In late February I traveled to Libya to report a story for GQ. Crossing into eastern Libya, the optimism was immediate and contagious. Just over the border, a group of men warming up around a fire shouted over to the band of sleepy journalists I was traveling with, "Welcome! Welcome to Free Libya!" Less than two weeks earlier, rebels drove out Muammar Qaddafi's security forces in Libya's second-largest city. It seemed like only a matter of time before the rest of the country would collectively march on Tripoli.
Then, in early March, Qaddafi's troops attacked the rebel-held oil refineries from the west. Untrained men of all ages poured in to defend their holdings, forming the ragtag rebel army that by now you've read so much about. Graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Rebel Media Center in Benghazi clearly stated: NO FOREIGN MILITARY NEEDED IN LIBYA.
But the rebels were too poorly trained and disorganized to mount a substantial counterattack. I sat with an unemployed young man, Abdul Rahman, in an abandoned house in Ras Lanuf, just a dozen kilometers from the front, as antiaircraft guns rattled on the roof, shaking the house's windows. Rahman pulled out a small handmade grenade from his pocket--his only weapon. "I wish I could get a weapon," he told me, "but there's no excess. If it ever gets to hand-to-hand combat, that's when I'll use it." Rahman was helping unload ambulances and give out food, but without a gun he couldn't join the fighting.
The situation appeared increasingly hopeless as government forces pushed east, taking one town after another on the road to Benghazi. Everyone was terrified that Qaddafi would manage to seal the border and slaughter the people of eastern Libya. As troops advanced on Benghazi in mid-March, most journalists and aid workers pulled out to more secure locations closer to the Egyptian border. In Benghazi, Libyans set up makeshift checkpoints inside the city to defend their homes. Then, on March 17, the United Nations passed a no-fly zone. When loyalist troops attacked the city two days later, the United States and France responded by bombing Qaddafi military installations and tanks. Euphoria returned to eastern Libya as loyalists were driven back.
NO FOREIGN MILITARY NEEDED was covered with other posters; a billboard advertising NO FOREIGN INTERVENTION was taken down. Outside the city's courthouse and the headquarters of the Transitional National Council, Libyans flew the American flag--a rare sight in a region where it's more common to see it in flames. When people learned that I was American, they thanked me. After nearly three years living in the region, girding myself for tirades against the U.S., the outpouring was disorienting.
One morning at four A.M, I was woken by a phone call from a medical student turned activist, Ahmed Sanalla. He'd heard that a NATO campaign had taken Sirte, Qaddafi's hometown. Benghazi was crackling with deafening sounds of happy fire. He wasn't going to sleep--he wanted to know if I'd join him on the drive to Sirte. The next day, rebel forces advanced on the city but were rebuffed by heavily fortified Qaddafi troops. Sanalla didn't end up going, NATO was nowhere in sight.
A pattern quickly emerged: NATO bombings enabling the rebels to move west, followed by counterattacks from Qaddafi's troops pushing the rebels back east. The frontline volley became tedious, and even Libyans began to lose hope. Sanalla stopped talking about the imminent drive to Tripoli; now he thought about leaving Libya altogether. There were rounds of happy fire following the president's "Qaddafi must go" speech--but the United States has since backed down, ceding authority to NATO and refusing to arm the rebels.
Two months into the war, I sat with a Libyan friend in a coffee shop in Benghazi. He told me he wanted more than just a no-fly zone; he wanted "American boots on the ground." Anything to get rid of Qaddafi. He wanted freedom for his newborn daughter--the kind where he could say he hated Qaddafi without fear for his life. America had let him down.
My last trip to the frontline was at the beginning of April; I visited a checkpoint at the eastern town of Brega. We felt the bombardment move closer to us--a soft boom in the distance, a deep vibration you could feel in your thighs. As I walked to the car with another journalist, a man shouted at us. "Where is NATO? Where is America?" he wanted to know. We drove to the hospital, where four badly injured rebel fighters lay on stretchers soaked in blood. They'd all been brought in within the last half hour.
That afternoon, Qaddafi troops would move on Ajdabiya, one city down from Benghazi. Later, over dinner, some journalists tried to figure out whether or not NATO had struck back. No one knew for sure.
Sarah A. Topal, along with photographer Ben Lowy, vividly translates the revolution in Libya for the pages of GQ. To read Sarah's feature, "This Is How You Start a War," pick up a copy of June's GQ, on stands everywhere May 24, 2011. For Lowy's dramatic photographs accompanying the piece, visit GQ.com.