“Rebel chic”.
Misrata, Libya.
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Libya
The streets of the neighbourhood through which Salim Sheikhlahoon guides me are deserted. The sound of heavy artillery echoes through them, punctuating the staccato cracks of gunfire.
Salim is one of the civilians caught in the cross-fire of the war for Libya’s third largest city, Misrata, as rebel fighters try to oust Qaddafi troops from their city.
A couple of blocks away, as Salim sips tea, a pick-up truck mounted with a heavy machine gun opens fire on a building containing some of the Qaddafi forces.
“I will not leave my house” he says, and gathers with the few of his neighbours who have decided to stay. The roof of his family’s living room has been punctured by rocket fire, and light streams onto the concrete of another, unfinished room in his house. Luckily, when the rockets rained down on his home, his family were not in the room.
Around the corner, Salim shows me to an unexploded shell lying in his neighbour’s garden. Behind it sits a children’s bicycle, a remnant of what would have been a bustling residential district just a few weeks previously.
I had no idea what to expect of the conflict in Misrata. For six weeks, the city had been under siege as a rebellion inside the city largely ousted the Qaddafi forces there. Few foreign journalists had been there, and telecommunications in ...
“There is a boat leaving for Misrata this evening” I was told, just three hours before I would have to turn up at the port, if I was to take it.
Misrata. The besieged rebel-held city in “the west” of Libya. The last frontier in this war for us hacks, covering it from the east.
I had a moment of doubt. Should I go? But this soon passed, overtaken by my desire to see a new face of this revolution, far from what was becoming the mundanity of the desert front-line near Ajdabiya.
I rushed back to pack a small bag, and made arrangements. I decided to tell only two people of my plans. I didn’t want to worry anybody unnecessarily, and wanted to keep the number of people I had to keep updated on my status to a minimum. There would be no telephones, and no internet, in Misrata. Satellites only.
Arriving at the port, it was abuzz with activity. Pallets and trucks of humanitarian aid were being loaded into the Ionian Spirit, a Greek owned ferry chartered by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to help rescue some of the estimated eight thousand foreign migrants stranded at the port.
“I repeat, this is a one-way seat only” called out the head of IOM to us. Their mission was to save as many of the stranded as possible, and there would not be room for us on the return trip. A few uneasy glances were exchanged.
There were a few other journalists around, but I later learned that we would be very few to disembark in Misrata, to stay there.
During the night, everybody was talking about what would await us there. Only a handful of reporters had already made the voyage, and stories were few and far between. Libya’s third largest city is deep within the Qaddafi-controlled western area of Libya, and access is by sea alone. The city has been besieged for over six weeks by surrounded troops.
Through most of the following day we sailed, passing by two Nato warships as they patrolled way off the coast. As the salty sea sprayed up into my face, it was strange to think that this boat normally sails for holiday makers, navigating the Greek islands and across to Italy. Today, it was sailing amongst warships, charged with delivering a small group of people to a war-zone, and rescuing hundreds from it.
The shoreline appeared, hazy in the distance. The towers and cranes of Misrata port stood high, separated from Benghazi by the vast Gulf of Sirte, and much closer to fabled Tripoli.
A moment of uncertainty weighed heavily, as we heard reports of heavy rocket fire directed at the port throughout the day. By the time we were guided into the harbour by a small tug, flying the familiar flag of the revolution, smoke was rising from a damaged container. The last rocket had hit at 3:30pm, just an hour before.
Evidence of the attacks was reinforced as we left the port, with fresh craters littering the road.
And so here I was. Misrata.
“Why have they sent him” asked, rhetorically, a French friend of mine in Benghazi. Thousands of Libyans had assembled on the city’s corniche, a sea of red-black-green tricolours of independence waving—dotted with the French tricolore and the occasional Qatari flag—prior to Bernard-Henri Lévy’s appearance on stage.
Earlier in the day in the Ouzu hotel, which has become the media nest in Benghazi, a Libyan was asking me what phrases would be suitable for the French philosopher’s visit, pondering links between the storming of the Bastille and Libya’s own revolution.
Several hours later, amid the banners in flowing Arabic script, there were placards grateful for the foreign intervention (“Merci France / Thank you Cameron / Thank you Obama / Thank you United Nations”), and welcoming the Frenchman to Libya “en cours de libération”. Another reminded the world that “Libya is not [a] kingdom for Gaddafi’s sons [to] inherit”.
Dusk was setting-in as BHL, full of gall, took to the stage. His speech certainly rallied the spirits of the Libyans assembled before him, if not, I found, a little too self-congratulatory. Amid talk of why he would “risk his life” in Ajdabiya, France was the first country to offer their support to the Libyans, and Benghazi was now a global symbol of resistance, he said.
At a moment when people seem to be losing their morale, wondering why it is taking so long to oust Col. Gaddafi, it is this kind of boost that they need, whatever it happens to come wrapped-in.