Libya Feature: Insurgent Victory in the Western Mountains? (Kirkpatrick)

David Kirkpatrick reports for The New York Times:

Until a few weeks ago, the rebellious towns in the Nafusah Mountains were struggling to survive on dwindling supplies of barley, water and gas during a long siege by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s soldiers.

But after an improbable series of military victories over the past three weeks — with fewer than 100 rebel fighters killed, their military leaders say — residents of a broad area in this mountain region are celebrating virtual secession from Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya. While there have been defeats, and the Grad rockets of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces still menace the outskirts of Nalut near the Tunisian border and Yafran to the east, rebels point hopefully to the growing stability of the towns under their control as evidence of how tenuous Colonel Qaddafi’s grip may be.

“This is the new Libya,” said Anwar Fekini, a Sorbonne-educated French-Libyan lawyer, rebel organizer and local tribal leader who returned for a weekend trip to his ancestral home to strategize with local allies. “It feels good.”

He delicately accepted an aging Belgian rifle from two gray-haired rebel fighters, just for safekeeping.

The Nafusah Mountains have emerged as a strategically significant front in the battle for Libya, in part because the rebels there are closest to Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in the capital, Tripoli, and in part because they have the potential to cut off vital supply lines from the border. And though barely trained and few in number — one rebel leader estimated that there were about 2,000 armed fighters — they have used their knowledge of the terrain and the sympathies of much of the local population to expand their territory as the fighting around Benghazi to the east and Misurata on the central coast has moved toward a stalemate.

The rebels have established firm control of more than a half-dozen towns from the Dhiba border crossing into Tunisia, where rebel guards mingle amiably with their Tunisian counterparts, to the major town of Yafran, a 90-minute drive from Tripoli. Indeed, on a tour from the border to the front beyond Yafran, rebel security seemed extraordinarily light, with hardly any guards at the Dhiba crossing. Teenagers were running checkpoints along the road, and some front-line posts were unmanned.

After months of an exodus, driven by the fighting in the mountains, refugees returning home jam the border crossing in a long line. This weekend, several Tripoli residents arrived to take refuge with their families as well.

In many towns, local authorities say that most of the Qaddafi government employees kept working as the rebels took over, and the same police officers now patrol the streets in fresh new rebel uniforms. Their own makeshift jails house captured soldiers.

At least seven local newspapers — photocopied newsletters — have sprung up to capitalize on the new freedom of the press. In Rogeban, each issue of a new newspaper produced by a history professor includes both a “face of the revolution” feature on a local activist and a short civics lesson introducing concepts that may be useful in discussing Libya’s future, like “confederation” or “federalism.”

Rogeban residents have covered the walls with cartoons mocking Colonel Qaddafi and decorated public spaces with shards of his military’s Grad rockets. A new museum in Yafran celebrates local culture and achievements, with one room devoted to the armaments fired at local communities and another archiving the new newspapers.

There is also a media center in Yafran. The founder said he had received five visitors. “But we’re expecting a lot more,” he said.

Across the border in Tunisia, a small industry has sprung up to furnish baseball hats and T-shirts emblazoned with the tricolor pre-Qaddafi Libyan flag that the rebels have adopted as their own.

Local doctors say they are now better equipped with supplies than they were before the uprising, in part because of the generosity of wealthier Libyans abroad. The rebels have even painted a runway along more than a mile of highway, in the hopes that planes might land with more weapons and supplies. In the latest victory, several members of the Libyan national soccer team defected from Tripoli and entered the Nafusah Mountains on Friday to declare their support for the insurrection.

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