Libya's YouTube and Facebook rebels

When protestors took sledgehammers to the symbols of his rule, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime started to crumble.

His Green Book – an idiosyncratic political tract he claims has been translated into every language – was compulsory reading, and green-painted concrete monuments of its three volumes stood in every Libyan town.

Tawfik Othman Al-Shohibiy, a 25-year-old chemical engineer, filmed the destruction of the Green Book statues in Tobruk, Libya’s easternmost city. Previously best known as Rommel’s headquarters during World War ll, it has gained a new distinction as the first Libyan town to fall to anti-Gaddafi forces on 17 February.

Pictures al-Shohibiy took with his mobile phone, showing a crowd of 2000 yelling “the people demand the fall of the regime” and reducing the green books to rubble, were broadcast across the world.

“When I got these pictures, my brother said they would cut the internet so I should go and upload it immediately,” he said. “I went to the cybercafe and locked myself inside. It was so slow, I was there all night – from 6pm until 5am. Then the internet was cut.”

Read more from Lindsey Hilsum: ‘Gaddafi – you are the weakest link’

Well-educated and English-speaking, Al-Shohibiy is poised between the traditional tribal world of his forefathers, and the global connectivity of his generation.

An avid follower of events in Tunisia and Egypt, he had realised the importance of images and of getting the story out, so when he put the video onto his Facebook page, he added his full name and phone number, and asked his Facebook friends to post it on as many websites as possible. Then he uploaded it to YouTube.

He knew that if the revolution was quashed, he had signed his own death warrant.

“I was scared,” he said. “I knew what Gaddafi would do if this failed.”

Within a few hours, Al-Shohibiy’s phone was buzzing.

“It was Egyptians asking if we needed anything,” he said. “I told them to pray for us, and tell the international media. After that I got more than 500 international calls from journalists.”

Al-Shohibiy’s family had long resisted Colonel Gaddafi’s rule, as had many others in Tobruk. His father, Ebrik, a police officer, was in prison when he was born – the family still doesn’t know why. In 1990, several opposition figures were publicly hanged in Tobruk, cementing Ebrik’s hatred of the regime. In 1993, he was gaoled for five years without trial.
Yet even Ebrik was worried about his son’s bold move of publishing his phone number on Facebook.

“We have a saying that if you’re riding a camel, they can already see your head, so there’s no point in lowering it. I said that to my father.”

Read more: social media and the people’s revolution

Protestors in Tobruk came out for a second day on 18 February, and were met with tear-gas, beatings and shotgun fire. Five were killed and dozens injured before the military and the police changed sides, and Libya’s traditional tri-colour flag replaced Colonel Ghadaffi’s green one over the town. Old men emerged with tattered flags they had kept hidden in their houses since Colonel Gaddafi seized power from King Idris 42 years ago.

Celebrations erupted as the uprising spread west along the coast road towards Libya’s second city, Benghazi.
Suddenly al- Shohibiy and his family found themselves at the centre of a revolution. A relative smuggled in kalashnikovs to add to the large stock already in the area.

“Tobruk’s full of guns anyway,” shrugged al-Shohibiy. “We don’t respect the law and the tribe controls everything. We’re on a major migration route for birds so we have guns to shoot them.”

By the next day, everyone in town knew who had uploaded the video so the other revolutionaries asked al-Shohibiy and his brother to start a media campaign. As town after town fell to the rebels, al-Shohibiy collected amateur video from across eastern Libya. Sleeping only a couple of hours a night, he ferried the pictures to the Egyptian border where his brother collected them, and took them to the small town of Matruh to upload onto YouTube. With the internet cut, and before reporters started to cross the border into Libya, TV news stations across the world had no other source of pictures of the rebellion sweeping across the country.

The rubble of the Green Book monuments in Tobruk has become a monument in themselves, as people gather there every afternoon to chant anti-Ghadaffi slogans.

Hundreds of cars file down the corniche, honking their horns while passengers lean out of the windows flashing victory signs. The police station and the headquarters of the regime’s local committee have been burnt down, and in the centre of the town square a few make-shift tents have been erected, a minature copy of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, one of the inspirations for Libya’s revolt.

Al-Shohibiy is busy guiding journalists across “liberated” eastern Libya and planning for his future. He’s confident now that Colonel Gaddafi will fall, and when the job is done, he hopes to go to the USA to study for his PhD.

Channel 4 News International Editor Lindsey Hilsum wrote this blog for The Sunday Times.  You can follow her on Twitter @lindseyhilsum.