To the shores of Tripoli

Rico says it's in the Marine Corps Hymn, but hopefully we won't have to go back because, as David Kirkpatrick and Mona el-Naggar's article in The New York Times points out, things are going badly there:

The faltering government of the Libyan strongman Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi struck back at mounting protests against his forty-year rule, as helicopters and warplanes besieged parts of the capital, according to witnesses and news reports from Tripoli.
By Monday night, witnesses said, the streets of the capital, Tripoli, were thick with special forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi as well as mercenaries. They shot freely as planes and helicopters buzzed over the city, making further protests against the government impossible for the moment.
Hundreds of Qaddafi supporters took over Green Square after truck loads of militiamen arrived and opened fire on protesters, scattering them from the square. Residents said they now feared even to emerge from their houses. “It was an obscene amount of gunfire,” said the witness. “They were strafing these people. People were running in every direction.” The police stood by and watched, the witness said, as the militiamen, still shooting, chased after the protesters.
The escalation of the conflict came after six days of revolt that began in Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, where more than 220 people were killed in clashes with security forces, according to witnesses and human rights groups. The rebellion is the latest and bloodiest so far of the uprisings that have swept across the Arab world with surprising speed in recent weeks, toppling autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia, and challenging others in Bahrain and Yemen.
As the conflict spread to Tripoli, Colonel Qaddafi’s long hold on power appeared to be weakening, too, as key advisers and diplomats broke with his government and Libya’s second-largest city remained under control of the protesters.
Colonel Qaddafi’s whereabouts were not known. But the heavy presence of security forces in the capital late Monday was a clear signal of his determination to hold on. Two residents said planes had been landing for ten days ferrying mercenaries from African countries into an airbase in Tripoli. They had done much of the shooting, which began Sunday night, they said.
“The shooting is not designed to disperse the protesters,” said one resident, who wanted to be identified by only as Waleed, fearing for his security. “It is meant to kill them. This is not Ben Ali or Mubarak,” he added, referring to the deposed leaders of Tunisia and Egypt: Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. “This man has no sense of humanity. ”
Two Libyan fighter jets defected to Malta after they had been ordered to bomb protesters, said Maltese government officials quoted by Reuters. Reports of firing from helicopters at protesters and bombing from warplanes could not be confirmed, however. It was a jarring turnabout from earlier, when Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces had retreated to defend just a few buildings, including the state television headquarters and the presidential palace, witnesses reported from Tripoli.
In a sign of growing cracks within the government, several senior officials— including the justice minister and members of the Libyan mission to the United Nations— broke with Colonel Qaddafi. In Tripoli, fires from the rioting burned at many intersections throughout the day on Monday. Most stores were shuttered, and long lines were forming for a chance to buy bread or gas. Protesters had torn down or burned the posters of Colonel Qaddafi that were once ubiquitous in the capital, witnesses said.
Protesters remained in control of Benghazi on Monday. Online videos showed them flying an independence flag over the roof top of a building, and a crowd celebrating what they called “the fall of the regime" in their city. They issued a list of demands calling for a secular interim government led by the army in cooperation with a council of Libyan tribes.
Playing down the unrest, Colonel Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi went on state television to give a rambling, disjointed address. He blamed Islamic radicals and Libyans in exile for the uprising. He offered a vague package of reforms, potentially including a new flag, national anthem, and confederate structure. But his main theme was to threaten Libyans with the prospect of civil war over its oil resources that would break up the country, deprive residents of food and education, and even invite a Western takeover. “Libya is made up of tribes and clans and loyalties,” he said. “There will be civil war.” He repeated several times that “Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt, ” neighbors to the east and west, and vowed to fight to “the last bullet.”
Apparently enraged by the speech, protesters converged on the capital’s central Green Square soon after and clashed with heavily armed riot police for several hours, witnesses in Tripoli said by telephone. Young men armed themselves with chains around their knuckles, steel pipes, and machetes, as well as police batons, helmets, and rifles commandeered from riot squads. Security forces moved in, shooting randomly.
By morning, businesses and schools remained closed in the capital, the witnesses said. There were several government buildings on fire— including the Hall of the People, where the legislature meets— and reports of looting.
The United States condemned the Qaddafi government’s lethal use of force, and ordered all non-essential personnel and family members at its embassy to leave the country.
The Libyan government has tried to impose a blackout on information from the country. Foreign journalists cannot enter. Internet access has been almost totally severed, though some protesters appear to be using satellite connections. Much news about what is going on came from telephone interviews with people inside the country.
News agencies reported that several foreign oil and gas companies were moving to evacuate some workers as well. The Portuguese government sent a plane to Libya to pick up its citizens and other residents of the European Union, while Turkey sent two ferries for its construction workers.
The Quryna newspaper, which has ties to Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, said that protests have occurred in Ras Lanuf, an oil town where some workers were being assembled to defend a refinery complex from attacks.
Quryna also reported that the justice minister, Mustafa Abud al-Jeleil, had resigned in protest over the deadly response to the demonstrations.
An opposition Web site, al-Manara, reported that a senior military official, Colonel Abdel Fattah Younes in Benghazi, resigned, and the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Colonel Qaddafi had ordered that one of his top generals, Abu Bakr Younes, be put under house arrest after disobeying an order to use force against protesters in several cities.
Abdel Monem Al-Howni, Libya’s representative to the Arab League, also resigned. “I no longer have any links to this regime which lost all legitimacy,” he said in a statement reported by news agencies. He also called what is happening in Libya genocide.
Over the last three days Libyan security forces have killed at least 223 people, according to a tally by the group Human Rights Watch. Several people in Benghazi hospitals, reached by telephone, said they believed that as many as 200 had been killed and more than 800 wounded there on Saturday alone, with many of the deaths from machine gun fire.
After protesters marched in a funeral procession on Sunday morning, the security forces again opened fire, killing at least sixty more, Human Rights Watch said.
The deputy ambassador and more than a dozen members of the Libyan mission to the United Nations called upon Colonel Qaddafi to step down and leave the country. “He has to leave as soon as possible,” the deputy ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, said. “He has to stop killing the Libyan people.” He urged other nations to join in that request, saying he feared there could be a large-scale massacre in Tripoli and calling on “African nations” to stop sending what he called “mercenaries” to fight on behalf of Colonel Qaddafi’s government. Mr. Dabbashi said he had not seen the Libyan ambassador since Friday and did not know his whereabouts or whether he shared the opinion of many in his mission. But, Mr. Dabbashi said, the United Nations mission represents the people, not Colonel Qaddafi.
The man who was the government’s chief spokesman until a month ago, Mohamed Bayou, called on Libya’s leadership to begin a dialogue with the opposition and discuss drawing up a Constitution. On Monday, Reuters reported that Mr. Bayou issued a statement referring to Seif Qaddafi: “I hope he will change his speech to acknowledge the existence of an internal popular opposition.”
With little shared national experience, aside from brutal Italian colonialism, Libyans tend to identify themselves as members of tribes or clans rather than citizens of a country, and Colonel Qaddafi has governed in part through the mediation of a “social leadership committee” composed of about fifteen representatives of various tribes, said Diederik Vandewalle, a Dartmouth professor who has studied the country.
Most of the tribal representatives on the committee are also military officers, who each represent a tribal group within the military, he added. So, unlike the Tunisian or Egyptian militaries, the Libyan military may lack the cohesion or professionalism that would enable it to step in to resolve the conflict or stabilize the country.