Libya's battle for Brega: 'I've not had any training, but I've seen plenty of action films' Much of Libya's rebellion is being fought by a dishevelled army of shopkeepers and waiters, welders and engineers, writes Adrian Blomfield among the insurgents in Brega. Loyalist army units last week captured both the oil port of Ras Lanuf and Brega, whose refinery supplies many of the power stations in the east, bringing them to within 150 miles of Benghazi, Libya's second city and the rebellion's chief stronghold. But by the early hours of Saturday morning, both were once more under rebel control. The success of the insurrectionists, at first glance at least, remains a mystery. The uprising ostensibly has 6,000 trained soldiers from defecting battalions to call on, but much of the rebellion is being fought by welders and engineers, shopkeepers and waiters, a dishevelled army of civilian volunteers commanded by a handful of military officers who have agreed to join the fight. In minivans, battered saloon cars and the occasional pickup truck mounted with an anti-aircraft gun, this motley band of ingenue irregulars charges out of Benghazi every time the call to battle is sounded. A seething mass of people, many wasting their ammunition by firing it frenziedly into the air, gathers on the desert approach to the town, among them Osama Hamad al-Hasi, who has been confined to a wheelchair since losing both legs in an accident ten years ago. "I've lost my legs, what more can I lose," he said. "Your life, perhaps," a friend joked, before placing a bolt-action rifle across the stumps protruding from his torso. Others seem to have no weapons at all, arming themselves instead with whatever they could find in their homes. One had a machete, a second a barbecue skewer. "There aren't enough guns to go round," explained Ali Muftah Mughrabi, a purveyor of women's clothes in civilian life, who had come to defend Ajdabiya with a hammer. There was little evidence of formation of coordination on the frontline either, where men charged forward, firing wildly, heedless of the pleaded orders shouted by hapless commanders. Yet the disorder seemed to reap dividends in Brega, as the rebels first pushed Col Gaddafi's men out if its airport and oilfield, forcing them to retreat to the town's university. They may have been frightened of airstrikes, but these men showed little fear in the face of an onslaught of artillery and anti-aircraft rounds, directed not into the sky but at the shapeless mass of men fighting in Brega's sand dunes. "I've not had any training," said one fighter. "But I've seen plenty of action films." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ning-but-Ive-seen-plenty-of-action-films.html LOL, these guys are nuts.
A rag-tag army like this once drove England from the colonies and Russia from Afghanistan. Don't underestimate the power of a collective army of people who are determined to see a cause to its end.
Exactly the Viet Cong kicked our asses with AK's and the same for the Jihad fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. A highly motivated person who isn't afraid to die is a formidable enemy.
America would spend tens of billions to force a war on a foreign country in the name of spreading freedom. Yet when freedom literally comes knocking on our front door, we hide behind carefully phrased political statements and do nothing. At least airdrop a few crates of weapons to those guys. /facepalm
It is not the rag tag revolutionary glory but the inept skills of the Libyan government army that cannot defeat the 'part time' battlefielders. 1 in 8 person in Libya is a foreigner which shows that oil rich nation has most of its people merely living off the oil income and letting others do the daily work.
Hasn't anyone learned? The 50 years of Imperialism is over. We are bust financially. Why don't you ask the same of the Brits? They are buddies with Libya. Not our problem. A bunch of cheap talk from the French. Let them enforce the no fly they want so much.
I also am in favor of noninterventionalism, but my heart goes out to these revolutionaries. Here's a quote from a different article from Wash Post today: "We still fear another attack, so everyone is preparing molotov cocktails that we are making from Pepsi-Cola bottles," said Salah Abed El-Aziz, a 60-year-old architect in Misurata. "The morale in the city is very high. It was a beautiful battle; the price was high. But this is the price we have to pay for our freedom."