REBEL POLITICS:LIFE AFTER Col Muammar Gadafy had been a distant utopia for Libya's rebels since they sacked Benghazi in February. Six months on, it may have come too soon.
The National Transitional Council (NTC) that has come to represent Libya’s opposition has been slow to win the support of many who fight under its banner. As the civil war that enveloped the country descended into stagnation and setback, three distinct rebel factions developed – all with disparate identities and different tribal roots.
There were the originals in the east, drawn largely from a rebellious middle class; a second group in the centre, who fought the war’s most intense battles; and the mountain men from the west who saw getting to the capital first as their higher calling.
In the end, the western rebels did just that, breaking through Gadafy’s weakened lines late last week and moving forward to storm fortress Tripoli. With their triumphant arrival in Green Square comes a sense of entitlement.
But for them and for the stragglers elsewhere, there will be little time for euphoria. Now comes the hard part.
The real race will be to build a state from the ruins of four decades of totalitarian control, where institutions remain feeble and immature. Building the foundations of a freer society is a necessity that will make or break Libya’s emerging new order.
The lessons of what becomes of a Middle East state that suddenly loses its strongman are recent and raw. More than eight years after Baghdad fell with the same ignominious haste as Tripoli, it remains a basket case of competing agendas, a disengaged political class and citizens left with the reality that the state neither has the capacity nor the will to look after them.
Benghazi’s NTC seems to know that the same torpor in Libya will quickly dissolve their claim to authority and have pledged to do everything they can to effectively represent all of Libya. They will relocate to Tripoli as soon as Gadafy has gone and have already drafted a constitution. Yesterday they said it would take up to 20 months to create the framework for a new Libyan government.
But they may not have that long. Libya shares another trait with Iraq – it is fiercely tribal, and the country’s 140 tribes and clans have flagged a stake in whatever emerges from the rubble of the Gadafy regime.
The spectre of the tribes waging war against one another was often raised by Gadafy’s son, Saif al-Islam, and other members of the regime who said they would either hold the state together, or rip it to shreds.
The tribes will be decisive, especially those who feel they did not enjoy the benefits of Gadafy’s patronage. Overlaying the tribal structure are others that have competing stakes in Libya, a group of exiles that have returned en masse in recent months and will probably be lured in greater numbers when Tripoli finally falls.
Also raising their heads are Islamists in the east, who were kept under control by Gadafy, except when they wanted to travel to Iraq, or Afghanistan, which villagers from the east chose to do in large numbers.
The Nato intervention led to the unlikely reality of jihadists who had fought the US military in Iraq fighting Gadafy under the cover of US warplanes within the space of five years. Their allegiance for now is to the NTC and its ambition to turn a state run under an entrenched cult of identity into a pluralist democracy that represents an array of competing interests.
There are real fears that such a task may be beyond the competence of the 33-member NTC, which has been recognised by the international community more on promise than merit.
With one eye to Egypt in the east and the other to Tunisia in the west, neither of which have surged ahead since their dictators fell in January, NTC leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil will quickly need to convince Libyans that he can do better. At a press conference in Benghazi yesterday, he appeared to acknowledge as much.
“My role after the fall of Gadafy will continue, unless I lose control of the goals I aim for,” he said, before warning rebels that the world was watching for any sign of vendettas against Gadafy’s men.
"I hope that Gadafy can be taken alive so he gets a fair trial," he added. He will also be hoping for a just hearing for the NTC. If it cannot deliver as a governing authority, post-Gadafy Libya will be in trouble. – ( Guardianservice)