one rumor of an underground hospital. Other than at Gadaffi's compound, there are no reports of looting in Tripoli and the NTC has said that the police will be back on the job very soon. In fact, see the message I received from Meteor Blades at the end of this section of updates.
Big news!
(h/t greenbird)
@AlArabiya_Eng Al Arabiya English
UN to release $1.5 billion of Libya assets: diplomats
#alarabiya #Libya #Qaddafi
1 minute ago via web
@BBCBarbaraPlett Barbara Plett
#UN diplo: #SouthAfrica lifted its block on request to unfreeze #Libya assets b/c #US removed reference to #NTC from the request
2 minutes ago via web
(h/t
smiley7)
ShababLibya LibyanYouthMovement
Sky News breaking: ENORMOUS stores of Food & Medicine have been recovered in #Tripoli Enough to feed 4 mill people-Enough medicine for a yr!
(h/t
gchaucer2)
1812: Paul Wood BBC News, near Sirte
says: There are now allegations, being loudly repeated on local radio here, that the Gaddafi forces are executing their rebel prisoners and burying them in a mass grave in Sirte. That could be propaganda but it is widely believed on this side of the front line and, true or not, will certainly make it far more difficult to achieve a negotiated and peaceful end to the struggle for Sirte.
(h/t
petral)
Liberty4Libya Free Libya Now rt by septimius_sever
Zwara is surrounded from all sides. #TNC @Guma_el_gamaty @MahmudShammam Zwara is shelled heavily. Needs urgent help. #Libya
19 minutes ago
Liberty4Libya Free Libya Now rt by septimius_sever
All Militias that was pusshed from Nafousa Mountains were pushed down to Ajilat & Jmail are & now attacking Zwara, we need help for Zwara
16 minutes ago
Liberty4Libya Free Libya Now rt by septimius_sever
Zwara shelling have subsided today, hospital destroyed, no aid to city. City is shelled from Jmail by Warshafana tribe volunteers. #Libya
13 minutes ago
(h/t
greenbird)
@ScottHeidler Scott Heidler
As all eyes are on Tripoli,fighting continues to the east.Rebel forces advancing toward Gaddafi hometown Sirte pushed back 20km by shelling.
30 minutes ago via web
(h/t
amk for obama)
Lyse Doucet BBC News, Tripoli tweets : Many Libyans in Tripoli have proudly told me very little looting in city.. #Libya
reported to me by Meteor Blades, based on word from family members in Tripoli:
Not only have the rebels turned on both of the phone companies that Qadafi had shut down in the past week, but they also put 40 dinars worth of free calls into everybody's account so people could call out of the country if they wished to do so.
Some inspirational messages from Libyans:
(h/t
petral)
@taimur_ly تيمور عبد العزيز
Benghazi taught us courage, Misrata resistance, Nafousa determination, Zawiya perseverance, Tripoli patience. This is Libya @tripolicouncil
54 minutes ago via Echofon
(h/t downsouth )
Good Tweet
hishamjmatar Hisham Matar, Author
We've defeated Qaddafi in the battlefield, now we must defeat him in our imagination. We mustn't allow his legacy to corrupt our dream.
6 minutes ago
The Libyans tell us who they are and what they fight for
A Vision of a Democratic Libya - the guiding document of the revolution
Their newer, flashier web site is
NTCLibya.com
Who are the libyan 'rebels'?
Opposition fighters against Gaddafi's regime are sometimes referred to as 'rebels'. This can be viewed negatively and so the correct term for the 'rebels' is freedom fighters.
(h/t
angry marmot )
TNC comments on post-Q role for NATO
AFP via Al-Ahram
Libya's rebel government envoy to the Cairo-based Arab League said Monday that his country will not allow NATO bases in Libya after Muammar Gaddafi's ouster, official MENA news agency said.
"Libya is an Arab and Islamic nation before NATO and after NATO," he said, adding, "the Libyans revolted from the 1970s against Western bases and there will be no non-Libyan bases."
They've also decided not to take international loans:
(h/t
greenbird )
Bloomberg news:
“We don’t need loans,” former Libyan Central Bank Governor Farhat Bengdara, who broke with Qaddafi’s regime in February, said in an interview in Dubai. “Libya has huge financial resources and oil reserves. What it needs is the cooperation of the international community to lift the freeze on Libya’s assets aboard.”
Good sources for information:
Al Jazeera English live TV
Al Jazeera English liveblog
Guardian Middle East liveblog
Feb17.info news aggregator and local reporting (live video feed), excellent resources such as maps and reliable Twitter streams to follow
BBC live coverage (video and text)
Free Libya TV-Arabic
Free Libya TV-English
NATO site on Libya
File:Tripolitanian Front.svg
Great map of what's happening where right now from the Guardian. (I couldn't figure out how to embed this)
Follow on Twitter:
Feb 17 voices
Al Jazeera English
LibyanYouthMovement
Sultan Al Qassemi
Twitter tags #feb17 #libya #tripoli #mermaiddawn
(h/t Lawrence )Libya: Doctor Sees Victims Of 'Mass Execution'
9:17am UK, Thursday August 25, 2011
A doctor in Libya has told Sky News how he witnessed the bloody aftermath of an alleged mass execution by Colonel Gaddafi's troops.
Dr Moez said he was working in a hospital on the Matiga airbase, in east Tripoli, when a truck full of bullet-riddled bodies turned up outside.
He said one of the survivors told them that they had been captured by Col Gaddafi's troops, held in a school for several days and then executed.
and it's not always clear that human rights discipline is being maintained by Freedom Fighters, though the head of the NTC is repeatedly calling for it:
(h/t angry marmot)
Thirty Gaddafi fighters found dead at Tripoli camp
More than 30 men believed to be fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi have been killed at a military encampment in central Tripoli and at least two were bound with plastic handcuffs, indicating they had been executed.
A Reuters reporter at the scene in the Libyan capital said he counted 30 bodies riddled with bullets in an area where there had been fighting between Gaddafi forces and rebels.
Five of the dead were at a field hospital nearby, with one in an ambulance strapped to a gurney with an intravenous drip still in his arm.
The challenges for the media when faced with new realities:
(h/t pico) a comment from and Al Jazeera English blog
Salwinder 9 hours ago
Dear Sky News and BBC
You may have noticed that Ghadafi and his regime have been heavily defeated by the Libyan people who now recognise the NTC as the legitimate interim government of Libya.
I would be most grateful therefore if you could stop referring to the few pockets of loyalist snipers, murderers and rapists as "government forces". Whilst you're at it you might want consider stopping referring to the 99% of FFs and the NTC as "rebels" since there is no longer a brutal, murderous regime for them to rebel against.
Finally - any chance you could invite guests onto your programmes who DON'T insist that Libya is going to instantly collapse into civil war and turn into another Iraq?
Yours irritatedly,
Salwinder
change is not easy for everyone:
(h/t
Phil S 33) from BBC liveblog
1109: Sami, a 42-year-old engineer in Tripoli, has lived all his life under Col Gaddafi. He told BBC World Service that it would be hard for many Libyans to adjust. "I was brought up in this system, I was educated in this system, you get used to his environment," he said. "We have lived this, we understand it - we know the barriers, and we know the rules. It's part of our lives. To change to something unknown is very difficult."
(h/t Phil S 33) from the BBC
1059: Four Italian journalists kidnapped in Libya have been freed, Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper website reports.
(h/t
Lawrence)
Libya inspires the Arabs
Posted By Marc Lynch Monday, August 22, 2011
The scenes of the joyous reception for Libyan "Freedom Fighters" entering Tripoli with little resistance yesterday sent an electric shock through the Arab public. The Jordanian blogger Naseem Tarawnah beautifully captured this regional effect: "Staying up last night to watch the events unfold on the streets of Tripoli, I cannot help but feel the sense of confidence that swept across the region last night; radiating from TV, computer and mobile screens." My Twitter feed could barely keep up with the rush of excited declarations that Assad must be watching Tripoli on TV and seeing his own future.
The reactions yesterday once again show the potent and real demonstration effects which characterize today's highly unified Arab political space.I don't see how anybody watching al-Jazeera, following Arab social media networks, or talking to people in the region could fail to appreciate the interconnected nature of Arab struggles. It's the same sense of shared fate and urgency that those who follow the Arab public sphere could feel in February and March. I supported the NATO intervention in Libya in large part because of that powerful Arab popular demand and the likely impact of the outcome in Libya across the region.
Now, as Syrians march chanting "Qaddafi is gone, now it's your turn, Bashar!" and excited protestors in Yemen's Change Square shout "our turn tomorrow!" there's suddenly a chance to recapture some of that lost regional momentum. It has been a long time since there has been such a unified Arab public sphere, or such hope that the long summer's stalemate might be broken and the momentum of January and February reclaimed. As one put it, "the fight isn't over in Yemen & Syria; Libyan friends remind us when we think its over we're closer to victory than we think."
(h/t
jpmassar)
Juan Cole's Top Ten Myths About The Libya War
1. Qaddafi was a progressive in his domestic policies.
2. Qaddafi was a progressive in his foreign policy.
3. It was only natural that Qaddafi sent his military against the protesters and revolutionaries; any country would have done the same.
4. There was a long stalemate in the fighting between the revolutionaries and the Qaddafi military.
5. The Libyan Revolution was a civil war.
6. Libya is not a real country and could have been partitioned between east and west.
7. There had to be NATO infantry brigades on the ground for the revolution to succeed.
8. The United States led the charge to war.
9. Qaddafi would not have killed or imprisoned large numbers of dissidents in Benghazi, Derna, al-Bayda and Tobruk if he had been allowed to pursue his March Blitzkrieg toward the eastern cities that had defied him.
10. This was a war for Libya’s oil.
He devotes a paragraph or two to each of his myths.
Map of neighborhoods in Tripoli (click on image for larger version):
map of West Libya, towns surrounding Tripoli (click on image for larger version):
updated as of AUG 22
(h/t Oujdi) This interactive google map is more up to date
View Larger Map again, I can't get google map embed to work here
(h/t bumblebums) I can't get the embed to work
there's an interactive Google map of Tripoli indicating where fighting has broken out.
This is the best map we've seen of Libya and what's happened where.
@IbnOmar2005 Ibn Omar
EXCELLENT PIC. How the media covered the "stalemate" in #Libya. Every outlet should see this. @CNN @BBC
(h/t Lawrence)
A blog post from a Libyan on Al Jazeera that I
would like to repost here.
I know from personal experience just how grateful Libyans are to all who gave them their solidarity and this blog post expresses that well:
LibyaInAbstentia
Thank you to all the people here who have stood with the Libyan people to what I hope will soon be the end. I hope that any of you who would like to visit Libya and see all the places you have been talking about and meet all the people you have been supporting will be able to. I know that I do mention God in my posts, I do not mean to offend anyone and I know that you are all good people no matter what your belief or you would not be here. I have to believe in God, I go to funerals for these young men, I have seen them badly hurt and I have tried to calm my children while they tried to sleep listening to battles in the neighborhood. Because I believe, I do pray for the best for each one of you who has given up time doing something else so that you could be here. That you know more about a place and people that you might not have thought of a year ago, means to me that there is hope not only for the future of Libya, but the future of the world. Apathy is the biggest threat to freedom and democracy. No matter what your opinions, you are not apathetic and you are all fighters for freedom and democracy. To those who consider themselves believers, God bless you, to those who do not, my sincere thanks and appreciation.
(h/t Lawrence)
If a picture speaks a thousand words, then this video about the early days of the Libyan Revolution speaks millions. Not only does it clearly show that the Revolution was initially peaceful, but also that it was an uprising that took place in basically every major town and city in Libya.
Links to previous Tripoli Battle diaries:
The Battle for Tripoli Part II
Breaking: The Battle For Tripoli Has Begun. W/ Updates. "All Hell Has Broken Out in Tripoli."
Witnessing Revolution #227: Battle of Tripoli or #MermaidDawn
Witnessing Revolution Diary #228: Battle of Tripoli continues
Witnessing Revolution Live Blog #229 - Libya
Witnesssing Revolution #230: Battle of Tripoli continues
Witnessing Revolution Live Blog #231 - Libya
Witnessing Revolution #232 - Battle of Tripoli continues
Witnessing Revolution #233: Zero Hour for Libya is really here
Witnessing Revolution #234: Libya Celebrating, Seeking Gaddafi
Witnessing Revolution #235: Libya Celebrating, Seeking Gaddafi
Witnessing Revolution #236: Libya NTC Rejects Notion of NATO Bases
Witnessing Revolution #237: Fighting continues in Libya
Witnessing Revolution #238: Fighting continues in Libya
Witnessing Revolution #239: Do the Gaddafis Even Matter Anymore?
Witnessing Revolution #240: Libyans have entered Bab Alziziya
Witnessing Revolution #241: full Arab Spring updates
Witnessing Revolution #242: Battle of Tripoli continues
Witnessing Revolution #243: Libya-SCUD missiles, grad rockets, journalists as hostages
Witnessing Revolution #244: Libya: Journalists freed, another defection
A href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/25/1010422/-Witnessing-Revolution-245:-Fighting,-atrocities-and-change-in-Libya">Witnessing Revolution #245: Fighting, atrocities and change in Libya |