The New Libya
Post-Gadhafi, Libya is ready to be governed. But is it governable in the way that secular-liberal Libyans would like to see for their country? With government institutions to be set up and to offer services to their people reflective of a forward-looking, modern country using the oil-wealth that their former tyrant used largely to bolster his position as King of Africa? And for the private gain of his family, cronies, supporters?Not that Moammar Gadhafi had never done anything useful and worthwhile for Libya. He did do that. He lifted the endemic poor out of their poverty. Marxist-inspired like his Egyptian hero, Gamal Abdel Nasser, he improved living standards in Libya, spent millions of Libya's oil wealth for poor African neighbours. Literacy rates improved in Libya, life expectancy improved, per capita annual income grew above $12,000.
He and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez did have much in common beyond a similarity to their rhetoric, their bombast, their doling out of oil wealth to poorer neighbours, their burnishing of their credentials as leaders of their geographic area that others would look up to, admire and respect. He appeared in some ways as a visionary. But he was also a psychotic psychopath, which the world became very familiar with in his role as supporter of terrorism.
He's gone, and Libya is set to welcome a new government. If they can produce one, without resorting to the same kind of relentless strong-arm tactics that Gadhafi-as-benevolent-tyrant did. For theirs is a tribal society, mired in primitive tribal hatreds and jealous challenges. The vast wealth of the country will be disputed by the various competing tribes all of which feel they should be ascendant.
The disparate militias representing the various tribes, all well armed and brimming with triumph, will they be willing to form a national army, and surrender themselves to the national good rather than tribal ascendancy, and submit their stockpile of arms at this juncture, enabling a new government to be formed? And who knows whom the looted advanced weapons depots have benefited?
Those anti-aircraft missiles that were stockpiled, capable of downing airliners...? How many reached the ready embrace of terror groups known to be present in the far desert reaches? And the Libyan Islamists, would they be prepared to obligingly lend themselves to a coalition of Libyan groups all working zealously together to build cohesion and further their nation's future?
Labels: Africa, Chaos, Conflict, Libya, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Friday, October 21, 2011
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