General Omar Hariri was confirmed
as the head of the Military Council at a press conference on March 5,
but the lines of his authority are difficult to discern in this
haphazard and still uncertain command structure. His control is even
less clear in the field of battle, where defected soldiers and civilian
volunteers come together in a poorly disciplines, frequently chaotic
rebel army.
The days following the explosions at Rajma brought
-- or perhaps exposed -- confusion among the rebel military
organization. Saturday was a rough day for 36-year-old Khaled Al-Sai'ih,
the civilian coordinator between the National Libyan Council (the
public face of the opposition, announced on February 27) and the
military council, the membership of which remains secret for, they say,
security reasons.
At the Lawyers' Union of Benghazi, where the
eastern leadership meets, Al-Sai'ih was escorted by a young man carrying
not one but two Kalashnikov rifles. Walking the halls of the courthouse
between locked-door meetings, he tried to juggle the journalists,
assistants, and volunteers asking him questions, pulling on his sleeve
and handing him mobile phones and sheaves of paper. Asked if he liked
the job, Al-Sai'ih gestured towards someone who was shaking a phone at
him urgently. "Not this part," he said. The front door of the courthouse
was locked for the first time in days. Outside, a crowd of people
waited to enter and meet with their new government. One man in fatigues,
pounding his fists against the door, shouted himself hoarse.
Al-Sai'ih
insisted that the membership of the military council, including its
leader, is "classified and confidential." The military prosecutors
charged with investigating the explosions at the Rajma depot also cannot
be named, he said. Of the civilian volunteer soldiers, he said, "a lot
of them have done national service before. They are not totally
untrained." He said that the volunteers and the defectors from Qaddafi's
army "are all working together, they are all coming together to fight."
Al-Sai'ih was quickly exasperated by the questioning. "A
spokesman will be announced at the press conference in a few minutes.
Enough? Finished?" He turned around and left without looking back,
surrounded by men whispering in his ear and pulling him along. Five
minutes later, a courthouse volunteer said the conference had been
cancelled and "it should happen tomorrow. Maybe around 1 o'clock, I
don't know."
A press conference was eventually held at the
Tibisti Hotel, but was ill attended because few journalists knew where
it was, when it was, or that it would take place at all. Omar Hariri was
announced the head of the 13-person military council. An official said
that Hariri was unavailable for questions because he was busy meeting
with the commandos unit of the army.