Reply #90: Gaddafi's New Forces: The Teenagers and Women Keeping Libya's Rebels from Taking Tripoli

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Source: TIME

By Steven Sotloff / Benghazi Friday, July 08, 2011


"They told us al-Qaeda fighters infiltrated the country," the shy 16-year old says, standing in a non-descript building in the coastal city of Misratah where rebels are holding their prisoners. Murad nervously bites his nails as he relates how forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi plucked him out of school and shipped him to fight at the front against a "foreign conspiracy aimed at occupying the country." With half of his country controlled by rebel forces, Gaddafi is having difficulty finding soldiers to fight his battles. Without an effective standing army, he has increasingly relied on teen soldiers, African mercenaries, and more recently women, to defend his 42-year rule.


Since the beginning of an uprising against him in February, Gaddafi has recruited Africans from neighboring countries such as Chad and Niger to fight the rebels. Journalists who visited the eastern city of Ajdabiyah in late March saw dozens of black African corpses of fighting age men. In Misratah, a European told the Associated Press he saw piles of similar bodies, apparently executed in late April. Rebels told him the men were from Mali, Chad, and Niger. A Misrati official with the rebel's political council confirmed this account to TIME. Abd al-Basit Abu Mzirig, in charge of Human Rights for the rebel's Justice division, says he met seven mercenaries who were from Mali, but possessed Libyan identification cards issued after the beginning of the February revolution. Though Gaddafi officials could not be reached for comment, they have previously denied recruiting mercenaries from neighboring countries in the conflict.

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Nevertheless, international organizations have censured Libya for doing so. In the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing force against Libya, it deplored "the continuing use of mercenaries by the Libyan authorities" and imposed a travel ban on the country's ambassador to Chad and the governor of a southern province for being "directly involved in recruiting mercenaries."

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But with a flight ban and stepped-up international surveillance making it increasingly difficult for Gaddafi to import African mercenaries, he has turned to barely trained teenaged soldiers to fill his ranks. At the Hikma hospital in Misrata, Dr. Khalid Abu Falqa said he has treated a dozen teenagers sent to fight the rebels. "One was terribly frightened. He was crying for his mom," related the radiologist as he tended to a six year old girl with shrapnel wounds.

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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2081970,00.html