THE INDEPENDENT: It has been a week of military reversals for the rebels, but their spirit remains unbroken, reports Donald Macintyre in Tripoli
The walls across the street from the Murad Aga mosque in Tajura were freshly whitewashed to cover up the anti-regime graffiti that has been repeatedly scrawled on them in the last three weeks.
Before the mid-morning Friday prayers, the streets of this easterly working class suburb 10 miles from the centre of the Libyan capital were eerily quiet, with just a few customers passing through the two general stores that were open. On the surface at least, there was hardly a sign that it had been here two weeks ago that residents were fired on – with an unknown number of deaths – when they tried to march towards the city centre to demand the end of the regime.
This felt very much like a district in lockdown, one about which the regime was now so confident that they had not even bothered to maintain the earlier military checkpoints and tanks on the main road in. "But some of them are here in civilian clothes," said a 20- year-old resident, adding that the regime had given AK 47s to hand-picked civilians here "to fire on the people" after the crisis began.
The resident, who gave his name, but which it would be unwise to use, added: "Ninety-five percent of the people don't like Gaddafi, but they can't do anything. They don't have any weapons." Many of the district's inhabitants, he said, came from a tribe originating from Benghazi. "They saw what was happening there, and they wanted to do the same here." He added: "We should not talk on the street. You don't know who is watching."
He would be proved right in every salient detail; less than five minutes later, plain clothes security police arrived, told us we had no business to be there, and ordered us to leave the neighbourhood immediately, herding us peremptorily into a minibus they had summoned for the purpose. After we were safely out of the way, according to a Tajura Libyan now living abroad but in touch with residents, tear gas was again used to quell a repeat of the protests. Continue reading and comment >>> Donald Macintyre in Tripoli | Saturday, March 12, 2011
