Wednesday, March 02, 2011
By Patrick Baz
Agence France Presse

BENGHAZI, Libya: As Benghazi sleeps, a volunteer nightwatch patrols the opposition bastion, fearful that Moammar Gadhafi will wreak his revenge by unleashing saboteurs to ravage Libya’s second city.
The civilians, most of them without any military training, operate shifts throughout the hours of darkness, manning roadblocks to hunt out infiltrators and guarding the city’s key infrastructure.

“We take turns from 3 p.m. to 8 a.m.,” says Ahmad Abdelrahim, 32, who has a business in the capital Tripoli, which remains in the hands of Gadhafi loyalists, but who rushed to help out in Benghazi when the city was liberated.
“We are all civilians without any military training,” he says, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder and his face masked with a balaclava.

“I am responsible for a group of popular committees. My team has the job of protecting the city’s infrastructure.”
As protesters took over the streets of eastern Libya during the first week of the now 17-day-old uprising, a number of key army commanders announced they were breaking with Gadhafi and joining the rebels.

But Abdelrahim says that despite the defections, units of the regular army are still playing little role in maintaining security in the city as many troops simply deserted while the loyalties of others remain suspect.
“There is little coordination with the army because some officers have just gone home, while others are still loyal to the regime,” he says.

Abdelrahim’s cell phone rings to raise the alert. There is a fire in a warehouse at an abandoned barracks in the city. His volunteers jump into a white civilian van and race through the deserted streets at 120 kilometers an hour.
“We have to protect the firefighters,” Abdelrahim explains. “Gadhafi’s mercenaries are starting fires and doing all they can to create chaos in the city.”

A few kilometers west of the city, volunteers guard a petrochemical plant.
“If Gadhafi’s men managed to burn this place down, it would be a catastrophe, they could pollute the whole city,” says Salim Nabus, 35, a fez perched on his head.

He too has no military training. “I never touched a weapon before in my life,” he says.
As the patrol moves on, a group of militiamen hails it down from behind a large metal gate. One of them, who is wearing a military uniform but armed with only a machete, asks Abdelrahim if he has any firearms.
“I haven’t got any for you,” he answers. “Unfortunately not all the weapons taken from the army ended up in the right hands.”

As troops abandoned their units last month, some simply sold their weaponry to the highest bidder, meaning some inevitably fell into the hands of criminals.
A rattle of machine-gun fire breaks the silence of the night. “Don’t panic, it’s our guys,” says Abdelrahim.
Nabus explains that in the darkness the volunteers take no chances.

“Our men have no night-vision goggles,” he says. “Out in the desert, they shoot at anything that moves.”
On the way back into the city, around 20 civilians are mounting a roadblock. “We are on the lookout for mercenaries,” their leader says, alluding to the foreign fighters Gadhafi recruited as his regime’s praetorian guard, many of them from sub-Saharan Africa.

As dawn breaks, the patrol returns to the requisitioned hotel which serves as their headquarters. On the red sofas of the lobby, another group of civilian volunteers waits to take over.