"We're not militias brah..."

So there I was sitting in a hazy smoke filled shop alongside four Libyans on a Thursday night.

The shop was one of many in a neighborhood south of Souq Al-Juma called Ayn-Zara. It was past closing time and the roll-down door was open just enough to keep us from becoming a conspicious target of the "militia" (more on that in a minute).

We'd been in the shop for about three hours. Spliff after spliff had been meticulously processed after the arrival of a stick of hash about the size of a PEZ dispenser arrived in the sock of one former oil company engineer from Benghazi.

As we were sitting in a car accessory shop it was only natural for me to ask about the recent van on black tinted windows for civilian cars.

I asked "show me which window tinting was banned by the militia."

Everybody froze and silence overcame the room as I said "yeah, the militia... they had a checkpoint set up last week and were tearing the black tinted screening off any non-militia vehicle."

They then went on to inform me to never use this word again as the Libya Dawn (Fajr Libya in Arabic) aren't a group of militias but are the sole and legitimate Army of Libya.

Now whether they said this to protect me from getting my head stomped in by sympathizers or off-duty "soldiers" or because they were somehow connected to Fajr Libya remains to be seen. I'm still not sure but I suspect the latter given that later that night we took a smoke-filled drive through the streets of Tripoli at speeds of more than 100 mph as we weaved in and out of traffic.

Looking back, they probably form some sort of Libya Dawn reserve. Not full-time soldiers but uncommited irregulars that would be called up in case Fajr Libya was unable to hold the city from General Haftar's Karama push.