Can they take Tripoli?

Into battle with Libya’s middle-class rebel army

Nafusa mountains, Libya

‘My people, did you forget what you got from this tyrant Gaddafi? Only pain, death and humiliation!’ The commander of the Tripoli Brigade was rallying his men at a rebel base not far from the frontline in the western mountains. ‘Stand up, in his face, and say in one voice: No more!’ The Tripoli Brigade is a ‘special unit’ being prepared to storm the capital. Most of its members still have family in Tripoli, so had covered their faces with masks. If I hadn’t known that they were an army of teachers, engineers and accountants, many holding a gun for the first time, I might have thought them a bit sinister.

Some were paunchy despite the training — as if the Rotary Club had gone to war — but even so, they were determined to see the fight through. A fighter called Ismail showed me a bracket attached to the muzzle of his Kalashnikov.