The war in Libya is almost over, but for ordinary people in Sirte's District 2 the misery gets deeper
- The Observer,
- Article history
A Libyan revolutionary fighter patrols in downtown Sirte, Libya on Friday 14 October 2011. Photograph: Manu Brabo/AP
When war came to the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace, Fajla Sidi Bey made the sort of choice that poor people have to make in a conflict.
Fajla, a Malian driver who worked at the Ibn Sana hospital when the besieging government forces announced their intention to take Sirte in September, was owed 3,736 Libyan dinars, a small fortune. So while others fled he stayed in the city with his five children, aged between four months and nine years old, and his wife and a cousin.
His home was in District 2, at the heart of the last remaining pocket of pro-Gaddafi loyalist fighters, still being pounded yesterday by artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Until Friday that is, when Fajla and his family slipped out.
I found them sitting by a wall near the field hospital outside the city, uncertain what to do or where to go. "I left the hospital on 15 September, the day the fighting started," he explained. "I haven't been back since. I came to Libya 13 years ago to earn money. For 10 of those, I worked as a tailor. For the last three years, I worked in the hospital." He showed his pass from Ibn Sana. It described him as a driver and a tailor.
"The only time I went out of my house was to search for food for my children. I had a car from the hospital. After a while, they would not let me get food from the shops. All the shops were closed. They said: 'Bring your family to the security building.' Outside was a place where you could buy food.
"We were in my house with another Malian family of three and hid in the basement. Most days I slept and hid in my house. I did not know what was happening outside.
'We were lucky. Nothing happened to our house. All the other houses around ours were hit by shells and missiles. Most of the houses were empty. They fired during the day, but not after seven at night. Then it was quieter.
"There was water, but we had no electricity. I was not frightened for myself but for my children and my family. Every day we talked about escaping. My life was in the hands of God.
"Then three days ago the other family went and did not return. So on Friday, before seven in the morning, I went out of the house and walked 100 metres. No one fired at me, so I went back for the family and we walked out with the clothes that we were wearing. Then some government fighters picked us up and took us here.
"I would have left Libya in February," he added sadly. "But I needed the money."
Details of conditions for civilians and pro-Gaddafi troops in the last pocket held by Gaddafi fighters in Sirte's District 2, a coastal strip no wider than 700 metres and often narrower, and perhaps a kilometre and a half in length, are difficult to come by.
The pocket centred on this neigbourhood is defined by a handful of landmarks. At its western end lies Sirte's television station, with its pair of ruined satellite dishes. It runs east through houses and expansive villas to an open area of sand skirted by the grey hulks of unfinished buildings before reaching the "high rises" – long feared by the government fighters' commanders.
The high rises are really not so high, a cluster of two dozen buildings in a district backing on to the sea, apartments and shops and offices, an area of diminished sovereignty that runs out just short of a tall aerial.
It is difficult to know how many civilians have been trapped, although Médecins Sans Frontières suggested on Friday that as many as 10,000 are still suffering what Fajla and his family went through. In places it has been flooded thigh-deep with a rank mixture of water and sewage that has settled in the dips below a low, narrow ridge that runs just above the coastal road.
The discovery of four groups of bodies numbering between 30 and 42, shot with their hands tied, has hinted darkly at executions in the area controlled by Gaddafi forces. At first it was believed they were captured government fighters. Now it appears they were civilians of Sirte.
"They are not from the katiba [government militias]," said Dr Mohammed Abdel Rauf, whom I met near the pocket's southern front line. "The fighters came to see if the dead were among their missing and did not recognise the bodies. They had been divided into groups. There was a group who were dark-skinned and another group with lighter skin. Some had green army jackets. They were aged between 18 and 35-40, although I did not look at their faces.
"There was a cousin of one of the men who I chatted with." Rauf relayed the story of the cousin's dead relative, how the Gaddafi troops took him when they couldn't find his father and told the man's mother she could have her son if the father surrendered himself. When he did not surrender, they killed the son. He supplied his own theory for the other dead. "I think they were all citizens of Sirte who refused to fight."
Then there are snatches to be pieced together. First, there are clues to the strong loyalties of those still inside. In a recently captured house a child's homework project is found, a large sheet of yellow paper covered with pictures of Gaddafi fighters routing the "rats of the revolution". A government fighter saw the picture and flew into a rage, grabbing the sheet and tearing it into pieces.
And in house after house there are snapshots or stylised pictures of Gaddafi and his family. Inside one of the government ambulances I found a group of doctors leafing through a pile of photographs an inch thick that somebody had collected: Gaddafi in close-up, Gaddafi sitting in a group, Gaddafi greeting friends – all signs of a cult of personality that permeated much of Sirte. Explaining, perhaps, its bitter and intransigent resistance even to the very end.
Then there are clues to the morale of those inside the pocket. Fighters who have captured those left inside, fighting to the end, say it is every man for himself within the pocket. That it is chaos.
Certainly soldiers captured in the last few days look haunted and terrified, bruised and crying from beatings they have received. Others have been thin and emaciated.
What is certain is the damage that has been wrought on District 2 by the relentless fire levelled at it over the past three days. On Dubai Street, where the road curves round into a narrow canyon of three-storey and four-storey buildings, flooded at road level, the government fighters' southern advance has been held up, and it is possible to glimpse the damage from a front line sectored by machine-gun fire.
Shells have blasted through walls and windows. Where walls have not been scorched, they have been smashed through by anti-aircraft guns fired from pick-up trucks or punctured by .50-calibre rounds.
Every few minutes on Friday another shell would hit the rooftops, some only a few hundred metres distant, sending up clouds of white smoke and concrete dust that merged with the grey smoke of fires. "We think there are 200 to 300 of them left, according to our intelligence," said Abdul Salem Rishi, one of the commanders of the eastern forces from Benghazi who have been assaulting the pocket from close to Sirte's coastal road. "We listen to their radios, but for the last two days we have heard nothing."
It is a silence that prefigures the end of the resistance in District 2, in Sirte itself and of its last pocket of followers of Abu Muammar, which might happen in a day or in 10 days, but cannot be avoided.
Fajla, a Malian driver who worked at the Ibn Sana hospital when the besieging government forces announced their intention to take Sirte in September, was owed 3,736 Libyan dinars, a small fortune. So while others fled he stayed in the city with his five children, aged between four months and nine years old, and his wife and a cousin.
His home was in District 2, at the heart of the last remaining pocket of pro-Gaddafi loyalist fighters, still being pounded yesterday by artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Until Friday that is, when Fajla and his family slipped out.
I found them sitting by a wall near the field hospital outside the city, uncertain what to do or where to go. "I left the hospital on 15 September, the day the fighting started," he explained. "I haven't been back since. I came to Libya 13 years ago to earn money. For 10 of those, I worked as a tailor. For the last three years, I worked in the hospital." He showed his pass from Ibn Sana. It described him as a driver and a tailor.
"The only time I went out of my house was to search for food for my children. I had a car from the hospital. After a while, they would not let me get food from the shops. All the shops were closed. They said: 'Bring your family to the security building.' Outside was a place where you could buy food.
"We were in my house with another Malian family of three and hid in the basement. Most days I slept and hid in my house. I did not know what was happening outside.
'We were lucky. Nothing happened to our house. All the other houses around ours were hit by shells and missiles. Most of the houses were empty. They fired during the day, but not after seven at night. Then it was quieter.
"There was water, but we had no electricity. I was not frightened for myself but for my children and my family. Every day we talked about escaping. My life was in the hands of God.
"Then three days ago the other family went and did not return. So on Friday, before seven in the morning, I went out of the house and walked 100 metres. No one fired at me, so I went back for the family and we walked out with the clothes that we were wearing. Then some government fighters picked us up and took us here.
"I would have left Libya in February," he added sadly. "But I needed the money."
Details of conditions for civilians and pro-Gaddafi troops in the last pocket held by Gaddafi fighters in Sirte's District 2, a coastal strip no wider than 700 metres and often narrower, and perhaps a kilometre and a half in length, are difficult to come by.
The pocket centred on this neigbourhood is defined by a handful of landmarks. At its western end lies Sirte's television station, with its pair of ruined satellite dishes. It runs east through houses and expansive villas to an open area of sand skirted by the grey hulks of unfinished buildings before reaching the "high rises" – long feared by the government fighters' commanders.
The high rises are really not so high, a cluster of two dozen buildings in a district backing on to the sea, apartments and shops and offices, an area of diminished sovereignty that runs out just short of a tall aerial.
It is difficult to know how many civilians have been trapped, although Médecins Sans Frontières suggested on Friday that as many as 10,000 are still suffering what Fajla and his family went through. In places it has been flooded thigh-deep with a rank mixture of water and sewage that has settled in the dips below a low, narrow ridge that runs just above the coastal road.
The discovery of four groups of bodies numbering between 30 and 42, shot with their hands tied, has hinted darkly at executions in the area controlled by Gaddafi forces. At first it was believed they were captured government fighters. Now it appears they were civilians of Sirte.
"They are not from the katiba [government militias]," said Dr Mohammed Abdel Rauf, whom I met near the pocket's southern front line. "The fighters came to see if the dead were among their missing and did not recognise the bodies. They had been divided into groups. There was a group who were dark-skinned and another group with lighter skin. Some had green army jackets. They were aged between 18 and 35-40, although I did not look at their faces.
"There was a cousin of one of the men who I chatted with." Rauf relayed the story of the cousin's dead relative, how the Gaddafi troops took him when they couldn't find his father and told the man's mother she could have her son if the father surrendered himself. When he did not surrender, they killed the son. He supplied his own theory for the other dead. "I think they were all citizens of Sirte who refused to fight."
Then there are snatches to be pieced together. First, there are clues to the strong loyalties of those still inside. In a recently captured house a child's homework project is found, a large sheet of yellow paper covered with pictures of Gaddafi fighters routing the "rats of the revolution". A government fighter saw the picture and flew into a rage, grabbing the sheet and tearing it into pieces.
And in house after house there are snapshots or stylised pictures of Gaddafi and his family. Inside one of the government ambulances I found a group of doctors leafing through a pile of photographs an inch thick that somebody had collected: Gaddafi in close-up, Gaddafi sitting in a group, Gaddafi greeting friends – all signs of a cult of personality that permeated much of Sirte. Explaining, perhaps, its bitter and intransigent resistance even to the very end.
Then there are clues to the morale of those inside the pocket. Fighters who have captured those left inside, fighting to the end, say it is every man for himself within the pocket. That it is chaos.
Certainly soldiers captured in the last few days look haunted and terrified, bruised and crying from beatings they have received. Others have been thin and emaciated.
What is certain is the damage that has been wrought on District 2 by the relentless fire levelled at it over the past three days. On Dubai Street, where the road curves round into a narrow canyon of three-storey and four-storey buildings, flooded at road level, the government fighters' southern advance has been held up, and it is possible to glimpse the damage from a front line sectored by machine-gun fire.
Shells have blasted through walls and windows. Where walls have not been scorched, they have been smashed through by anti-aircraft guns fired from pick-up trucks or punctured by .50-calibre rounds.
Every few minutes on Friday another shell would hit the rooftops, some only a few hundred metres distant, sending up clouds of white smoke and concrete dust that merged with the grey smoke of fires. "We think there are 200 to 300 of them left, according to our intelligence," said Abdul Salem Rishi, one of the commanders of the eastern forces from Benghazi who have been assaulting the pocket from close to Sirte's coastal road. "We listen to their radios, but for the last two days we have heard nothing."
It is a silence that prefigures the end of the resistance in District 2, in Sirte itself and of its last pocket of followers of Abu Muammar, which might happen in a day or in 10 days, but cannot be avoided.
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