Libya's bloody victory over Gaddafi is just the beginning

[dkf]

The removal of Gaddafi has been hard-earned through the bravery, persistence and bloodshed of those who dared fight him. Now the real battle begins: to establish a unified government over a united country. It will not be easy.

The National Transitional Council (NTC), from which the new Libyan government will be formed, will have to find credible leaders and agree a constitution. Yet two distinctly incompatible elements have emerged within the council: the deeply conservative Islamists, who would like Libya to embrace Sharia law as the cornerstone of its new system; and the secular liberals who long for western-style democracy.


National cohesion may also prove problematic: Libya is an enormous country, four times the size of Iraq, and difficulties in communication serve to entrench local sympathies and attitudes. Its people are deeply tribal and several tribes – among them one of the largest, the Warfalla – remain loyal to Gaddafi and may resist the new government.

Many of Libya's cities are awash with weapons as a result of arming the citizenry in its fight against the old regime; the new government's security apparatus may struggle to achieve nationwide disarmament peacefully. Some surface-to-air missiles of Libyan provenance have already turned up in the Sinai.

A significant proportion of the revolutionary army is composed of Islamist fighters, some of whom were previously in the al-Qaida-linked Libyan Fighting Group. Armed with weapons looted from Gaddafi's stockpiles, these militia represent a serious threat to national security. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and the new al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri have issued statements championing the Libyan "jihad". What happens next is a litmus test for the revolutionary process in the Arab world, as are the imminent elections in Tunisia and Egypt.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/libya-bloody-victory-gaddafi-beginning

[Ohio Joe]

1. Coming out from under the thumb of a dictator will be a hard road

I wish all Libyans the best through this rough time.

[DCBob]

7. Other countries have done it and survived.. I suspect Libya will do the same.

Sure it will be difficult but it will be worth it.

[Ohio Joe]

9. Agreed

I think they will end up better off then they were.

[virgogal]

2. I feel things are going to be very,very tough in Libya for

quite a while.

I am especially concerned about the women.

[lib2DaBone]

3. Whenever you leave a vacuum.. something will move in to fill it...

I don't think the U.S. is prepared to deal with filling the vacuum in Libya.

Pandora Box has been opened.. and we do not have enough money to close it.

We can't even fix the pot holes in the roads or the broken down school buildings in the United States... how can we support a continental war in Africa?

Fools.

[sad sally]

4. They are fighting over the carcass as vultures

The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.
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Let me bomb you to protection
As for how R2P ("responsibility to protect" civilians), any doubters should cling to the explanation by NATO's secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen; "NATO and our partners have successfully implemented the historic mandate of the United Nations to protect the people of Libya." Anyone who wants to check NATO's protection of civilians just needs to jump on a pick-up truck and go to Sirte - the new Fallujah.
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Listen to the barbaric whimpers
Welcome to the new Libya. Intolerant Islamist militias will turn the lives of Libyan women into a living hell. Hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans - those who could not escape - will be ruthlessly persecuted. Libya's natural wealth will be plundered. That collection of anti-aircraft missiles appropriated by Islamists will be a supremely convincing reason for the "war on terror" in northern Africa to become eternal. There will be blood - civil war blood, because Tripolitania will refuse to be ruled by backward Cyrenaica.
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We also know that change the world can believe in will be the day NATO enforces a no-fly one over Saudi Arabia to protect the Shi'ites in the eastern province, with the Pentagon launching a Hellfire carpet over those thousands of medieval, corrupt House of Saud princes.

It won't happen. Meanwhile, this is the way the West ends; with a NATO bang, and a thousand barbaric, lawless whimpers. Disgusted? Get a Guy Fawkes mask and raise hell.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MJ22Ak03.html?du

[DCBob]

5. It is often a choice between the "lessor of two evils" in that part of the world.

Sure it will be difficult but ridding Libya of a ruthless tyrant like Gaddafi is worth the risk.

[pinto]

6. Interesting background take. Thanks for the post.

:hi:

[tabatha]

8. Really bad article

"among them one of the largest, the Warfalla – remain loyal to Gaddafi and may resist the new government"
Jalil and Jibril are from the Warfalla tribe. Many members live in Bani Walid which once rose up against Gaddafi and were punished for doing so.

"significant proportion of the revolutionary army is composed of Islamist fighters"
Actually, it is less than 3%

In March 2011, members of the LIFG in Ajdabiya declared to the press that the group supports the revolt against Gaddafi's rule, and had placed themselves under the leadership of the National Transitional Council. They also stated that the group had changed its name to Libyan Islamic Movement (al-Harakat al-Islamiya al-Libiya), had around 500–600 militants released from jail in recent years, and denied any past or present affiliation with Al-Qaeda.<23>

An emir of the LIFG, Abdelhakim Belhadj,<24> became the commander of the Tripoli Military Council after the rebels took over Tripoli during the 2011 Battle of Tripoli.

[dkf]

10. It looks like traditionally the Warfalla have opposed the group now in the majority of the NTC

"Gaddafi is dead, but many of his supporters are alive, armed to their teeth and are likely to seek revenge, for their loss in the war and for Gaddafi's killing. Among them the tribes of Qadhafah, Magariha, Al-Awaqir and Warfalla that traditionally oppose any participation of people from Cyrinaica in the Libyan government -- and the Cyrinaicans comprise now the majority in the National Transitional Council. The matter is further complicated by the strong division within the TNC among the militias that control the capital city, the Berber tribe militias in western Libya, and the Muslim Brotherhood militias that are close to Al Qaeda, which control parts of Tripoli and in areas near to the Tunisian border."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/haggai-carmon/muammar-gaddafi-libya-war_b_1024011.html

[tabatha]

11. and the Muslim Brotherhood militias that are close to Al Qaeda

Sorry - there are no Al Qaeda in Libya. Period.

[TheWraith]

13. It's sad that some one the left are embracing right-wing talking points in order to bash the Libyans

When isolationism reaches the point of dogma, where you have to insist that the US can never do anything good outside our borders, that's when it's become ridiculous.

[dkf]

14. It will all come out. No point arguing over this stuff...but it's good to inform.

[polly7]

15. The rebels / peaceful protesters freely chose to bash themselves with their own filming

of one atrocity after the other. Unimaginable horrors. Completely in line with the beating, torture including attempted sodomy with a stick! on Gaddafi after his capture. Yes, there is video of that, too.

GRAPHIC. http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/04/rebel-atrocity-videos.html

"The following post will discuss a disturbing trend among Libya's rebel fighters, revealed in videos they themselves recorded and shared on social media sites, especially Youtube and Facebook. These have persisted despite a general ban on violent and gory images, perhaps for the posters' stated aims of supporting the rebel cause and freedom. Consider the inset screen capture from a video of at least four dead government soldiers being driven around Misrata, chased and insulted by the crowd.

Almost universally, the victims of these crimes are called "mercenaries," usually (black) African, though it now seems that probably none of them were. Their very presence on videos labeled as that, however, went far towards convincing the world when it mattered most."


What did NATO do to protect these people?

[polly7]

16. Bull.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAO7GjMSH9k&feature=player_embedded#!

[inna]

12. translation from tabatha: "really good article"

FWIW

:shrug:

[Union Scribe]

17. Surely you knew

that THE authorities on all things Libya are DU's own Revolutionary Guard. They know better than all articles they don't approve of, and they even know better than people who are there and have actually done things besides copy and paste during all this mess. We're just lucky they only sent in their second-in-command for this thread.