Help from the U.S.? Libyan rebels not sure they want it

Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi's forces have surrounded Tarek Zawi's hometown of Zawiya, he suspects, to stop shipments of food and medicine from coming in. When the rebel fighter steps outside his home to defend the city — which has been in rebel hands for more than a week — from the nightly attacks, it's always on an empty stomach.

Yet in a phone conversation Zawi, 19, was slow to embrace help from the West to end the battle for control of Libya.

After a long pause, he finally agreed that one act of military assistance would be welcome.

"Kill Gadhafi and get it over with," he said. "The Libyan people declared what they want: more freedom. A lot of people shouldn't have to die for that."

That reluctant call for help is spreading quickly across oil-rich Libya, even as rebels are deeply sensitive about foreign intervention. Many Libyans had hoped that the Gadhafi regime would be gone by now. That it isn't has forced the rebels to wrestle with whether foreign intervention would help or hurt their movement.

Whether the U.S. or other powers would in fact intervene is far from clear. The U.S. has dispatched two amphibious assault vessels loaded with hundreds of Marines, but Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference Tuesday that their purpose would be strictly humanitarian. A no-fly zone, intended to keep Gadhafi from bringing aircraft to bear in his struggle to hold on to power, is little more than an idea for now.

Still, the range of emotions that comes out as Libyans struggle with the possibility of foreign help captures how proud they are of what they've accomplished, how fearful they are that they won't be able to finish the job anytime soon and how distrustful they are of the West and its motives.

Just a week ago, suggestions of Western intervention were met with outright hostility. But these days the response is more ambivalent, as the struggle between pro- and anti-Gadhafi forces reaches a standoff and the suffering of those who live in cities that are still under Gadhafi control seems crueler every day.

Stopping the bloodshed is paramount, many say.

In Zawiya, residents think that Gadhafi's forces are blocking shipments of food and medicine to starve them into submission. There, residents such as Zawi can contemplate intervention.

In Benghazi, in Libya's east, where the battle against Gadhafi's forces was quick and often bloodless, suggestions that the United States and its allies would even enforce a no-fly zone are met more skeptically.