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"FacebookPinterest\n\n The rebel army keeping watch on the desert highway that connects liberated Benghazi to Tripoli is surprisingly relad given the persistent rumor that pro-Qaddafi forces will be arriving in thirty minutes. The men sauntering around the rebels' western line of control have collected a diverse array of weapons\u2014machine guns from the world's major arms manufacturers, RPGs and artillery launchers, anti-aircraft guns, hand grenades, and knives of all shapes and sizes. They've also turned ammunition belts into slings and crowns.\n\n The frontline is about thirty miles past Brega, a sleepy town next to a major oil refinery. On Wednesday, fierce fighting broke out along the main roads and dunes leading to the town as a Qaddafi offensive tried to retake control of the oil terminal. By the time the clashing ceased, fourteen people were dead and many more injured, but the rebels managed to beat back Qaddafi's forces.\n\n On Wednesday morning, defected soldiers and civilians from across eastern Libya jumped into cars and drove to the front to help. Now they are standing guard fueled by nationalism, adrenaline and communal plates of rice.\n\n Akram El Abdulli is the first in line on the west-facing highway overlooking the desert. He is manning the post's only recoilless rifle, which is actually a massive green launching tube for 106-millimeter shells, propped up on sandbags. When El Abdulli arrived at a Benghazi military base to join the fighting Wednesday afternoon, they gave him a truck, the launcher and sent him on his way.\n\n The businessman completed two years of military service in 1996 and has done the month-long mandatory refresher courses every year since. But it's unclear if he knows what's actually going on. He's peering into the sight with his black Ray Bans still on, calmly observing the highway Qaddafi loyalists raced through Wednesday.\n\n \"We're looking to go ahead. There's no way back except cutting off the head of Qaddafi,\" the rebel fighter says, smiling under his green helmet. \"I'm 42-years-old, the same number of years as Qaddafi's rule.\" The forces gathered around him burst out laughing.\n\n Although there are no official uniforms, everyone is dressed to match in keffiyehs and what appears to be a mandatory object of green or tan clothing, preferably with camouflage print.\n\n In fact, the whole post looks like its paying homage to Che Guevara. The best imitation by far is by Ali Youssef, a young electrician. Youssef is sporting a brown camouflage jacket and skinny matching cargo pants above his lace-up black boots (see photo). His neck is wrapped in a white keffiyeh, eyes hidden behind dark Ray Bans. He's topped off the look with a mop of tangled curls and a thick black beard.\n\n Leaning over a truck bed with a cigarette dangling from his lips, Youssef declares: \"I'm not afraid. The army and the people are here together to get rid of Qaddafi.\" Next to the rebel hispter an older soldier flashes thumbs up.\n\n But despite the spirited merger of defected troops and eager civilians competing with one another to curse Qaddafi to visiting journalists, the frontline is a disorganized mess. It's entirely unclear who is in charge of strategy and giving orders to the rebel forces.\n\n El Abdulli, at the recoilless rifle, first explains that if he sees an approaching enemy, he will seek permission from his commander before firing. When I ask from who and how, he stutters and then changes his mind: \"As soon as I see something suspicious, I'll shoot.\" The intersection has a few shuttered single-story shops, and not much else\u2014beyond is desert.\n\n But perhaps with so many eager recruits, it won't be hard to set up defenses in the open expanse. The rebels with rifles fire at random into the air, shout \"God is great\", and fire some more. It seems like everyone here is prepared to run face-first into oncoming fire, whether armed or not.\n\n That includes Mufah El Mami, a 30-year-old field engineer, who arrived at the fortification line this morning. He left his wife, three months pregnant, with her father. He told her he was going to do something to help the rebellion, though he wasn't sure what. She started weeping but he was adamant.\n\n \"Whatever is coming, we can't avoid it,\" El Mami explains. \"I don't have to wait until Qaddafi and his forces come to my house and kill me there.\" As we walk over bullet casings riddling the ground, he looks down and says, \"Maybe I'll call her this afternoon to tell her I'm here.\"\n\n El Mami doesn't have a gun; he's waiting for another friend coming from a city more than ten hours away to bring him a spare. And when his friend arrives, El Mami admits he won't actually know how to fire the newly acquired weapon. \"It's not such a difficult thing to learn how to shoot,\" he reasons. I'm not sure if he's trying to convince himself or me.\n\n Soldiers and civilians hold the line in scattered clusters around trucks with anti-aircraft bolted into the beds. On the farthest left of the lineup a crew of eight guys lounge outside a mud-covered white Highland truck that they said they picked up at the military base in Benghazi.\n\n Sherif Mohammed's weapon is a pistol. It won't do him much good unless he gets extremely close to the Qaddafi forces. But he doesn't care; he's confident they'll win anyway. \"We gave them a good chase yesterday,\" he says of rooting out the Qaddafi forces. The rest of the guys, sprawled across a small blue mattress in a mass of triumphant testosterone, agree. \"Compared to the guys fighting in Tripoli,\" he says in reference to the African mercenaries Qaddafi has hired to buttress his control, \"they are getting money to fight, to buy their loyalty. But we are doing it for free, because we love our country.\" He says his parents were only too happy he's chosen to come fight at the front. \"They support me, until we die or win.\"\n\n But fighting Qaddafi's forces has taken a heavy toll. In nearby Ajdabiya, the hospital counts fourteen deaths from Wednesday's fighting, including a 12-year-old boy. Their bloodied bodies are washed and wrapped in clean white sheets, before being transferred to wooden coffins for the joint-funeral procession. Men shoot AKs into the sky in memory and everyone chants: \"There is no God but God. The martyr is the beloved of God.\"\n\n The chanting is interrupted by a piercing wail, a mother stumbles back from one of the caskets, her hands covering her face. The men send more bullets into the air.\n\n Sarah A. Topol is a Cairo-based journalist. She has reported from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel and Palestine, Libya, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, Newsweek, and Slate, among others"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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