Libya's Ajdabiya retaken by rebels: what next for coalition forces?

It’s not that our driver has been hedging his bets, but he did keep a green Gaddafi flag under the car seat just in case. Everyone here brandishes the red, green and black flag of the uprising, with its star and crescent in the centre, but if Gaddafi’s forces had retaken eastern Libya, green flags would have suddenly appeared from nowhere as insurance against retribution.

Today, as we entered newly ‘liberated’ Ajdabiya, he decided that he would not need that policy. As he whipped out the green cloth, ‘shabab’ fighters reached into our car and tore it into pieces. One rag was used to wipe the windscreen. Someone made a great play of blowing his nose on another.  And – insult of insults – another cleaned his shoes with the third piece. Our driver laughed and laughed.

The fighters at the checkpoint were wild with excitement. Every car that came through was cheered.  Someone climbed into the cab of a yellow digger, scooped up a burnt out tank and turned it over like a dead cockroach. Fighters climbed on the abandoned armour and shot their Kalashnikovs into the air.

Three weeks ago, we were staying in a hotel in Ajdabiya but Gaddafi’s forces retook it and drove out the rebels. Since then, the people have been besieged. Yesterday we met a man who described how British and French air strikes on Thursday night took out the tanks and armoured personnel carriers which had surrounded the town.  Gaddafi’s men, he said, then came in on foot, knocking on doors asking for food and transport. They stole cars and, it seems, drove west, leaving Ajdabiya for the rebels to retake this morning. We saw empty ammo boxes suggesting they may have run out of ammunition.

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As we drove in, we could hear fighting to the west but most of the gunfire was celebratory. A group of fighters drove up to the hospital with the body of one of their comrades in the back of a pickup.  We don’t know how many died in the last three weeks of fighting.  A man beckoned us into his house. A rocket had gone straight through the wall, and the upper storey had been destroyed.

“It was a strong house,” he said, as we stumbled through the rubble. “My father, my brothers and I built it.” Luckily, the family had been eating downstairs, so no-one had been hurt in the attack, but he said he had no idea where his mother and sisters had fled some days earlier. “I am just hoping they are all right,” he said.

This evening a fighter we’ve met on several occasions called to say he was heading for Brega, the next town to the west.  It’s a small oil town, and the people fled weeks ago. If Gaddafi’s forces need resupply, they won’t find anything there or in Ras Lanuf, the next town along. So they may have to pull back to Sirte, Gaddafi’s home town.

The question now is whether the coalition will attack Gaddafi’s troops on the road west, or whether that will be deemed a breach of the UN mandate which is confined to protecting civilians. The fear here is that if allied airstrikes don’t take out what remains of his forces, they’ll regroup and come back to Ajdabiya again.