Libya’s Rebels Head Back to Beni Walid to Fight Pro-Gaddafi Forces

After a war that many thought was finally over, the rebels in Libya are heading back to Beni Walid. This was the city where Muammar Gaddafi was found and killed in October of last year. The rebels and the National Transitional Council (NTC) had control of the city, but it has now fallen into the hands of pro-Gaddafi supporters.

Fighting between the pro-Gaddafi supporters and the town’s militia resulted in the deaths of four soldiers loyal to the NTC. According to Suleiman Hatir, who is a rebel fighter from the town of Tobruk, there are more than 300 pro-Gaddafi fighters in Beni Walid. Many of them were in jail along with Gaddafi regime officials. They were being held for war crimes. Those prisoners were freed during the fighting.

Ian Martin, a United Nations special envoy, reported to the United Nations Security Council a bit of different story. According to Martin, the fighters holding Beni Walid are not part of an uprising for the memory of Gaddafi. Instead, the problem, Martin says, lies in the NTC and their inability to convince the Libyan people that there is no corruption going on with the country’s oil revenues. Protests last week in focused on the fact that there is no transparency in the new leadership. In addition, many protestors are very upset that there are former Gaddafi officials still in power. They want those officials fired, but the NTC says that it simply cannot fire everyone and start over.

The national army is staying back out of Beni Walid and leaving the fighting to various militias around the country. They are coming from Misrata, Benghazi, Tripoli, and even from within Beni Walid. The fighters are quick to say that they want the same thing as the protestors and that is democracy and more accountability.

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