“They support us now, so we’ve forgotten about all they’ve done to us.There are two ways of gold acquisition: taxation, which was described above, and selling resources on the market. Suluq is once again hoping for better times now that the rebels have sought to wrest back Mukhtar’s legacy.Īs for the Italians who once built a concentration camp in the town but are back in east Libya as supporters of the rebels now, all is forgiven, says the merchant Absallah - even if they killed his grandfather for fighting with Mukhtar. “We had hopes that they would do lots of things to develop the town, but they did nothing for us,” said Mohammed Mohammed, a vegetable store owner in Suluq. A monument marks the spot where Italians hanged the warrior. The grave itself is simple, with a large portrait of Mukhtar standing next to it. Instead, visitors to the site are greeted by a compound overgrown with weeds, snail-infested lamps, a derelict building with a broken door and no security guard in sight. Gaddafi came bearing promises of turning Suluq into a shrine for Mukhtar - a plaque outlines plans for a mosque, mausoleum, museum, library and a school for Koranic teaching.Ī billboard depicts a futuristic vision of the grave site, with red-carpeted steps flanked by palm trees leading up to a gleaming mausoleum. “If you ask any of the rebels where Omar Mukhtar was from or where he was born, they don’t know,” Horeir said. Mukhtar was a natural figure for rebels to latch on to because he is a legend among east Libyan tribes and because the 1981 film “Lion of the Desert” starring Anthony Quinn made him popular among younger Libyans, said Abdelmola Al-Horeir, a history professor at Benghazi’s Garyounis university.īut few of the young Libyans waging the battle against Gaddafi are versed in Mukhtar’s biography, he added.
“And that’s because he fought for freedom.” “If he were alive today, Omar Mukhtar would be with the rebels,” said Mustafa Mohammed, a Suluq shopkeeper. Legend has it that his resilience won him the grudging respect of the Italian officers sent by the country’s Fascist leader Benito Mussolini to quell the rebellion.
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“Omar Mukhtar fought to free Libya from the Italians and the rebels are doing the same thing now, fighting to free Libya from Gaddafi,” said Suluq merchant Tahar Ibrahim Absallah, whose grandfather Absalam Ali fought alongside Mukhtar.Ĭurled up on a rug in his Suluq shop stacked with sacks of dates and bottles of date oil, Absallah says he supplies the rebels with food just like his wealthy grandfather did with the camel, sheep and cows he owned.Ī former Koran teacher affiliated with Libya’s Salafi-inspired Senussi order, Mukhtar was skilled in desert guerrilla warfare and eluded his Italian captors for 20 years. Mukhtar’s solemn figure clad in white robes gazes down from billboards, posters and bumper stickers throughout Libya’s rebel-held east, from the insurgent stronghold Benghazi to the forgotten town of Suluq, where the Italians hanged him in 1931. Nearly a century after Italian colonial rulers executed Mukhtar, the “Lion of the Desert” is now back as a spiritual father figure and icon for Libya’s ragtag rebel movement.
This wasn’t meant to be vandalism, but part of the rebels’ efforts to reclaim the revered warrior’s legacy which the Libyan leader alternately exploited and suppressed for four decades. SULUQ, Libya (Reuters) - Near the grave of Libyan resistance hero Omar Al-Mukhtar, insurgents have painted a wall the rebel tricolour, ripped Muammar’s Gaddafi’s name from a stone plaque and scrawled anti-government graffiti everywhere.
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