Loyalist strongholds test Libya’s new rulers

Salam
Kushrabi edged his way over the rubble of a fire station in Tripoli’s
Abu Salim district on Sunday, moving from a room housing a large
unexploded rocket into another where a charred body lay trapped under
mangled concrete and metal.

Although he said he was a rebel supporter, Mr Kushrabi was upset by
the destruction in a building he claimed was used as a field hospital
for Col Muammer Gaddafi’s many loyalists in the area. It was hit by a
Nato bomb on Thursday.

He said: “It is a very, very bad situation. Most people here supported the leader.”

Whatever his actual sympathy for the rebels, his subdued reaction showed the physical and emotional task now facing Libya’s victorious opposition in areas of the capital traumatised by fighting and still attached to some degree to the old regime.

The opposition ruling National Transitional Council’s handling of areas such as Abu Salim will be an important test of both their fitness to govern and of their pledge to uphold human rights and shun Gaddafi-style persecution.

Abu Salim is close to Col Gaddafi’s sacked Bab al-Aziziya compound and was the site of firefights last week after rebels pushed successfully to extend their advance into the capital.

The district’s basic and dowdy concrete apartment blocks are now pockmarked with bullet holes from the shoot-out between advancing opposition forces and Gaddafi loyalists who fired at them from the windows.

The ferocity of the battle was clear from an abandoned hospital in the area where corpses had piled up. Several bodies lay early Saturday evening on trolleys just outside the entrance – at least one of them a man who appeared to be wearing green military uniform.

Further along the road, the atmosphere around the Abu Salim fire station was far from the watchful but happy air of opposition stronghold districts in Tripoli. A group of men standing at the side of the street made deferential half-bows as rebel vehicles rolled past, even as their reticence in private conversation made their resentment and anxiety clear.

Asked what he felt about the revolution, one said: “God willing, everything will be all right,” adding a pointed reference to “people who were wounded and whose houses were burnt”.

Around the corner, a group of woman standing on a ground floor balcony said members of their family had been detained by the rebels. One, who gave her name as Aziza, said: “My father and brother were arrested. We don’t know where they are now.”

Nearby, a young customs officer named Mohammed angrily struck a plastic bottle with a stick. He and his friend Imad, who was in the Libyan navy, were standing around with other men, a number of whom worked for the former regime or were unemployed. All said they supported Col Gaddafi.

“They [the rebels] can kill us,” said Imad. “There is no one to protect us. Gaddafi didn’t do this to us.”

A similar pattern of stories tumbled out of Abu Salim on Sunday, many of them disturbing. One woman said her brother had disappeared and her home had been looted, while another more belligerent Gaddafi supporter named Amir pledged resistance to the rebellion: “Anything could happen,” he claimed.

Amir produced a taciturn young man named Hussam, who he said was a Gaddafi soldier now being hunted by revolutionaries. Amir and one of his neighbours began arguing about the revolution, each talking over the other at Hussam.

The scene, which would have been comical had the setting not been so grim, seemed a preview of arguments likely to play out in Abu Salim and elsewhere in Libya as regime supporters recover from the shock of Col Gaddafi’s sudden end.

Rebels at a nearby checkpoint said Abu Salim was now under their control, although one fighter said he had been shot at the previous night. They claimed opposition forces would not take revenge on Gaddafi supporters, despite allegations of rebel reprisal executions elsewhere.

Ahmed Ali, a sweetshop owner turned local rebel militiaman, said of regime supporters: “We will treat them good.”

Back at the fire station, which was littered with drugs, plastic gloves and a box that once contained body bags, Mr Kushrabi surveyed the mess and suggested the violence of last week had cowed the colonel’s supporters – for now.

Mr Kushrabi said: “The people who held weapons – most of them are killed or have run away. Who will resist the revolution?”