ZAWIYAH, Libya — The Libyan rebels challenging Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi demonstrated their increasing military coordination and firepower on Sunday, as defecting officers in the east took steps to establish a unified command while their followers in this rebel-held city, just outside his stronghold in the capital, displayed an array of tanks, Kalashnikovs and anti-aircraft guns.
In a further sign of their strength, the rebels also began making plans to tap revenue from the vast Libyan oil resources now under their control — estimated by some oil company officials to be about 80 percent of the country’s total. And in recognition of the insurrection’s growing power, Italy’s foreign minister suspended a nonaggression treaty with Libya on the ground that the Libyan state “no longer exists,” while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States was reaching out to the rebels to “offer any kind of assistance.”
The most striking display of strength came here, 30 miles from Colonel Qaddafi’s Tripoli redoubt, one of several cities near the capital controlled by rebels, who have repulsed repeated attempts by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces to retake them. The arsenal they had in Zawiyah was far more lethal than previously seen.
“Army, army, army!” excited residents shouted, pointing to a defected soldier standing sentry at Zawiyah’s entrance as he raised his machine gun in the air and held up two fingers for victory.
A few yards away a captured anti-aircraft gun fired several deafening salutes into the air, and gleeful residents invited newcomers to clamber aboard one of several Army tanks now in rebel hands. Residents said that when Colonel Qaddafi’s forces mounted a deadly assault to retake the city last Thursday — shell holes were visible in the central mosque and ammunition littered the central square — local army units switched sides to join the rebels, as about 2,000 police officers had done the week before.
And on Sunday, scores of residents armed with machine guns and rifles joined in a chant that has become the slogan of pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and across the Arab world: “The people want to bring down the regime!”
The opposition’s display came as a global effort to isolate Colonel Qaddafi and possibly force his resignation gained momentum over the weekend, with the United Nations Security Council moving to impose punitive financial sanctions and NATO allies discussing steps that included a possible no-fly zone over Libya.
But with their increasingly brazen show of firepower, the rebels appeared more willing to engage Colonel Qaddafi’s forces militarily and break the pattern of nonviolent revolts set by neighboring Egypt and Tunisia and now sweeping the Middle East — just as Colonel Qaddafi has shown a willingness to shed far more of his citizens’ blood than any of the region’s other autocrats.
The maneuverings by both sides suggested they were girding for a confrontation that could influence the shape of other protest movements and the responses of other rulers who feel threatened by insurrection movements.
Colonel Qaddafi’s militias, plainclothes police and other paramilitary forces have so far kept the deserted streets of Tripoli under a tight lockdown. And residents of Zawiyah said Sunday that his forces were massing again on its outskirts, and as a caravan of visiting journalists left Zawiyah on an official tour, a rowdy crowd of hundreds of Qaddafi supporters waving green flags and holding Qaddafi posters blocked the highway for a rally against the rebels. “The people want Colonel Muammar!” some chanted.
In interviews with ABC News, two of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons appeared to mix defiance and denial. “The people — everybody wants more,” said Saadi Qaddafi, apparently dismissing the public outcry for a more accountable government. “There is no limit. You give this, then you get asked for that, you know?”
He described the uprisings around the region as “an earthquake” and predicted, “Chaos will be everywhere.” If his father left, he said, Libya would face a civil war “one hour later.”
His brother, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, seemed to challenge journalists to look for signs of unrest. “Please, take your cameras tomorrow morning, even tonight,” he said. “Everything is calm. Everything is peaceful.”
But when government-paid drivers and minders took visiting journalists on an official tour to visit here Sunday morning, they found a town firmly in rebel hands, where Libyan officials and military units did not even attempt to enter. It was the second consecutive day that an official tour appeared to do more to discredit than bolster the government’s line, and questions arose about the true allegiance of the official tour minders, who appeared to mingle easily with people of rebel-held Zawiyah. Others suggested that the Qaddafi government might in fact have believed its own propaganda: that the journalists would discover that Zawiyah had fallen into the hands of radical Islamists, or young people crazed by drugs procured by Osama bin Laden.
But the residents o showed little interest in either Islamist politics or hallucinogenic drugs. They mocked Colonel Qaddafi’s allegations, waved the tricolored pre-Qaddafi flag that has become the banner of the revolt, and chanted, “Free, free, Libya.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/africa/28unrest.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
William B. Robinson
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