Germany to lend €100m to Libyan rebels

International Medical Corps medics treat injured rebel fighters at a field hospital near Misrata's frontline. The rebel city is struggling to pay for essentials.

Germany has announced that it will lend €100m to the Libyan opposition to ease a growing humanitarian crisis in rebel-controlled parts of the country.

The £88m loan to the national transitional council (NTC) was secured against frozen Libyan government funds. The money comes as the rebels struggle to pay for essentials, a fact that was exacerbated on Sunday when government missiles struck the oil tanks that fuel the besieged city of Misrata's power generators.

"We have decided to provide the NTC with urgently needed funding for civil and humanitarian measures," said the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, in a statement. "People are suffering more and more from this, particularly in eastern Libya."

Five months into the war, cash is running low and the rebels have tried and failed to get access to billions of dollars held in Libyan government accounts.

The situation is most acute in Misrata, Libya's third largest city, whose only route to the outside world is by sea. The normally affluent city was well stocked with supplies when war broke out, with petrol tanks and grain silos full. But supplies are running low, along with the cash to pay for them.

Prices for goods ranging from clothes to fruit have skyrocketed in recent weeks. "You cannot pay for everything you need in Misrata now, you cannot pay for juice, the children must have fruit and we cannot pay for it," said Bashir Al Zawawi, a lecturer in business administration at Misrata University.

On Sunday, one of the four giant tanks holding the city's oil supplies was hit by three grad rockets fired from government lines, leaving a huge pall of smoke over the city.

The most acute shortages are felt in Misrata's battered hospitals. "We have a shortage of everything," Dr Khalid Abufalgha, head of the city's health council, told the Guardian. "We are receiving humanitarian aid but it is never enough."

The rebels say Qatar, one of their key backers, has offered an "air bridge" to fly in food and medical supplies fly out wounded, but only when it is safe to land at the airport. Engineers have cleared the runway of debris and cannibalised wrecked machinery to provide fuel and power for landing planes, but the government frontlines are too near to make landings safe.

"We need this airport," said the airport's director, Abdul Hamid Garwash. "From our side we're ready, but permission is needed from Nato."

Earlier this month the NTC spokesman, Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, complained that promises of payments from western donors in May remained unfulfilled. Western officials counter that payments are being held up because the NTC is unable to present a fully transparent accountancy system to allow funds to be checked, and to guarantee that money earmarked for aid is not used for weapons.

Nato remains outwardly confident that however bad things are for the rebels, they were worse for government forces, saying that weeks of bombing had inflicted significant damage on Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli, where bombs reportedly hit early on Sunday morning.

"Gaddafi has for decades hidden from the Libyan people behind these walls," said Major General Nick Pope, spokesman for Britain's chief of the defence staff.

The Gaddafi government insists it remains open to a negotiated solution to the war, with spokesman Moussa Ibrahim saying Libyan officials had a "productive dialogue" with US officials last week.

Informal peace proposals will be canvassed this week by special UN envoy to Libya, Abdul Elah al-Khatib, a Jordanian senator. But the sticking point in any negotiations is likely to be the insistence of the US, UK, France and Russia that Gaddafi steps down as a precondition to talks, which Ibrahim said would be rejected.

Rebels Want Qaddafi to Face ICC

On July 22, the deputy head of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC), Ali Essawi said that he wanted to see Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi stand trial at the International Criminal Court in Hague.

Deputy head of Libyan NTC Ali Essawi said, "We would like to have Gaddafi taken to the ICC, we would like justice to play its role and we would like to see the crimes paid also. There is no contradictory between the two. No-one can forgive him, even if he left the country. His crimes have touched all over the world, not only the Libyans, even other people and other countries and his terrorist actions, and we cannot forgive him on behalf of the others also."

Ali Essawi added, "Negotiations will be only on the departure of Gaddafi. We will not negotiate on his staying in Libya or ruling the Libyans, this is in principle. His statement belongs to him, as far as we know that Gaddafi will not step down. He is insisting on the killing of the Libyans, he is insisting on the revenge from the Libyans and he will not leave the country or the power"

Last month, the Hague-based ICC issued warrants for the arrest of Gaddafi, his son Saif Al-Islam and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah Al-Senussi on charges that they ordered the killing of protestors.
Meanwhile, on July 21, Gaddafi addressed thousands of supporters in an audio message saying that he would never negotiate with the rebels. NTC officials rejected his statement.

Lack of Coordination Hampers Libya's Rebels

Ahmad Harari, a Libyan rebel fighting to overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, recounted how he was almost killed last week. He was part of a small group of fighters assigned to defend a front- line position in Qawalish, a village in Libya's arid western highlands.

Then Colonel Qaddafi's military attacked, rushing forward in pickup trucks. Mr. Harari said he had only 18 cartridges for his rifle, roughly the same amount of ammunition carried by everyone in his group. Within minutes he ran out. "Every man lost all of his bullets and tried to escape," he said. A friend was captured, killed and mutilated, he said, but the others managed to get away.

While the Libyan rebels have carved out an enclave in the west, the dearth of ammunition in Mr. Harari's group points to one of the continuing drains on their military strength - an absence of coordination, even on matters as basic as making sure that ample ammunition is provided to the front-line fighters. As Libya's uprising-turned-desert- war enters its sixth month, the rebels in the mountains have assembled into small bands of local fighters.

These groups - often named for the towns the fighters come from - have demonstrated both an eagerness to fight and a willingness to work with almost anyone who can help them reach their goal of ousting the Qaddafi family from power. But coordination between them, as well as logistical help from their higher commands and foreign supporters, has not developed in important ways.

In eastern Libya, the rebel authorities talk of making a national army; here in the west, the state of official disorganization makes the prospects for such a force unlikely in the near term. Interviews with dozens of rebels present a portrait of a guerrilla force that acts less like a coherent structure than a network of pickup fighting clubs. Groups share common goals but are undermined by local rivalries. Orders from the senior regional command are followed arbitrarily, including, in Qawalish, orders not to loot.

Information flows only partly up and down the chain of command. Many fighters say they suspect others of hoarding weapons and ammunition, and withholding essential supplies. And when they fight, the different groups can move haphazardly about the battlefield, each according to its own will, while the senior commanders - many of them former officers in Colonel Qaddafi's army - remain far back, out of harm and sight. Some former pro-Qaddafi officers have declined to participate in the fighting, the rank-and-file rebels say, making the chief value of these defectors their political significance, not how they can influence the direction of a bitter, village-by- village ground war.

One fighter from Gharyan, one of the cities held by Colonel Qaddafi's forces that is now in the rebels' sights, described the Gharyani fighters' request to a defector, an air force colonel, to lead them to reclaim their homes. "We asked him to be our commander," said the fighter, Ziad, who requested that his last name be withheld to protect his family. "He said, 'No, the only thing I know is office jobs.' And we don't have a commander yet."

The rebels in the mountains cut across many boundaries, and often the composition of their units breaks through distinctions in class, ethnicity and tribe. Side by side in fighting groups are university students and their professors, laborers and accountants, lawyers and petroleum engineers. In one group, an air traffic controller worked beside a lecturer from Gharyan University's faculty of law.

Few of these men claim to have had any military experience before taking up arms this year. Considering their circumstances and backgrounds, their tactical success has been remarkable. The impoverished population began the war with few arms with which to fight a conventional force, yet the rebels, aided by NATO air power, have chased Colonel Qaddafi's soldiers from much of Libya's highlands.

Many villages on the high plateau today are independent of Colonel Qaddafi's rule. Some, like Jadu, are also safe enough that families who had fled the fighting have returned. But there is also a strong sense among these men that what is behind them, from a military perspective, was not as challenging as what lies ahead, and that their low level of organization may add to the difficulties. Politically and socially, many of the villages captured thus far were strongly anti-Qaddafi. But many of the towns and cities on the roads to Tripoli, the capital, have split loyalties.

A few tilt in favor of the Qaddafi clan. Intertribal grievances have become a visible factor, too - which could make the fighting fiercer and more widespread. And tactically, the approaches to some of the cities lie across the open desert, where the rebels could find themselves more vulnerable to the Qaddafi garrisons' artillery and mortar fire. Moreover, as Colonel Qaddafi's forces have suffered attrition, they have seemed to rely more on land mines to defend their positions, a menace that could drive up rebel losses when they move forward.

With the holy month of Ramadan set to begin in early August, and daytime desert temperatures often climbing above 100 degrees, the pace of fighting has slowed. The duties of many groups are often as simple as rotating through daylong shifts watching over the front. But these shifts offer insights into the weakness of the rebel command.

Rebels from Yafran standing duty at the front line on Monday said that their fighting group had fewer rifles than men, and when they were assigned to front-line duties they were issued a rifle for one day that they had to return to their base the next. They are also issued little ammunition. And tellingly, in more than two weeks of interviews with fighters, not one said he had seen the rifles and machine guns France has said it supplied to the rebels in the spring.

Each man said his rifle had been scavenged from the battlefield. Many wondered who among their leaders had kept or withheld the guns. The shortages are a drag on the rebels' strength. Before the recent battle for Kikla, the rebels said they had more than 200 fighters, but only 89 military rifles and limited ammunition. "We have belief," said Ibrahim Suraya, the leader of the local civilian council. "This is our gun." The mountains are awash with bravado, and many fighters echo such statements. God is with us, they say. Victory or death, others add.

Still, others wonder why there is enough ammunition to fire in long bursts at funerals in the cities, but not enough for battle. Jamal Akhmad, a 52-year-old petroleum engineer waiting with younger men for the next battle, was looking for more than slogans. He spoke calmly and without bitterness as he shared a front-line soldier's view. His complaint was as old as revolution and war. "People get comfortable, sitting in their chairs, and they forget about the people," he said. "Even this is true of our own committee."