POST-GHADDAFI LIBYA: A DIFFICULT ROAD TO MANY DESTINATIONS

The National Transitional Council which provided the political leadership for the insurgency which ousted and killed Muammar Gaddafi last week led the celebration for Liberation Day on Sunday, 23^rd of October. The world watched hundreds of thousands of Libyans formalize a victory in Benghazi the city, which provided the bulwark of the resistance against Gaddafi virtually for his entire reign, but particularly since the insurgency built up and took on much of the traditional cultural and political fault lines of the Libyan nation. It is difficult not to feel some of the relief of the Libya people that the 9-month old insurgency has come to an end. Nonetheless, even as they celebrate, it is not difficult to see that the road ahead for the people of Libya will be fraught with many challenges, some of them serious enough and with the potential to rob them of the benefits of removing Gaddafi. This is a time for deep reflection, and friends of the Libyan and African people should have the courage to give them honest and practical advise as they commence the difficult task of national reconstruction and reconciliation.

    The image of the dead body of Gaddafi being dragged virtually naked and being beaten up by a crowd made up of supposedly civilised Libyan Muslims will remain indelible in the minds of a global audience. It will dent the joy and accomplishment of the celebrations even in Benghazi. It will particularly leave a negative image in the minds of other Muslims who believe that a dead body, anyone’s dead body, deserves to be treated with some dignity. When Americans threw the dead body of Osama Bin Laden into the ocean for fish to feed on, they at least claimed that they gave him his rites as a Muslim, and did not humiliate and violate his dead body and gloat over their actions on television.  When the US captured Saddam Hussein, they tried and hanged him, instead of killing and desecrating his dead body. Now, even NATO nations who provided the fire power and the intelligence which led to the ouster, capture and eventual killing of Gaddafi are joining the chorus of demands for enquiry into how or why he was killed after his capture. Nothing will come out of this hypocrisy.

          The savagery which was shown on global television by some Libyans has exposed the soft underbelly of the revolution. Gaddafi’s 42years in power, much of it spent in brutal suppression of opposition must have robbed many Libyans of their basic humanity and compassion. The nine months of bitter and brutal campaign to oust him had affected every Libyan very badly. Both sides adopted the most inhuman methods in the conflict, and in the end, the struggle to remove Gaddafi had stripped Libyans of their civilisation and humanity to their bare bones. Those who fought these bitter battles against each other, including those who dragged a dead body through the sand, are going to continue to live within Libyan communities. They will also keep their arms and ammunitions. And some of their memories and bitterness. And they will count graves, and injuries and bullet holes. And others will ask how all these will be justified by the outcomes of the revolution.

          There will be many who will be counted among the defeated. They will continue to live in Libya, but may have to pay a price for siding with, or defending Gaddafi. They too will have their reasons and justification for their choices. And they will have their arms and ammunitions; and their grievances and bitterness. They too will ask how the revolution will be better than Gaddafi’s rule. There are yet many who will wake up to a new Libya which has been thrown wide open to NATO countries. They will ask how the new Libya will or should relate with Europe and the US. They will ask deep and searching questions over the cost of reconstruction; which nations among the NATO coalitions will get the biggest contracts for rebuilding what their bombers destroyed; and what type of constitution and political system Europe and the US will now insist is adopted by Libyans. They may retain some pride in being an independent people who, although at great price, stood up to the US and Europe under Gaddafi in the past. They may resent the possibility that their faith and culture will suffer to the degree of NATO influence in their lives. They too will have their arms and ammunitions; and their memories and their sympathisers.

          There are tribal leaders, religious leaders and leaders of factions who will each jostle for a place in the sun in the new Libya. Many will test the powers and the resolve of the NTC, and its NATO backers. They will quarrel and bicker on the type of constitution to adopt; on how victors and vanquished should be treated; how Arab and Islamic they want the new Libya to be; and how to deal with the many legacies of Gaddafi’s 42 years of rule. They will have to fight over, and learn how to elect new leaders; how hundreds of thousands of young people can be disarmed and demobilized; and how trust can be rebuilt among and across communities. And they will have their arms and ammunition; and their memories and bitterness over the course of the last 9 month conflict.

The Libyan people have come through one of the worst crisis any people can go through. The killing of Gaddafi and the bestial treatment of his body may have given a small percentage of the Libyan people some satisfaction. But now the real hard work of reconciliation and rehabilitation has to begin. There is no easy way forward. Every challenge they will meet has the potential of opening up new theatres of conflict. They need a strong and broad-based leadership which should disarm citizens and begin the process of reconciling the people. They need NATO to lower its profile, and retreat sufficiently to allow some semblance of Libyan influence in deciding a Libyan future. They need to re-integrate with Africa and the Arab world in a manner that acquires support for them to reduce the influence of NATO, as they embark on the difficult road to a new life. They need to look at the abuses and excesses on both sides of the conflict, and commence the process of addressing the requirements of guaranteeing basic human rights, particularly for the thousands of black people who have been imprisoned on sundry and questionable suspicions. The journey of the Libyan people will be difficult because there will be arguments over routes and destinations. It will be tragic if a post-Gaddafi Libya continues to suffer because its people and leaders fail to appreciate the fact that the reverse side of Gaddafi is the emergence of a democratic system that gives every citizen a fair chance to make concrete choices over how he lives, and who governs him. It will not be easy to build that system; but failure to build it will mean an unending conflict and real potentials for prolonged civil war. This is the one destination Libyans should avoid at all cost.