Sunday, September 11, 2011

Bani Walid’s stubborn resistance to the rebels,, may be nearing its end., but battle to overcome #Qaddafi ties just beginning


Paul Erickson
Telegraph.co.uk: 's resistance fading, but battle to overcome  ties just beginning  

Bani Walid’s stubborn resistance to the rebels, which turned it from a Libyan crossroads town to the epicentre of the country’s civil war in the space of two weeks, may be nearing its end.

Members of the powerful Warfalla tribe parade on their horses
Members of the powerful Warfalla tribe parade on their horses  Photo: AFP/GETTY
By Ruth Sherlock, North of Bani Walid
11:34PM BST 11 Sep 2011
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But as the ferocity of this weekend’s fighting shows, the battle to reconcile the bitter enmities caused here by Col Gaddafi’s rule and the brutality of its end is only just beginning.
On Sunday night the fighting in the town was so intense that rebel forces ran out of ambulances as casualties were rushed back down the road out of town.
And, alarmingly, captives suggested that those staging the most bitter resistance were not members of pro-regime forces left behind by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the dictator’s son, who left after marshalling defences, but townsfolk themselves.
“There is no military here,” said Al-Hadi Imbiresh, a retired colonel from the town who had volunteered to lead a home guard of residents against the rebels, many of them like him fellow members of the dominant local tribe, the Warfalla.
Over the last two weeks, rebels had tried to portray the town’s refusal to surrender as an example of the regime holding ordinary people hostage. But Col Imbiresh, who was nursing a foot which had taken a bullet and seemed to be allowed to speak freely after being captured on a scouting mission, said that local Warfalla had themselves been determined to 
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