Loyalties questioned

29 July 2011 Last updated at 14:01 GMT By Ian Pannell BBC News, Misrata Opponents say there have always been questions over Gen Younes' loyalties The head of the Libyan rebel armed forces, Gen Abdel Fatah Younes, has been shot and killed by unknown assailants.

He was gunned down on his way to answer questions about the lack of military momentum by the opposition, but reports say he was suspected of having ties to the forces of Col Muammar Gaddafi.

Gen Younes was a lifelong Gaddafi loyalist, helping the Libyan leader seize power in a coup in 1969.

As the former head of the country's Special Forces and the sitting interior minister he was the highest profile defector to the new rebel council in Benghazi and was rapidly appointed as the chief of the rebel armed forces.

But suspicions lingered about his true allegiance, fed by claims in Tripoli that there was someone on the ruling council who was in effect a double-agent.

According to the New York Times, Col Gaddafi's daughter Aisha rather mischievously refused to rule out the name of Gen Younes as the culprit in an interview she gave in April.

But it was also the lack of momentum on the battlefield and the inexplicable bit-part played by Special Forces defectors who should have had more of a leading role on the frontline that also nurtured doubts.

Some rebel fighters refused to take orders from him, giving their loyalty instead to the general's rival, the rebel commander Khalifa Hifter, who could well be named to succeed his now dead adversary.

Gaddafi contacts?

Publicly Gen Younes was recalled for questioning about military operations, but there are allegations he was suspected of maintaining contacts with the Gaddafi regime.

So who killed him? Disgruntled rebel fighters, rivals looking for power or Gaddafi loyalists?

Although an arrest has been made, no names or motives have been made public and the circumstances surrounding the bodies remains unclear.

Nadia Darrez in her damaged home in the centre of Misrata

It makes for fine political theatre and it bears all the hallmarks of a Shakespearian tragedy (think Hamlet meets Macbeth).

If you are sitting in Tripoli this must be manna from heaven.

But if you are in Benghazi this is awful timing for a movement continually struggling to gain momentum on the battlefield.

And it could hardly be worse for those governments (Britain being the latest) who have staked their diplomatic credibility on the rebel government in Benghazi.

Tribal divisions

What matters now is the impact this has. The death taps into tribal divisions within the opposition and some members of the general's Obeidi tribe are already armed and angry at what has happened.

Just when the rebels are desperate to drive forwards on the battlefield it leaves them without a leader. And for those countries like Britain that have officially recognised the National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya it feeds serious doubts and concerns about the rebels' ability to end this conflict and their ability to function as a cohesive government.

One of the main criticisms of the Nato-led operation is that it was hastily conceived without a clear strategy or exit-route. Nothing that has happened this week will allay those fears.

But the hatred of Col Gaddafi and the craving to see him overthrown may be strong enough to keep this disparate and often shambolic rebel alliance together.

No Plan B

For many, like Nadia Darrez, a young lawyer in Misrata, people have sacrificed too much and there is no going back, no Plan B.

She has been sifting through what remains of her family home on Tripoli Street, an address synonymous with the ferocious battle that took place in the city. The flat has been devastated; great holes have been punched through the walls and ceiling, the floor is littered with broken glass, masonry and bullets.

Nadia was born here. She had four brothers when this battle began. One was killed by Col Gaddafi's men. The other three are now volunteer soldiers of the rebel army.

There is little left here but anger, grief and a desire for justice.

"We need our fighters to capture him [Col Gaddafi] and all those around him and we're not going to stop this fight until this happens," she says.

What is unclear is whether that unity of purpose is enough to allow the rebels to prevail or even keep them united.

The West is frustrated by the slow progress of this conflict and whatever the facts about the mysterious death of Abdel Fatah Younes, it will give Britain and the rest of the Nato-led alliance little confidence that this five-month old conflict will end quickly or cleanly.

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Learning to cope

29 July 2011 Last updated at 01:08 GMT By Gavin Lee BBC News, Benghazi Many teachers have not been paid in months

How do you provide stability and education for children amid the turmoil of a civil war?

That is the challenge currently being grappled with in Libya.

In Benghazi, which the rebels have held for most of the five-month uprising, schools are struggling to provide anything like a normal education for their pupils.

As I stared out of the window of the Alsuisi family car, we passed upturned vehicles, a burnt tank and the bullet-ridden walls of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi's military barracks.

This is the morning school run for seven-year-old Awwab and his eight-year-old sister, Buruuj.

Acting differently

While the nearest frontline is now around 200km (125 miles) further west in Brega, the landscape has been deeply scarred here by the fighting that took place back in March.

The children's father, Dr Abdul Salem Alsuisi, told me that he wondered whether his children would be affected psychologically by this journey that they have to take everyday.

Few children are able to go to school in Libya

"First of all I was a bit worried, but now they have been accustomed to that. I think they feel sad at first and then they started enduring the situation and living normally. Especially when they started going to school," he said.

Awwab and Buruuj are among the lucky few that can still go to a school in Libya, as all of them across the country closed five months ago.

Here in Benghazi, a handful of schools have been reopened but for activities, rather than actual lessons. They are run by local unpaid teachers, such as Naeema Kawofya.

"The last time I was paid was May. The reason I want to continue teaching is that I don't want the children out in the street. I want them to go to school," she says.

She also says she notices that the children have started to act differently.

"Of course, they have been affected. Sometimes they don't want to come to school. They say 'maybe the mercenaries will kill us. I want to go and see my dad, I want to go and see my mum. What if Gaddafi kills us'.

"Some of them are very scared to come here and you can see it in their behaviour," she adds.

The main aim for the rebel authority, the National Transitional Council, is to have every school in Benghazi open for some activities by September and to pay the teachers.

In addition, there is the task of looking after children who have been turned into internal refugees by the conflict, often after having witnessed horrific events. 

At least 70,000 people are estimated to be living in makeshift camps in Benghazi after escaping from areas of intense fighting around Misrata and Brega. 

Drawing weapons

Some are staying in displacement centres, often offices abandoned months ago by foreign companies. 

Aid agencies are trying to provide activities for children displaced in the conflict

I visited one of the sites, 30 miles east of Benghazi on the barren plains of the east coast.

Families are staying in the empty labourers' quarters of a foreign fishing company, and many of the displaced children there have witnessed unimaginable violence.

Aid agencies and volunteers are working to provide activities for them.

Jenny Humphries, from Save the Children, says many of the children are deeply traumatised by what they have seen.

"What [we have] been doing is allowing them to express fears and concerns that they have through art and through drawing, and when we first started working with them some of their images were of quite horrific scenes of rockets and tanks and weapons and actual death scenes," she says.

The volunteers say the drawings over time have become less violent, less filled with hate.

But the question the children ask is still the same: when can they go home?

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Fractured front

30 July 2011 Last updated at 09:03 GMT By Shashank Joshi Associate fellow, Royal United Services Institute Abdul Fattah Younes defected after decades serving Col Gaddafi On Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague hailed the Libyan rebels' "increasing legitimacy, competence, and success".

On Thursday, with impeccable timing, it transpired that those rebels might have murdered their top military commander.

If Abdul Fattah Younes did indeed die at the hands of soldiers he nominally led, it would be little surprise.

Gen Younes was a man with many enemies.

He had defected to the rebels only after four decades of friendship with and service to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

Rumours of his lingering ties to the regime seemed to have caught up with him after he was summoned by a panel of judges in Benghazi.

That came on the heels of severe criticism of his military leadership for a series of territorial losses early in the uprising.

The furious reaction from members of Gen Younes' Obeidi tribe, amongst the largest in eastern Libya, indicates the resurgence of tribal divisions hitherto papered over by the strenuous efforts of the broad-based National Transitional Council (NTC).

These will not shatter the NTC or lead to the collapse of Benghazi, but they point to longer-term problems for the anti-Gaddafi rebels.

Simplifying factor?

The first irony is that the assassination of Gen Younes will scarcely affect the military campaign. For a short period some months ago, the rebels' military command was anyway bifurcated between the defector Gen Younes and the war hero and long-time US resident Colonel Khalifa Hifter.

The NTC denied that these divisions mattered. And yet, shipments of rifles would never make it to official units, orders from Gen Younes would be amended by Col Hifter, and bitter debates over strategy and tactics got in the way of decision making.

Col Hifter or another commander will likely step into the breach and Gen Younes' death might, perversely, simplify things. But even if it doesn't, it might not matter much.

This is because Libya's revolution has already fractured into hundreds of semi-independent fronts, each driven by local fighters soldiering in local conditions.

The most important battlefield successes of the past month, those in the western mountains and around Tripoli, have had virtually nothing to do with Gen Younes' operational nous.

Rebels made gains in the west even as Gen Younes' death was announced in the east

That much should be clear from the widespread looting and executions - essentially, war crimes - by rebel soldiers in western towns like al-Qawalish and al-Awaniya, actions patently incompatible with the commitment to military professionalism and legality professed by the NTC.

As if to underline this detachment, between formal leadership and the various theatres of operations, even as news of Gen Younes' death was trickling out from Benghazi, major advances were being made in the plains south of the capital and near the border with Tunisia.

Seizures of the towns of Tekut, Hawamid, and Ghazaya now place rebel forces in a strong position to sever supply lines into Tripoli, hastening what they hope will be an organic urban uprising.

Just as Misrata was liberated from within (though not without some assistance from the east), this war will likely be won more than 800km (500 miles) away from the political wrangling of Benghazi and the frustrating stalemate around the oil town of Brega.

Factional animosities

But the second irony is that Gen Younes' death threatens to unpick the NTC's credibility and cohesion at exactly the moment of its latest diplomatic triumph - fresh endorsement from Britain, the last major rebel ally to recognise the opposition as Libya's legitimate representatives.

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The concern that emerges most sharply from this incident is not so much that the NTC will splinter before Tripoli falls, but that it might do so after”

End Quote The NTC, though lax in investigating and stopping battlefield transgressions by its own soldiers, has earnestly sought to include representation from across Libya's regions and tribes. It is now at pains to placate Gen Younes' Obeidi tribe and counter the regime's narrative that the revolution is simply a tribal, rather than democratic, movement.

That narrative is exaggerated propaganda, intended to discredit the opposition. But the resurgence of at least some tribal and factional animosities has been apparent for months.

In the west, it is evident in the revenge attacks on the pro-Gaddafi Mashaashia tribe. In the east, it was clear from the spontaneous shows of force by the Obeidi tribe after Gen Younes' death, including the establishment of roadblocks in Benghazi and an attack by tribesmen on the hotel where the NTC had just given a press conference.

These latent divisions were well known. They underpinned the British and American decisions to refrain from directly arming the opposition. But as deeply embarrassed as the rebels' international backers will be at these episodes, they see no alternative but to work through the NTC, having invested so much in the removal of Gaddafi, and absent any other viable partners.

The concern that emerges most sharply from this incident is not so much that the NTC will splinter before Tripoli falls, but that it might do so after.

If it struggles to represent the full spectrum of political forces in a transition period, in the face of armed factions demanding political sway, Gen Younes' killing might not be the last political assassination amongst the self-described Free Libya Forces.

Shashank Joshi an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defence think-tank in London, and a doctoral student of international relations at Harvard University.

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Thriving Tripoli

30 July 2011 Last updated at 15:35 GMT By James Reynolds BBC News, Tripoli The Abu Saleem market is bustling prior to the start of Ramadan The government keeps a close eye on the foreign reporters who report from Libya's capital. We all stay in the same hotel, we're not allowed to go into town on our own.

We're often taken by our escorts/translators to pro-Gaddafi rallies, where we're free to interview the colonel's supporters. But getting an idea of what ordinary daily life is like is much more difficult.

On the Friday before the start of Ramadan, we're driven to the Abu Saleem part of town and given an hour to walk around the marketplace. We do so free from escorts and translators.

Even so, those who oppose Col Gaddafi may still feel too intimidated to speak freely - in this city, public criticism of the leader is unwise.

The marketplace is busy with shoppers getting ready for the start of the Islamic holy month. Many stalls sell clothes - including Chelsea and Arsenal football shirts. One shop sells mugs with pictures of Col Gaddafi and his family (about $3 each).

Umm Ahmed is shopping for clothes at a stall on the edge of the market.

"Happy ... very happy ... because our Guide is very good," she says in English. The "Guide" is one of the titles Libyans use for Col Gaddafi.

Further inside the market, Ramadan Fitouri sits on a stool opposite his shop. He sells evening dresses for women to wear at weddings (he doesn't sell actual wedding dresses - there are special bridal shops for those).

Mr Fitouri used to get his new dresses delivered once every two weeks from Turkey and Syria. Now, because of Libya's conflict, he gets his deliveries only once a month.

"It takes longer and it's more expensive," he explains.

Mr Fitouri has put up his prices by 20%. A glittery blue dress on a mannequin outside the stall now costs the equivalent of $60.

Plenty of choice

But right now, he has few shoppers. The country is at war - so weddings get put off.

"People feel afraid, not ready to do their ceremony - they postpone," he says quietly.

Further along, the Shaban sisters are doing their pre-Ramadan shopping. Huda, 19, has bought a shirt and jeans and is looking to buy a pair of shoes to match her new outfit. Her younger sister Hada, 16, has bought a headscarf.

The sisters have plenty of choice in the market. The stalls are full of goods - a sign that shopkeepers are still able to get hold of supplies, even if it costs them a bit more.

"Prices have gone up 15% but we can handle it," said Huda, who is a medical student.

"We love Muammar Gaddafi," adds Hada unprompted. She is still in secondary school.

"Is it possible to be happy when there is a war going on?" I ask them.

"We get used to it - it's been six months now," laughs Huda.

"We're happy all the time... I love clothing," agrees Hada.

The Shaban sisters have been enjoying their shopping spree

"We want our leader," says Huda enthusiastically, "We die for him, I love him so much."

This feeling is so strong that Huda, the 19-year-old medical student, even signed up for a two-week military training course in Sirte, the hometown of Col Gaddafi. Her course included weapons training.

"It's fun - it's like the movies," she says.

"Do you ever think you will really have to shoot a gun?" I ask her.

"For my leader, yes, I can do anything."

Across the road from the main market, Amir Maeza works as a pharmacist. He says that male chemists in Libya work at night so that their female colleagues can work during the day. I ask him about the effects of the war on his business.

"There is no war as you see in the capital. Nothing has happened. Everything works okay until now," he replies. The shelves behind the counter are filled with packets of pills and medicines.

Mr Maeza's familiy lives with his family in Tripoli. He says that he has no contact with Libyans in the rebel-held east of the country.

"I feel so sorry because in the final we are all Libyans," he says, "What is wrong, what is right - it doesn't matter. In the last we are Libyans. That's what really hurts."

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Syria troops 'kill many' in Hama

31 July 2011 Last updated at 09:05 GMT Hama has seen some of the biggest protests yet Syrian tanks have stormed the northern city of Hama, killing at least 45 civilians, a leading rights group says.

Hama has been in a state of revolt and virtually besieged for the past month.

Earlier, a doctor confirmed that 24 people had been killed and residents reported "intense gunfire" as Syrian forces moved in from several sides.

The army is signalling that it will not tolerate large-scale unrest ahead of the month of Ramadan, when protests are expected to grow, correspondents say.

Activists say more than 1,500 civilians and 350 security personnel have been killed across Syria since protests began in mid-March.

The protests show no sign of letting up despite a government crackdown that has brought international condemnation and sanctions.

Centre of protests

According to activists on the ground, troops and tanks began their multi-pronged assault at dawn, smashing through hundreds of barricades erected by locals to reach the centre of Hama.

"[Tanks] are firing their heavy machineguns randomly and overrunning makeshift road blocks," a doctor in Hama told Reuters by phone, with machinegun fire in the background.

He said the death toll was rising rapidly, adding that three of the city's hospitals had received 24 bodies - 19, three and two respectively.

Speaking in London, Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the latest toll, based on his contacts with Syrian doctors, was 45 dead and several more wounded.

Residents of northern Hama told Reuters that tank shells were falling at the rate of four a minute there. They also confirmed deaths in the area.

Electricity and water supplies had been cut, they said, in a tactic regularly used by the military when storming towns to crush protests.

Security forces snipers were reported to have taken up positions on high buildings, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon.

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Hama - a bastion of dissidence - occupies a significant place in the history of modern Syria. In 1982, then-President Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar, sent in troops to quell an uprising by the Sunni opposition Muslim Brotherhood. Tens of thousands were killed and the town flattened. The operation was led by the president's brother, Rifaat.

Similarly, current President Bashar Assad has turned to his own brother, Maher, who commands the army's elite Fourth Division, to deal with the unrest.

Hama, with a population 800,000, has seen some of the biggest protests and worst violence in Syria's 2011 uprising. It was slow to join in, but has now become one of the main focuses of the revolt, and is largely out of government control.

Earlier this month, the US and French ambassadors broke protocol and staged solidarity visits to the city. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said there must not be "another Hama", meaning, another massacre.

One local activist said that five tanks had been abandoned by their crews in two parts of town, and that protesters had attacked and burnt down three police stations, our correspondent says.

One resident, who has been speaking to others around Hama, told the BBC World Service that the three main hospitals were overwhelmed with more than 200 wounded people.

"They are treating people in the halls of the hospitals. A lot of injured people [have been] taken to homes and doctors are treating them there," he told the World Today programme.

He said the protesters had done nothing to provoke the military action.

"For three months, Hama has had huge demonstrations. More than 250 people have been killed, and nothing, no shot has come out from Hama people. Just barricades and stones and wood, that's all," he said.

"It's just a 100% civilian uprising."

Hama was the scene of the suppression of an uprising against President Assad's father in 1982. The city has seen some of the biggest demonstrations of the recent unrest.

Mass arrests

Elsewhere on Sunday, three people were killed by security forces at Harak in the southern Deraa region, and six in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour and, rights campaigner Rami Abdel Rahman said.

On Saturday, troops shot dead three people who threw stones at a military convoy sent to quash the near-daily protests in Deir al-Zour, he said.

A total of 20 people were killed and 35 wounded on Friday as hundreds of thousands of protested in cities across Syria, rights groups said.

More than 500 people were arrested in a single operation in the Qadam neighbourhood of the capital Damascus, they added.

Since the start of the unrest, more than 12,600 have been arrested and 3,000 others are reported missing.

The government blames armed Islamist gangs for the unrest, but correspondents say the protests appear largely peaceful, with only isolated cases of residents arming themselves against the military assault.

Most foreign media is banned from the country, making it difficult to verify reports.

Syria's anti-government protests, inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, first erupted in mid-March after the arrest of a group of teenagers who spray-painted a revolutionary slogan on a wall. The protests soon spread, and human rights activists and opposition groups say 1,700 people have died in the turmoil, while thousands more have been injured. Although the arrest of the teenagers in the southern city of Deraa first prompted people to take to the streets, unrest has since spread to other areas, including Hama, Homs, Latakia, Jisr al-Shughour and Baniyas. Demonstrators are demanding greater freedom, an end to corruption, and, increasingly, the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad. President Assad's government has responded to the protests with overwhelming military force, sending tanks and troops into at least nine towns and cities. In Deraa and Homs - where protests have persisted ? amateur video footage shows tanks firing on unarmed protesters, while snipers have been seen shooting at residents venturing outside their homes. Some of the bloodiest events have taken place in the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour. In early June, officials claimed 120 security personnel were killed by armed gangs, however protesters said the dead were shot by troops for refusing to kill demonstrators. As the military moved to take control of the town, thousands fled to neighbouring Turkey, taking refuge in camps. Although the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo have seen pockets of unrest and some protests, it has not been widespread - due partly to a heavy security presence. There have been rallies in the capital - one with an enormous Syrian flag - in support of President Assad, who still receives the backing of many in Syria's middle class, business elite and minority groups. The Assad family has been in power for 40 years, with Bashar al-Assad inheriting office in 2000. The president has opened up the economy, but has continued to jail critics and control the media. He is from the minority Alawite sect - an offshoot of Shia Islam ? but the country's 20 million people are mainly Sunni. The biggest protests have been in Sunni-majority areas. Although the US and EU have condemned the violence and imposed sanctions, the UN Security Council has been unable to agree on a response. Some fear the country could descend into civil war if the government collapsed, while others believe chaos in Syria ? with its strategic location and its web of regional alliances - could destabilise the entire Middle East.BACK {current} of {total} NEXT

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