Foremost among Libya's advantages is the absence of a predatory military establishment, writes SHASHANK JOSHI
IF GENERALS fight the last war, then diplomats prepare for the last peace. The shadow of Iraq’s postwar chaos hangs uneasily over Libya’s interregnum. But it is precisely the fear of urban chaos that is one of the reasons for cautious optimism as the National Transitional Council, the rebels’ political body, prepares to make the transition from rebellion to rule.
Britain and France know that a mismanaged process would represent a foreign-policy catastrophe. Scores of foreign advisers have therefore been working with the rebels to address the issues that plagued Baghdad after the war, such as the outbreak of criminality and provision of public services.
Despite the cartoonish picture of the rebels as a feckless rabble, planning for the aftermath probably exceeds that of the US in 2003. It is true that the rebels are overconfident. After numerous false or exaggerated statements, their claims warrant appropriate scepticism. But they have been vindicated in important respects, such as the success of their pre-arranged agreements to have the crucial Mohammed Megrayef Brigade stand aside upon Tripoli’s fall. That undoubtedly prevented considerable bloodshed.
The transitional council has wisely pledged to work with the existing police force, and has ordered it to return to the streets – a litmus test of whether a body established 800km away can appropriate existing structures of government. Deeper fault lines remain. The Berbers, a non-Arab ethnic-minority group that performed much of the most decisive fighting, have suffered decades of repression.
The council must strike a delicate balance. It has to persuade these and other western groups that they are receiving equitable treatment commensurate with their central role in the revolution. It must also ensure protection of pro-Gadafy parts of the population. The slightest hint of violent or political retribution would enable the many semi-autonomous militias to undercut the council’s legitimacy in the name of self-preservation.
Against this, most cynics overlook Libya’s advantages. Foremost is the absence of a predatory military establishment overseeing the transition, as in Egypt.
The regular army has dissolved and the regime’s special brigades are far smaller than Iraq’s foolishly disbanded army of 2003. Second, the transitional council mercifully lacks a Hamid Karzai – a charismatic statesman whose ambition can all too easily congeal into venal oligarchy. Article 29 of the interim constitution even forbids council members from assuming ministerial or legislative office – a remarkable abdication of ambition. Third, the location of oil in the interior limits the ability of either east or west to coerce the central government. Finally, the suggestion that Islamist militias amount to a north African Taliban is absurd. They have neither external sponsorship nor cross-border havens. Many were animated mainly by 40 years of tyranny rather than commitment to a fundamentalist state.
There is still time and space for the transitional council to self-destruct. Much of the capital is no man's land, and the country is flush with weapons. But history is not bound to repeat itself as farce, and the trajectory of the revolution will hinge on choices taken by the newly empowered rebels in the weeks ahead. – ( Guardianservice)
Shashank Joshi is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London