The Gadafy regime seems to be twisting in the wind six months into the Libyan uprising, writes
CHRIS STEPHEN
REBEL FIGHTER Farouk Arifay plans to mark the six-month anniversary of the Libyan uprising today by heading for his favourite place - the beach.
Misurata's Jazeera beach is like a nice beach anywhere in the world, with its soft sand and turquoise waters - if you ignore the grumble of gunfire to the west and the boom of Nato jets overhead.
As Libya's rebels score victory after victory on their drive to Tripoli, many in the city are celebrating, but Arifay plans a bit of quiet reflection first.
"My life was the beach before," explains this cherub-faced former student who is 20 going on 60, as he looks back over six months of hard fighting. "All my hobbies were the beach. I used to go harpooning. My uncle taught me, he showed me how you got to be quick, or the fish gets away."
The concrete beach hut where he used to spend idle days is still here, now painted, like almost everything else in this city, in the red black and green of the rebel tricolour. "We love this flag - even I want to paint it on my skin," he says.
Much has changed since those first hectic days of war when Arifay, lacking a gun, was given a hand grenade and told to follow his elder brother's friends, who had guns, and use it when he saw his chance.
He spent three long weeks dodging bullets and shrapnel in the battered side roads around Tripoli Street, but never got to pull the pin on the grenade.
Then the fighters, with plenty of help from Nato, pushed government forces out of the city. Arifay was given a gun and he joined the rebels' Eagle Brigade, holding the front line in the hilly countryside at Dafniya, 20 miles to the west.
The careful smile vanishes when he remembers the close calls.
First there was the time, near Tripoli Street, when he ran around a corner more slowly than his brother, which resulted in him avoiding the effects of a mortar bomb that wounded his brother in the stomach.
A little later he was late again, this time stopping on a street corner for the call of nature, as comrades ran ahead - straight into a rocket blast that killed them. "That was the luckiest day of my life," he said.
Later, when the war had moved from the city streets to the hills and olive groves of Dafniya, 20 miles outside the city, he went home one day to get fresh clothes. His friends, who he normally fought alongside, were killed that day by a rocket explosion.
"Four of my friends are dead," he says, deadpan. "When that happens, you get a bit scared."
Misurata is playing a bit-part in the sudden victories breaking out elsewhere in this fragmented war, but its fighters claim to have tied down Gadafy's forces for long months.
Bafflement is the emotion that crosses his mind as he looks back over what has gone before, firstly in relation to the ferocity of the attack Misurata was subjected to in the spring.
"We were waiting for the revolution to come to Libya," he says. "First the revolt in Tunisia, then Egypt, and we all thought it was coming to Libya."
Older, wiser heads warned the young that Gadafy would not surrender power lightly. "We knew that Gadafy is bad but we don't expect that this war would be six months."
Equally baffling to him is his survival on the battlefield: he never wanted to join the army, nor had he ever seen a weapon, before this conflict.
"I don't know if I ever killed anyone," he says. "I mean, we see them [government troops] and we all shoot, so some of the bullets would kill. The important thing is that they died."
For journalists, to watch these fighters in action these past months has been to experience both admiration and dismay: admiration, because when the shells crash down and we are scrambling for a hole to hide in, they stand there and take it; and dismay, because if more of them had jumped into the holes, more would be alive today.
The best Arifay can manage by way of explanation is that he has done what he had to do to protect his city.
This is an oft-repeated mantra in Misurata. They fought the hardest because there were no options. Those in the west can run to Tunisia, those in the east to Egypt, but Misurata's fighters have only the sea at their backs.
"That is why we never retreat - if you run away you fight in front of your house."
"So you had no choice?"
By way of an answer he flashes the V for victory sign, which among the rebels means the only choice is that between victory or death - one Allah will make for you.
Islam is at the centre of everything these fighters do, from praying five times a day to observance, even on the front lines this August, of the strictures of Ramadan - no eating, drinking or smoking in daylight.
Dealing with his parents has been an issue; at first they were frightened to see their two sons go off to war each day when it was in the streets around their home. More recently, they have come to accept it, even the wounding of his brother, which did not stop him rejoining the front line. "They are proud of us," he says.
Along the way he remembers also flashes of humour, as when a fisherman in a neighbouring unit, finding himself posted on the dangerous coastal stretch of the front line, arrived one day with his harpoon.
"He's obsessed with fishing, he couldn't wait till the war ends, so he went out into the sea. There was a lot of bombs falling down," he says. "He caught four fish."
Now everything has changed: when Misurata's fighters took the neighbouring town of Tawarga at the weekend there was a brief, fierce firefight, after which Gadafy's troops ran away and the front line was dissolved. It remains so - there is simply no front line, only an instruction from Nato for the rebels not to advance further for fear of being hit by roaming jets.
"Before, Gadafy troops used to make an attack every day - hounds and grads everywhere," he says. "But now they defend themselves [ instead]. It's not like a war, it's like they gave up."
There is no secret about why, in the space of a week, the game seems to be up for the Gadafy regime: rather than give ground, government forces have held on to their positions, providing perfect targets for a Nato bombing campaign. Now it appears that Gadafy has almost run out of fighting men.
Each day brings more signs of the Gadafy regime twisting in the wind: rebel forces are now inside the strategic oil town of Brega and the capture of Zawiya, 35 miles west of Tripoli, has cut the last highway from the capital to the outside world, leaving the city, blockaded by Nato at air and sea, all but under siege itself.
About his future plans, Arifay is vague; he may become an English translator, travel the world and get married.
First there is the war to get through, he says, and for him it pays not to think beyond the expected final offensive, towards Tripoli. "I think I will remember every single day here," he says. "I hope this war ends soon."
Chris Stephen is a freelance journalist and writer