Zawiyah out of bounds on the road to Gaddafi's Tripoli

It’s a straight run from the Tunisian border into Tripoli. Unless you can’t get through the coastal town of Zawiyah, that is.

We were travelling to the Libyan capital yesterday on the regular bus which drops off journalists who are leaving the country, and picks up the newbies. As we rolled along the coastal road, the atmosphere began to change. The shops were shuttered. There were dozens of checkpoints manned by jumpy soldiers. We picked up a police escort, with flashing light. As we stopped at a roadblock, a soldier waved his pistol and then pointed it at the police car. Then a man in a crisp white naval uniform at a roadblock some five miles west of Zawiyah made us turn back and take a long detour.

We drove inland down country roads, the rest of the traffic following. Many of the young men on roadblocks wore half uniform – khaki trousers and a tee-shirt, or a camo jacket with jeans. They were on their feet, Kalashnikovs to the ready, none of the slouching and hanging loose you see at checkpoints where there’s no threat.

The detour ensured that we saw and heard nothing. Once we arrived in Tripoli, the government spokesman told us there had been nothing to see or hear. Just a few renegades, and not even in Zawiyah, he said, but 15 miles to the south. Rebel sources, however, suggested heavy fighting in the town, which they had occupied briefly in March before being defeated by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.

This morning, the Libyan government wasn’t letting us anywhere near Zawiyah. About 50 journalists were loaded onto a bus to Aziziya, just south of Tripoli, and taken to what was described as a cultural centre. In a half empty hall, a few dozen lacklustre youths waved placards of Col Gaddafi in various regalia. As the TV cameras arrived, they started to chant, and as we left, they stopped. The ante room was plastered with children’s drawings featuring camels, men on horseback, Colonel Gadaffi with an owl, jets, tanks, rats (note: the rebels are always called rats), flags of enemy countries and two-headed snakes.

We were then taken to see a hole in the ground, which may or may not have been caused by NATO bombing. Someone said mildly that the bomb hadn’t exploded.  This, I thought, was one for a bomb disposal unit not a group of journalists. At that point, half a dozen gigging children tore up and started jumping up and down for the cameras, shouting pro-Gaddafi slogans on the edge of the hole containing the potentially lethal possibly unexploded ordnance.

Time to pull back to the hotel, I thought, and we did.