Some people are leaving Tripoli but it's hard to estimate how many. Most people I have asked say they will stay and they do not think "NATO rebels" can enter this well-armed and apparently well-organized city of still around 1.5 million people.
A delayed UN fact finding delegation, led by a spectular Palestinian woman from Nazareth in occupied Palestine named "Juliette", finally arrived by plane after the UN demanded NATO allow their plane to land at Tripoli airport. The UN group, staying at our hotel, had been blocked from the main road between Tripoli and Tunisia. As of the morning of August 18, people are trapped in Tripoli from departing to Tunisia and no one is entering from Tunisia.
Libyan students at Tripoli's Al Fatah University and even some government officials have told this observer that they have vowed to dig in and wage a "Stalingrad Defense" of Tripoli against the advancing "NATO rebels." Certainly the neighborhoods are very heavily armed.
Some, including this observer, lack the heart to remind these dear students that at Stalingrad, the Russian citizns were holding out for the arrival of the Red Army that did indeed save many of them in the end.
One does not sense that a Red Army is en route to lift the threatened siege of Tripoli.
But maybe Tripoli's defenders will not need a Red Army to lift a siege of Tripoli.
This week, a Libyan law student who for weeks has been helping man a neighborhood defense committee checkpoint near Airport Road left me the following note:
"Franklin, you asked me how we will defend our capitol Tripoli if NATO bombs a path so rebel forces can arrive here and try to enter our neighborhoods. We discuss this often among ourselves during the night. This is what we have to say to answer your question"
It is not private information that our defense will be from every buildings on every main street, square or roundabout. We can and will keep for as long as possible every meter that NATO forces try to take. Every apartment building, factory, warehouse, street corner, intersection, home or office building is waiting and supplied with guns of different types, RPGs and mortars. Snipers and specially trained small 5-6 man units are ready. Our defense will be a house to house battle. From every floor and from hole in the floor we will fight NATO rebels. Also from the sewers we will fight and every basement. If NATO enters a front door we will fight them for every room in the house and from the piles of debris created from them bombing us.
Dear friend Lamb. Libyans are a good and a proud people. You and I have spoken about Omar Muktar and our defeat of the Italians that cost us more than one-third of our relatives who fell in battle. Do you know my friend that during the Ottoman Empire centuries of colonization which was the only Arab or Muslim country to rebel again them? It was Libya. Only Libya, led by her tribes. We stood up against the Turks and fought two 20 year wars against them. Do NATO and Obama believe they can defeat us? Your friend, Mohammad."
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