Commuting to Libya's front line

22 September 2011 Last updated at 11:08 GMT By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Libya The television images of the war in Libya show a ramshackle bunch of rebels, firing off their guns and missiles in what seems an almost haphazard fashion, but what is it like being on the front line and reporting on the war?

It was too late to buy lamb, so camel pasta it had to be and it was not bad.

I guess the little villa on the Mediterranean would count as luxury in normal times, but Libyans are still waiting to find out what normal is going to be.

It is luxury for us - hot water, electricity, even some air-conditioning. Luxury in an oil-workers compound.

An oasis and nightly retreat from the ever-advancing front lines closing in on Sirte, where Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was born and where what is left of his army is still holding out.

We are commuting to war. For an hour and a half every morning and evening, we drive the long desert road to collect the video footage we need to put a television news report together.

Anti-Gaddafi forces have been closing in on Col Gaddafi's home town of Sirte

We dodge the potholes and sand drifts, burned-out trucks, wandering camels and erratic rebel drivers - or now I suppose, former rebels.

They are the same rag-tag band of engineers and teachers, civilians who welded guns to their pick-up trucks and took on a standing army.

But they are soldiers now. Some bring fearless, almost foolhardy bravery. The professionals among them provide planning and strategy. The advance on Sirte we are documenting has been logical, cautious, well organised and well supplied.

They have troops, tanks, artillery, air power - courtesy of Nato - and rockets. Lots of rockets. And rockets make good television.

In a long-running war, finding different or dramatic footage keeps the story in the news. Outgoing fire shows the ferocity and aggression of war.

We filmed 30m (100ft) in front of the the rockets as they were fired over our heads with a roar and trailing fire - the only warning, a quick chorus of "Allahu Akbar".

Continue reading the main story From Our Own Correspondent is on Thursdays at 1100 BST and Saturdays at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4 and weekdays on BBC World ServiceThey were bombarding the pro-Gaddafi positions. The effect on screen was dramatic.

What we could not show was their impact 30km (19 miles) away, where these terrifying weapons were landing, tearing holes in the defensive lines - lines, that is, of other people.

The Colonel's army have the same weapons, without the air power.

So, like the troops, we experience and try to record incoming fire. The only reassurance while on the receiving end of rockets is the trick of sound - if you hear a bang, it has already missed you.

But it is an occupational hazard rather than good television. At best it is no more than a whizz, a puff of smoke and a wobbly camera shot as we race for cover.

Drama of war

In a world of Hollywood war films, there is something almost disappointing about how real war looks on screen. The desire for better pictures can lure you into increasingly dangerous places.

Continue reading the main story

The further forward you go, the more powerful the pictures, but the greater the chances of being killed or injured”

End Quote This war is being fought in two ways - through the precise and remote science of long-distance artillery, whose angles, bearings and logarithms are familiar to the engineers now firing them, and the up-close, car-to-car, gun-to-gun graft where bullets and shrapnel fill the air.

We film the consequences through the steady flow of dead and injured arriving at the field hospital, pools of rich crimson seeping out of them.

They are shocking images which people do not necessarily want to see close-up. The temptation is to be out at the very front with them - where the fighting is more dramatic, more filmic.

The pictures might lever the story onto a busy news bulletin, but what soldiers do is madness. It is hard, brutal, bloody, deadly war.

Front-line reporting - capturing and communicating the essence of war - is always a gamble, but one where we think we can set the odds.

Finding the strongest images while staying safe is a difficult balance

It is a balance of risk and access.

The further forward you go, the more powerful the pictures, but the greater the chances of being killed or injured.

Our flak jackets and helmets are far from invincible. As a cub reporter I was always told never to become the story.

This week, a friend of mine misjudged that balance.

On the other side of Sirte, dressed as a rebel, he tore through the desert with his camera.

As a freelance photographer there is more pressure to take risks just to make a living.

He was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. He survived, but is badly injured. I suppose I have thought more about risk in the days since.

It is dark now and I am glad to be commuting home. We will head back up to the front again tomorrow and again hopefully get that balance just right.

The men fighting will head there too. They do it because it is their future, their country, their revolution.

We will be there searching for an image you have not seen yet, something to keep you following a war far away which is not any less deadly or significant just because it goes on every day.

How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:

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Second 30-minute programme on Thursdays, 1100 (some weeks only).

Listen online or download the podcast

BBC World Service:

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Read more or explore the archive at the programme website.

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EU 'failed' on Libya's refugees

19 September 2011 Last updated at 23:42 GMT Many refugees live in "harsh conditions", Amnesty International says European Union countries have "shamefully failed" to help thousands of refugees stranded near Libya's borders, Amnesty International says.

It says the EU has failed to resettle some 5,000 mainly sub-Saharan Africans who face persecution in their nations.

Amnesty says the EU - some of whose member states have taken part in Nato's operations in Libya - must "urgently address the resettlement issue".

Britain rejected the criticism, while other EU nations have made no comment.

Fighting is still continuing in Libya, with forces loyal to the country's interim leaders now controlling most of the country.

The troops have been advancing towards the coastal town of Sirte, Col Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace and a stronghold of his loyalists.

'Driven by desperation'

In its report - Europe, Now It Is Your Turn to Act - Amnesty strongly criticises EU governments over their failure to act on the refugee issue.

"We have witnessed an abysmal response to the plight of displaced refugees on Europe's doorstep," said Nicolas Beger, director of Amnesty's European Institutions Office.

"This failure is particularly glaring given that some European countries, by participating in Nato operations in Libya, have been party to the very conflict that has been one of the main causes of the involuntary movement of people."

The human rights group says that about 1,000 people are still stranded in Egypt's Saloum camp and another 3,800 people in Tunisia's Choucha camp.

The refugees are living in "harsh conditions", it says, and cannot go back to their home countries because they face "a real risk of persecution".

"Neither is returning to Libya - a country currently unable to offer adequate protection to refugees - an option," the reports adds.

It says that "driven by desperation, more and more refugees are resorting to returning to Libya to try to board boats for Europe on a perilous sea journey which is believed to have claimed more than 1,500 lives" since the start of the conflict in Libya.

Amnesty says that so far only eight nations of the 27-member EU - Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Portugal and Sweden - have offered to help.

But those nations offered "fewer than 700 slots", the report adds.

In response, a British government spokesperson told the BBC that London "was one of the first to provide vital humanitarian support to those affected by the conflict in Libya".

"Our early action in providing emergency shelter supplies and flying people home from the border camps helped prevent a logistical problem from developing into a humanitarian crisis. We have repatriated over 12,700 third country nationals from the border camps, and also provided tents and blankets for emergency shelter."

However, the spokesperson added: "We are under no international obligation to bring asylum seekers or refugees to the UK from Libya and do not believe it would be desirable to do so.

"In our view humanitarian and refugee issues are best dealt with in the region of origin, or by asylum seekers claiming protection in the first safe country they reach."

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Libya's rebel government moving to Tripoli to head off power vacuum (The Christian Science Monitor)

Benghazi, Libya – Libya's rebel leaders are moving to establish political control in Tripoli in anticipation of Muammar Qaddafi's fall, seeking to prevent a power vacuum and establish themselves as the sovereign government of a new Libya.

“We have to be there at the moment of liberation,” says Joma Sayehi Eltayef, who has been coordinating preparations for securing Tripoli from the eastern city of Benghazi. “We can’t leave any opportunities for remnants of the regime, or a vacuum. We need a strong grip so that we don’t have chaos. As soon as the regime falls, we have an alternative ready to take over.”

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

The move poses a major test of the leadership's coordination as it prepares to expand its responsibility from the rebel-controlled east to the entire nation, and make the transition from the battlefield to the task of running a vast, oil-rich country.

Rebel leaders flying to Tripoli todayAfter rebels' swift takeover of the capital on Sunday night, Qaddafi loyalists began fighting back intensely today, indicating that the push to take the capital may yet be a bloody and drawn-out battle. The rebels' National Transition Council, as well as local councils under its umbrella, is now activating plans it has been preparing for months.

The NTC is sending government ministers to Tripoli today to begin coordinating executive control as well as security, and aims to implement its transition plan as soon as possible.

Mr. Eltayef, a Tripoli native from a prominent family and leader of the local Tripoli council, says he will try to fly to the capital today. Once there, he plans to activate what he calls an extensive network of Tripoli residents he has been preparing over the past few months to secure the capital once rebel fighters took control.

He plans to ensure the security of the capital by deploying his network to man checkpoints, secure government buildings, commercial centers, bakeries, and streets, and allow civil services to continue, he says.

The hundreds of people he has cultivated over recent months, first in person and then via satellite phone after he fled to Benghazi early in the uprising, have already begun to step into their roles as their neighborhoods have been freed. When Qaddafi falls, they will be in full force, he says.

“This is of course in harmony with what the NTC is doing, under the National Transitional Council umbrella,” says Eltayef, whose brother is an NTC minister.

Credibility concerns in BenghaziYet even as the council begins to extend its reach to the capital, it is facing doubts in Benghazi. Initial reports that rebels captured two of Qaddafi’s sons fell apart when one was reported to have escaped and the other appeared at a hotel where foreign journalists are staying in the capital.

The leader of the NTC “has lost his credibility by repeatedly lying to the press,” said a woman who asked to remain anonymous while criticizing the rebel leader because she came from a prominent family in Benghazi. A spokesman for the council refused to talk when contacted by phone today and then turned off his phone.

These latest developments have compounded local doubts about the NTC in the wake of the July 29 assassination of rebel military commander Abdel Fatah Younis.

"These things have been happening because the basic foundation of the council is not well organized because they have a lack of experience about how to deal with national matters," says Mohamed El Obeidi, a political science professor at Garyounis University in Benghazi. "They're not that politically experienced in these things. On this basis there have been gaps on the NTC, the biggest and hardest is the assassination of Younis."

Qaddafi forces retreating from BregaThe rebels’ military spokesman in Benghazi, Ahmed Bani, said in the early morning hours of Tuesday that 95 percent of Tripoli was under rebel control, but that pockets of resistance were fighting back fiercely.

Qaddafi’s forces are barricaded in his compound of Bab Al Aziziyah and are using their position to indiscriminately bomb neighborhoods, he said. He added that Qaddafi was using Grad missiles to bomb civilian areas, and said Qaddafi’s son Khamis, commander of a feared military brigade, was likely inside Bab Al Aziziyah.

In the east, rebels were still fighting for the oil refinery in the city of Brega, Mr. Bani said, though some of Qaddafi’s forces are retreating from the area and heading to his hometown, Sirte. Rebels have been fighting for months for the oil facilities, which under normal operation bring in $35 million per day. They have been wary of allowing the facilities to be bombed, and he said that was why the rebels have still not taken control of them.

Al Jazeera also reported that the oil town of Ras Lanuf had fallen to rebels as well.

Qaddafi himself is still on the loose, his whereabouts a mystery, and Sirte still under control of his troops. Bani said rebel troops will not attack Sirte, but will wait for residents to rise up against the colonel. Electricity to the city has been cut for more than a week.

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

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