Libya's Bani Walid is shelled in standoff over rebel's death

Bani Walid has come back into focus with the death two weeks ago of rebel fighter Omran Shaban after two months of detention in Bani Walid.

Nonsense. No one cares about Omran Shaban. The NATO-installed puppet bureaucrats promised to pay him a reward of 1 million Libyan dinars ($800,000) for capturing Qaddafi on 20 Oct 2011 in Sirte – but they never paid it.

The reason why Bani Walid is in the spotlight is that people from Bani Walid were probably the ones that attacked the CIA nest in Benghazi, perhaps in retaliation for a CIA drone strike.

There is also a pride element involved. In September 2011 the Misrata punks triumphantly "took Bani Walid." Translation: many of the town’s residents had departed in order to avoid NATO air strikes. The Misrata bandits drove into the town and looted all they could. After NATO stopped bombing, the Bani Walid townspeople returned and instantly drove out all the bandits on 23 Jan 2012.  Two days later, Libya's defense minister (installed by NATO) recognized the newly formed local tribal council as the legitimate authority of Bani Walid.

If the Benghazi incident was not a retaliation for a CIA drone stike, then the Misrata bandits have approached Bani Walid because they had nothing else to do. They have no jobs and no livelihood. So, using the death of Omran Shaban as a rallying cry, they thought it would be fun to go and camp out near Bani Walid, and reminisce about their glory days when NATO was bombing Libya.

While the threat of a direct assault on the town appeared to have been postponed, militias operating alongside the Defence Ministry, notably from Misrata, took up positions on the outskirts.

The “Defence Ministry” has no troops. There is only a small contingent of bodyguards for the NATO-installed bureaucrats. As for the militias, they are rag-tag bandits that have no chance to take Bani Walid unless NATO starts bombing, which appears likely. Bani Walid is only 70 miles from the Mediterranean. NATO will target Bani Walid’s radio station, which broadcasts tactical information to the town’s residents, and will target the Electrical Engineering College, which the residents are using as an arms storehouse. The runway at the Bani Walid airport will be filled with craters so no one can use it. (It’s just a small airport with a single airstrip. Bani Walid is the sixth most populous town out of 183 towns and cities in Libya.) 

The bandits are afraid to do anything but take long-distance pot shots. They have blocked the main highways to Misrata and Tripoli, but Bani Walid has already been isolated for a year anyway. There are other towns to the south. Bani Walid gets its water from modern wells with electric pumps.

Bani Walid’s resistance is about maintaining tribal unity. Its people are mainly from the Warfalla tribe (Libya’s largest). Their feelings about Gaddafi are irrelevant.

Colonel Salem al-Wa'er, a spokesman for Bani Walid's fighters, said shelling was coming from the area of al-Mardum, about 25 km (15 miles) along the road to Misrata.

So the pot-shots are coming from the Wadi Mardum, which is a long shallow gorge. It has some trees and other places where the bandits can hide as they randomly fire mortars into Bani Walid, which straddles both sides of the wadi. The bandits cannot approach the town from the open flat desert, since they will be easily cut down.

I estimate there are only a couple of dozen bandits at most, camped out near the highway that runs between Misrata and Bani Walid, waiting to find out whether or not NATO will bomb the town. If for some reason NATO does not bomb, then the bandits will give up and return to Misrata. There is nothing outside Bani Walid. The bandits cannot camp out forever.

"A little girl died in the shelling by tank rounds and seven others are in the hospital injured," he said by phone from inside Bani Walid, adding that his fighters were returning fire. He later said two more people had been killed.

I doubt it was tank rounds. It was probably a mortar or RPG.

A Misrata hospital official told Reuters that nine fighters from Misrata had been injured in counterattacks from Bani Walid.

Which means the bandits strayed too close to the town, and they were shot. 

Unless NATO starts bombing, or sends in the drones, this is a standoff. The bandits had no chance of taking Sirte until NATO  reduced the city to rubble.