Libya is united in popular revolution – please don't intervene

"THE GUARDIAN

We welcome a no-fly zone, but the blood of Libya's dead will be wasted if the west curses our uprising with failed intervention

"Kiss my mum goodbye for me, and tell her that her son died a hero," said my friend Ahmed, 26, to the first person who rushed to his side after he was shot in a Tripoli street.

Two days later, my friend Ahmed died in the hospital. Just like that.

That tall, handsome, funny, witty, intellectual young man is no more. No longer will he answer my phone calls. Time will stand still on his Facebook account for ever.

An hour before he was shot, I called Ahmed. He sounded at his best. He told me that he was in Green Square in the heart of Tripoli, and that we were free. Then bad telephone connections meant I couldn't reach him again for two whole days.

That was when I called Ahmed's best friend, who broke the devastating news to me. They were about to bury him, he told me. I rushed to the cemetery, and arrived there right after the burial. I found some of our friends. They pointed at a spot on the ground telling me it was where Ahmed's body lay. We all hugged each other and just cried our hearts out.

This is the kind of story you get out of Tripoli these days. Hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands. The kind of stories that you could never imagine on your doorstep.

...So as the calls for foreign intervention grow, I'd like to send a message to western leaders: Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy. This is a priceless opportunity that has fallen into your laps, it's a chance for you to improve your image in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims. Don't mess it up. All your previous programmes to bring the east and the west closer have failed, and some of them have made things even worse. Don't start something you cannot finish, don't turn a people's pure revolution into some curse that will befall everyone. Don't waste the blood that my friend Ahmed spilt for me.

Let us just live as neighbours on the same planet. Who knows, may be I as your neighbour might one day show up at your doorstep to happily shake your hand."

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