More Photographs From Eastern Libya.

Sunday, April 10 2011

More Photographs From Eastern Libya.

The lifting of the attack on Ajdabiya, Libya today presented many fresh scenes from the war. Some of them, like the image above, were dark. These were the bindings on the wrists of man who had been fatally shot. The staff at the city’s morgue said he had been executed while helpless. The update soon to be published on the NYT site provides more. The image was made after the bindings were cut from the dead man’s wrists at the examining table. There is a long journey ahead to document and account for the human rights abuses in this war. Let it be thorough.

The next image is just as grim. Air power can look clinical in video footage shot from aircraft that drop ordnance against targets — read, people — on the ground. On the ground, however, the effects of air power can look horrific. These men, wrapped in blankets laid out on the sand, were troops in the forces loyal to Muammar el-Qaddafi. The smoldering truck in the background was one of the vehicles hit by the NATO air strikes that helped save the city from falling into loyalist hands.

There is no need here for a closer view. This display, as is, serves a propose — offering a chance to discuss the responsibilities of those involved in the war. The rebels’ transitional government has been providing medical care to wounded loyalist troops, and the morgues in eastern Libya have been storing loyalist remains for return to the deceased troops’ families after the war. Some of these men in the blankets below were not readily identifiable. But with a proper accounting of the human costs of this war, and a careful accounting of the fate of each of the missing and the dead, these men can with time be properly buried back near their homes.

In a little while, the At War blog should be publishing a post about the expanding use of rebel weapons like the weapon below. It’s a jury-rigged, dangerous, and indiscriminate system. (The post just went live. It’s here.)