The Hope of the Arab World

Wednesday, July 6 2011

The Hope of the Arab World

The main blocking position held by the Qaddafi forces outside of Al Qawalish was a rest stop beside the two-lane asphalt road. Here the Qaddafi troops were dug in, kept an ammunition supply point, and had a roof over their heads that perhaps concealed them from NATO aircraft.

The rest stop was among groves of almond, olive and fig trees. The Qaddafi soldiers must have sat in the shade of these trees in recent weeks, judging from the stools and trash and signs of cooking fires under many of the trees’ small, dense canopies.

Inside the rest stop the soldiers had marked up several walls with pro-Qaddafi and pro-government graffiti, including this hasty rendering of the flag of Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya, beside script that reads, “The Symbol of Life, The Hope of the Arab World.”

The green Qaddafi flags that fluttered over the blocking position were torn down quickly by the rebels after the soldiers fled today, leaving behind boots and uniforms and food. But this graffiti seemed to last a while this afternoon. There were reasons for that. A rebel truck driving down a dirt access road beside the rest stop struck a landmine, wounding several fighters. And a subsequent search turned up many more mines. Then a Qaddafi position nearby shelled the rest stop with mortars. This chased many of the rebels away, and such trivialities as scratching off the graffiti, or defacing it, were forgotten as the fighters bolted — all of them, that is, excpet their deminers, who kept clearing the fields, looking for more hidden mines.

More on that, we hope, very soon. (Today’s NYT story from Al Qawalish is here.)