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TRIPOLI, Libya — Among the rebel leaders it was referred to as zero hour, the moment when residents of Tripoli would rise up against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces after a six-month war in the desert that had failed to break his 42-year grip on power.
But an uprising never materialized, in part because a bloody crackdown on protesters in February by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had served as a grim deterrent to those inside Tripoli who might try to challenge the government’s authority.
So, the rebel leaders began plotting their own revolt inside the capital. Over the past several weeks, they smuggled weapons into Tripoli and stashed them in safe houses. They spread the word among local revolutionaries that widespread protests would begin after the Ramadan evening prayers on the appointed day.
They chose Aug. 20, which also just happened to be the anniversary of the prophet Mohammed’s liberation of Mecca.
In the end, it was Saturday’s uprising inside Tripoli — combined with a rebel military advance toward the capital across three fronts — that overwhelmed Colonel Qaddafi’s beleaguered soldiers, though fighting continues in the capital.
Even with Libya’s ragged rebellion still troubled by internal divisions, several days traveling with rebel troops — along with interviews with rebel leaders, NATO diplomats and officials in Washington — reveal that rebel forces were able to devise a careful plan for the final assault on Tripoli that unfolded with a swiftness few had predicted.
They were aided by steady supplies of weapons, fuel, medicine and food from British, French and Qatari troops and an escalated bombing campaign by NATO jets and American Predator drones. Hundreds of rebels took part in secret military training inside Qatar.
Rebel forces even advanced on Tripoli by boat, arranging a flotilla from the town of Misurata in an operation the rebels called Mermaid Dawn.
With the regime collapsing, American officials said that aides close to Colonel Qaddafi called several Obama administration officials, including the American ambassador, Gene Cretz, and Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state, to try to hastily broker a truce. Yet the Libyans never promised that Colonel Qaddafi would cede power, the American officials said, and the calls were not taken seriously.
American officials said that even as fighting in eastern Libya bogged down in a stalemate, guerrillas operating in the rugged Nafusah Mountains in the west were steadily gaining ground against Qaddafi forces and cutting off supplies to the capital.
The rebels operating in the west made steady progress over the past month, driving north toward the Mediterranean Coast and seizing a sprawling oil refinery in Zawiyah, just 30 miles west of Tripoli. Along the way, according to a senior NATO official, the rebels battled mercenary fighters from Chad and other African countries whom Colonel Qaddafi had enlisted to bolster his overstretched military.
Several American officials said the fall of Zawiyah may have been the campaign’s real turning point, as it choked nearly all of the remaining fuel supplies to the government in Tripoli.
“That signaled the end might be near,” a senior defense official said on Monday.
The rebels had been resupplied with weapons from Qatari special forces and given satellite photographs by their British and French military advisers. To boost morale, the United States passed along snippets of intercepted telephone conversations in which Libyan commanders were complaining about desperate shortages of food, water and ammunition.
The western offensive by the rebels galvanized opposition fighters in other parts of the country. American and NATO officials described a carefully coordinated three-pronged push on Tripoli, to drive fighters loyal to Colonel Qaddafi on the roads back toward the capital where NATO planes could bomb them.
That push, concentrated to the west of Tripoli, was coordinated with the uprising on Saturday within Tripoli itself.
“It all came together more quickly than many anticipated, but it was not exactly a coincidence,” the diplomat said.
Rebel groups broke through long-stagnant front lines and approached Tripoli from the south and east. The surge forced Libyan government troops into the open, allowing allied warplanes to strike them repeatedly, a senior NATO official said on Monday.
The rebel push on Tripoli inspired some residents of the capital to go ahead with the planned uprising, according to interviews with some rebel leaders on Monday.
Over the weekend, residents “came to the point where they wanted to go for it,” said Yusuf Muhammed, who advises an elite rebel brigade made up of fighters from Tripoli.
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