The First Four Days of Libyan Revolution By Simon Assaf Feb 22, 2011 The first indication that anti government protests had become an uprising emerged on the afternoon of Friday 18 February in Benghazi, Libya's second city some 650km east of the capital Tripoli. On the day before, Thursday 17 February, small groups of Benghazi youths had answered the call to join peaceful protests calling for reforms. They set up tents in the city square and began painting signs, anticipating that riot police would attempt, at some point, to move them on. Instead regime thugs appeared and fired into the protesters, killing scores of peaceful activists. The next morning large crowds turned out for the funerals of the young people. As the procession passed security buildings regime loyalists opened fire again. And the cycle of killings, funerals and more killings began. On the Friday the days of protest turned into a day of rage. Huge funerals turned into mass angry demonstrations that swept the city disarming police and setting alight state security buildings. Demonstrators seized a radio station and immediately began broadcasting instructions to the youth fighting the state security forces. Reports flooded in to the station on the progress of the uprising. Over the next hours the station broadcast reports, appeals to other regions, and discussions on the strategy of the revolution. What was striking were the number of women involved in the on-air discussions. At one point a voice interrupted with a desperate appeal: “Citizens take control of the airport and block the airport runway, they are trying to land troops.� Messages sent from outlying areas also warned that regime forces under the command of Gadaffi's clan were closing in. "Any citizen with a truck or 4by4 block the road near the airport. Fill the cars with sand," the announcer begged. Then he made a plea to soldiers garrisoned in the city. "Now is your time to stop this criminal, this tyrant. Come over to the people. First Tunisia, then Egypt, now us. Come back to the people" Another urged all citizens to join the uprising, "Today we can have victory. What is victory? Our freedom, our rights, our dignity. Libya is returning to the people." With all mobile phones cuts, the station became the centre for the coordination of the uprising. Delegations appeared from neighbourhoods to declare for the revolution, and after realising that landlines were still working, the rebels began contacting other villages and towns. Word began to spread that the nearby city of el-Baydah had joined the revolt, then towns along the Mediterranean coast also declared for the revolution. It became clear that there were now desperate and uneven battles in many cities in Libya. A Tunisian revolutionary called in. "Don't have fear. We are with you. The people of Egypt are with you. The whole Umma is with you, urging your victory."
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Then a woman took the microphone: "Look at the joy in Egypt and Tunisia. We deserve this one hundred times over. Midan Tahrir teaches us to remain peaceful, and to use peaceful methods. It teaches us that we must have the people. In Egypt they had all the people." Another woman said: "Mothers wake your sons. Our time for freedom is now." Others called in to say that people were arming themselves with sticks and knives to defend their neighbourhoods. Then ominous calls came warning that heavily armed "foreign mercenaries" and regime thugs were entering the city. By Saturday morning the youth running the radio station were desperately reporting that Gaddafi's forces were sweeping through neighbourhoods, in one incident women and children became trapped on a bridge and jumped to their deaths rather than be captured. That Saturday turned into a bloody and desperate struggle to hold the city that was fast becoming the centre of a national uprising. If Benghazi could hold, then revolution could survive one more day. Similar reports from other towns and cities flooded in. Mercenaries were everywhere, they said. They were killing indiscriminately. Then the tone began to change. Sections of the police and some military units were coming over to the the revolution, religious and tribal leaders called on their supporters to rise up. One religious leader called on all Libyans to join the rebellion, but asked them not to destroy public and private property. Only “regime buildings�, he said. The rebels took a gamble on approaching the main Benghazi army barracks to call directly on soldiers to join the revolution. What happened next remains unclear. But according to eyewitness reports the rebels were enticed forward by officers claiming that the base wanted to surrender. As news spread that the garrison was about to fall, crowds rushed to the gates only to discover it was a trick. Soldiers turned their weapons, including anti-aircraft cannons, mortars and heavy machine-gun fire, on the crowds. Long bursts of gunfire could then be heard inside the base. It emerged later that conscripts had been cut down in a failed attempt at mutiny. As news spread of the massacre, the city rose in huge rebellion. Tens of thousands of people swarmed into the streets that afternoon. Armed with sticks, stones and few captured rifles, they cornered the heavily armed mercenaries and regime loyalists inside the main military base and the state security building. The state security building fell first. That night large crowds gathered to defend the radio station. In the background panicked cries could be heard that one Gaddafi's elite commando units was arriving outside the station. This was followed by a roar of cheers when the commanding officer declared that his troops had decided to join the revolution. These troops, along with armed civilians, finally overran the base late on Saturday night. The revolution in Benghazi had won an important battle. But it could not stand alone. The fate of the revolution was now in the hands of Tripoli. Tripoli_the gates of hell [Start] As the revolts swept towns and cities across Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was safe in Tripoli. The
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tyrant flooded the capital with his supporters, regime thugs and loyal troops to pre-empt any protest. But as the appeals from Benghazi reached Tripoli, many young people flooded into the streets. These first attempts at demonstrations were cruelly suppressed. Mercenaries and thugs roamed the streets gunning down anyone they found. Neighbourhoods began desperate attempts to defend their communities. Chants "we will defend you Benghazi" rang out as youths made desperate attempts to take the streets. The revolt was fast closing in. Towns and villages near the capital began to move. Crowds destroyed state security buildings, burnt police stations across the country and torched one of Gaddafi's palaces. The world seemed to be closing in of the dictator. A respected religious figure appealed to the army to abandon the regime. He ordered soldiers to turn their guns on the "mercenaries" and called on the major tribes to march on Tripoli and stop the massacres. This call was echoed by 50 religious leaders. Outlying towns and villages mobilised to march on the capital. All Libyans, irrespective of their ethnicity, religious belief or region, gathered in their hundreds of thousands to form huge processions. Gaddafi would surely fall under the sheer scale of this movement. On the Sunday people believed that the life of his regime could be measured in hours. Workers in the crucial oil industry declared a strike, they were joined by workers in the industrial city of Misratah, east of Tripoli. The process that had delivered stunning victories in Tunisia and Egypt were at work again — small protests that turned into mass demonstrations, security forces driven off the streets, units of the army coming over, and the decisive wave of mass strikes that sealed the regime's fate. Gaddafi son Said el-Islam, appeared on state TV that evening to deliver a rambling and incoherent speech blaming "drugs, coffee-drinking Arabs, immigrants and other foreigners" for the violence. After he finished the crowds stormed the TV station. Amid wild rumours that Gaddafi had fled, a jubilant march closed in on Green Square in the centre of the city. But they were ambushed. The regime reacted by opening the gates of hell. As with the cities of Benghazi and el-Baydah the day before, the people of Tripoli were suddenly confronted by heavily armed regime diehards with murderous intent. Gaddafi's desperate stand, including ordering warplanes and navy ships to bomb cities and neighbourhoods, were matched by harrowing tales of mass killings of soldiers who refused orders to fire on the people. The sheer scale and brutality of the crackdown accelerated the collapse of the regime. Libyan diplomats join the revolution, one resigned in the middle of an interview with Al-Jazeera Arabic. Embassy staff walked out of embassies across the world to join the throngs of protesters outside. Groups of army officers released statements commanding troops to disobey orders. But the Libyan revolution remains in a perilous position, and the price that has been paid in so lives so far has been very heavy. Among the scores of dead are many of the idealistic young people who dreamed of peaceful
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change. Many of them have disappeared, or fell in the first days. The fate of the revolution remains uncertain as Socialist Worker went to press. But the Libyan revolution has shown that even under the most brutal dictators, and merciless repression, the spirit of these revolts is changing the world.
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