THERE IS only one question Libya’s rebels need to sort out in what looks like their victory over Col Muammar Gadafy: what to do with the decapitated rump of the former regime?
Purge too far and you create an aggrieved and powerful enemy. Purge too little and the same thugs get to rule the roost, inviting a new cycle of violence. It is a delicate balancing act, and one the National Transitional Council (NTC) is failing to pull off.
Hardly had the guns fallen silent in Tripoli after a week of street fighting than NTC prime minister Mahmoud Jibril announced that none other than Albarrani Shkal, a former Gadafy general, would be the new security chief for Tripoli.
Jibril insists Shkal is a good man, having secretly turned against the regime in May and passed the NTC valuable inside information. But the rebels of Misurata remember a different Shkal, the man they say in March and April led the bombardment, torture, rape and plunder of their city.
The idea that the Misuratan rebel units who now help to garrison the Libyan capital would be led by the man who tried to butcher them was beyond absurd, and Misurata let the world know it, with street protests against the idea and the threat of near mutiny.
Jibril backtracked, but not before his reputation as a man of sound judgment and diplomatic skills had been torpedoed, possibly below the water line.
Making matters worse, Jibril’s second choice for the job is Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a man whose previous occupation was trying to wage a Jihadist war against the Gadafy regime. In a country neurotic about demonstrating to the West that it is an al-Qaeda-free zone, this was another gigantic own goal.
More to the point, Belhadj seems to have no real connection with Tripoli, adding weight to the arguments of Misuratan and Tripoli rebels that the NTC, far from being a government for all Libyans, is in fact a Benghazi organisation bent on grabbing power.
The east/west divide in Libya, with Misurata and Tripoli in the west and Benghazi dominating the east, should not be exaggerated. In a country where all are Sunni Muslims there are no dangerous sectarian divides, and tribal affiliations, while pronounced, are cross-cut by city and regional groupings.
Yet the rebels from Nafusa and Misurata, who actually captured Tripoli, suspect that the NTC is out on a power grab for itself. So do rebels in Tripoli itself.
The NTC is doing nothing to dispel this idea. This week it formed the grandly named Military Council, a sort of defence minister by committee. But the group is dominated by Benghazi men.
The top general, Suleiman Mahmoud, hails from Tobruk, a kindred town to Benghazi. The only brigade to have a place at the top table from the entire rebel army is the 17th brigade from, you guessed it, Benghazi.
Misuratan and Nafusa brigades are this week returning home. They are being replaced by brigades from Benghazi to garrison the capital – rather than from Tripoli’s own rebel formations – with Jibril yet to explain the logic.
Conspiracy theories in the rebel ranks say the NTC plans to get into bed with what remains of the Gadafy regime, to the exclusion of other rebel factions.
In fairness to the NTC, it was always going to face problems in establishing itself, unelected, as Libya’s new government.
And what do you do with a former administration that was so pervasive that, famously, the only organisation of any kind not affiliated with the Gadafy regime was the boy scouts?
Clearly a balance must be struck. The US example in Iraq, where de-Baathification was instituted to clear out the entire ruling system following the 2003 invasion, was a disaster. First, because the disbanded army took up arms in what became a civil war and, second, because services such as power, health and education collapsed without the experts who knew how to run them.
Jibril is surely right to want to include former Gadafy officials in his new administration. But trying to decide who to purge, and how deep to push the knife, requires the skills of inclusion, transparency and finesse that, to date, the NTC has not shown it possesses.
Time is running short. Already Misurata has announced its units will not follow NTC orders and Nafusa rebels may follow suit. Benghazi’s own army has been a disaster on the battlefield, spending most of the war stuck in front of the town of Brega, even as the rebels of the west swarmed into Tripoli.
The NTC needs its rebel allies to confront Gadafy forces who remain in strength in Sirte and southern Libya. It needs to show it is serious about inclusion, or risk a split that could plunge the country into fresh conflict.