'If the Americans Come, They Would Steal our Revolution'

Opposition Carries on Fight against Gadhafi

Libya opposition militia/ AFP image

Jonathan Stock
Spiegel

Far from raising the white flag, Gadhafi's troops are continuing to fight against the opposition in eastern Libya in order to maintain control of the country's crucial oil facilities along the Bay of Sirt. Opposition fighters claim they have driven back their attackers, but the battle is far from finished.

Yusuf helped to transport the explosives from old bombs to the front as the opposition fought to take control of Benghazi in eastern Libya. Today, the young man, with his dark curls of hair, is wearing a beret with a red star on it. The men fighting along with him call him "Chifarris," an apparent reference to Che Guevara. The 23-year-old's mother came to Libya from Germany 30 years ago, and his forefathers fought against their Italian occupiers in the North African country. "Whatever happens will happen," he says of the current battle against dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

At the green west gate to the Bedouin city of Ajdabiya, Yunus waits, indecisively, along with hundreds of other fighters, for a decision on whether or not they will continue forward with their drive. They cover their eyes to protect them from the desert sand and peer towards Brega to the west, where the pipelines from the Defa oil fields run to the Sirt Oil Company's refinery, the second largest in oil-rich Libya. That's where fighters supporting Gadhafi arrived in the morning, supported by airplanes and heavy artillary. Nobody knows exactly what is happening there now, or whether the fighting is still continuing.

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