On the border as workers flee 'dangerous' Libya

You can tell that Colonel Gaddafi’s forces still control the western frontier with Tunisia. You can tell from several hundred yards away, fluttering in the wind and during rain, the plain green flags of the Colonel’s 41 years in power.

Beneath them, emerging from the final Libyan checkpoint, a steady stream of people walking across no man’s land, into a country which was the first in this “Arab Spring” to oust its dictator – Tunisia.

Of course you get the range of emotions, according to experience. A businessman, in his suit says: “I saw nothing at all in Tripoli. It seemed calm. I just watched it on TV.”

Khaled – who did not give his second name – said: “In Tripoli it is the army and civil guard during the day. At night things are different, there is danger, protesters, there is shooting.” He does not know who is in charge in Libya anymore.

I ask another car overfilled with Tunisian, Egyptian and Algerian guest-workers what things are like and the driver tells me: “If you go now from the border into Libya towards Tripoli, for the first 60km things are ok. But after that, well, it just gets more and more dangerous.”

The new Tunisian government has responded rather well, laying on food, medical staff, and free buses to get these people into Tunisia and in many cases onward to Algeria and home.