In Europe they were known as the Amazons. In north Africa, they were admiringly dubbed Haris al-Has — the private guards.
They were the elite cadre of female bodyguards who surrounded former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi for more than 20 years, becoming almost synonymous with his idiosyncratic dictatorial rule.
Now, nearly three weeks after Tripoli fell, the dictator’s ravaged compounds are finally shedding light on the enigmatic unit and like much else in Qaddafi’s Libya, the myth of glamor and steadfast devotion is at odds with a reality of ruthless control and illusion.
Inside one building in 77 Brigade, a giant base of ruined hangars in the central city, a select group of female guards were based.
A pink petticoat in the forecourt distinguishes this two-story heap of rubble from other more intact buildings nearby and further inside, the shattered lives of press-ganged young women start to emerge.
In one room, a designer desert boot lies next to a mangled wardrobe. In the next, a black bra is strewn under a Mickey Mouse cutout and a blue high heel has been crushed by a timber. Further along the corridor the lighting improves, courtesy of a NATO missile that has crashed through the ceiling, and dusty wedding photos jut from a layer of concrete dust.
Down a crumbling staircase, packets of pasta spill from another ransacked room, which is now home to a cat and kittens. The building has a long-ago feel, until the last door on the left, where the reality of life in this place is both stark and recent.
This is the room of the commandant, a vehement Qaddafi loyalist named Fatima Baroud, who has not been seen for several months. Women who served in this unit had an abiding fear of Baroud, but were even more terrified of the small room with the rank blue carpet to the side.
“That is where I was raped,” said Nisrine Gheriyanih, 19, in a prison yard this week, having been captured by the anti-Qaddafi forces. “They would come and take us by the hand and walk us down the corridor. We knew what would happen.”
Several empty ointment packets lie strewn on the floor along with lentils and half-eaten baguettes. Nisrine said she was assaulted here by Qaddafi’s former head of internal security, Mansour Dhao, who this week fled to Niger.
However, now she is facing a different plight. On the night of Aug. 20, as Tripoli burned, she said she was ordered by a male Qaddafi soldier to shoot dead three rebels. She said she did as she was told in order to save her own life.
“What could I do,” she sobbed, a rebel badge pinned to her abaya. “If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be here now, but if I did do it, I wouldn’t be here either. Which is better?”
Sitting next to her in Jadida Prison in Tripoli’s east were two other women, also part of the 77 Brigade unit, known as Haris al-Shabi, with very different stories.
One, Nisrine Abdul Hadi, 19, said she was sent to join Qaddafi’s army by her family in Bani Walid. She was arrested in the loyalist stronghold of Abu Selim in one of the last battles for the capital, accused of running supplies to loyalist soldiers.
She has the haunted eyes of a child who is utterly lost.
“We had three jobs,” she said. “To support the male army, to do ceremonial things, like guarding, and to fight if necessary.”
Sitting next to her is a rare woman in the new Libya — a diehard Qaddafi loyalist, who is happy to talk about her role as a leader of the 77 Brigade.
“He gave us honor,” said Jamila Calipha al-Arun, 52.
“Yes, I fought for him and I was proud to,” she said, outlining how she carried and distributed guns to military units. “He was a good and noble man, and I was proud to have served. I loved him. It was my duty, but now it’s over and I want to go home.”
The one area where Arun clearly differed from the ousted Libyan overlord was in how he chose his elite guard force.
“You had to be tall, beautiful and have long hair,” she said. “I was never chosen.”
All three women sitting in the prison grounds wore conservative Islamic scarves, very unlike the female guards that Qaddafi used to travel with and often take abroad.
“They did not have the same rules,” Arun said. “They were the elite girls. There were about 400 of them over 10 years.”
Inside Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound, six low-set gray buildings with narrow slits for windows were where his private guards were based.
Everything here has been looted or burned in recent weeks, and finding remnants of the girls in uniform is difficult.
Along with the odd garment or shoe lying on a filthy floor, newspaper clippings of Arab leaders and pop stars are still pasted to one wall.
However, in every other building, it is like they were never there.
“They were the most important part of Qaddafi’s world and they have probably gone with him,” Arun said. “Go and find Salma Milad, Judia Sudani, Mabrouka al-Mashat or Howa Tuergi. They were all Qaddafi’s ladies and ran the unit. His world revolved around them.”
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