Libya: the end of the end

Unbelievable but true, Gaddafi felt.
With the international direct involvement we knew that it will come but there was still some scepticism. Now it is done.
Never two without three: It was quite quick the change in Tunisia and then in Egypt. Libya took a bit more time but it had to stand in the line.
Since months ago began the end of Gaddafi regime in Libya. The last hours the forty years in power, colonel Gaddafi, reached the bottom of his fall.
For a lot of people this is was unimaginable few months ago. But the facts are there.
Tripoli is surrounded and the zone under the control of the regimes force is becoming more and more narrow.
More painful, is the arrest of the sons. Three of them are already in the hands of the rebels. They are the first circle of personal protection of Gaddafi.
The former leader who was received by the world leaders like Tony Bler, Nicolas Sarkozy and Barak Obama, is now called the haunted “ dog of the middleeast”.
What then ?
The big question started to be asked with a serious insistence: how will it be after the end of the rebellion?
For sure there will be a transitional process, and like in all conflicts, there will be a huge plan to rebuilt the country.
The process started already in the two neighbours Tunisia and Egypt. It was not possible for Libya to stand there as an old regime between two new ones.
The photo would not be homogenous.
We knew that there will be a domino effect, now we witness it concretely.
Three of the five countries of the North of Africa are living a historical change.
The world will never be the same after that. It is not only a problem of a one country, one region, and one continent. It is the affaire of the whole world.
But Libya is a special case
Of course the whole world is concerned, but Libya is espeically interestes less on terms of democracy or human rights, but for economy.
This country is one of the biggest countries in Africa on terms of size (two million square kilometers, while tunisia, as a matter of fact is only 165000 S. klm)
It is a huge and a very rich country for a population of only 6 millions. The problem until now is that the welth was profiting only to the family of the leader Gaddafi.
Libya is one of the biggest producers of oil. It owns 3% of the global reserve and produces one million barils per day from a very good quality.
With all these caracteristics, the country could be like one of the richest Golf Emirates.
Once free from the dictatorship, and the welth democratically and equitably administrated, not only the country will emerge from fourty years of darkness, but the whole region will propser.
There however obstacles
In ashort a period the world is witnessing a the quickest changes in human history. And there is a kind of model of transition’ s proces.
After the fall of a regime, a country needs a ptransitional periode: it will be run by a group of interim governement of technocrates.
This is necessary to prepare a new constitution that is going to supply the green book of Gaddafi and establish the new political framework of the country.
This schema looks handy out of the reality. For many reasons, it is not as obvious as it looks.
The regime of Gaddafi didn’ t built any institution that could hold the construction of a united nation nor a society.
Out of the rouling family, the rest of the population is divided in around eighty tribes.
These are not going to gather for a long time. They look united right now around one idea: let’s get rid of the dictator and after that we will see.
New political paysage
One should not forget that the rebels are not obviously united. They are armed but they don’ t have have one real comandement.
Symbolically, they are represented by a kind of“council” but on the field they are groups of armed fighter pushed by only one desire: force Gaddafi to surrender or to flee.
Once this is done, it will be really complexe to birng a new order.
In addition to the ethnic confusion, the country is distorced by two big political tendencies.
The libyan nationalisme is going to emerge as a reaction to decennias frustration because of the arab nationalisme somehow developped by Gaddafi.
The islamisme is having a huge influence on a society where education was never considered as a priority by the former regime.
Like in Tunisia and egypte, and perhaps more, the religious feeling in the libyan society is very strong and could be fertile ground to grow an explicite islamic regime like in Iran or like the regimes in the arabic Golf.
Libya in the region’s
Because of the former dicatorship, Libya was allways isolated as a society. It never succeeded to connect to any regional configuration.
The first tendency was the arab nationalism. Gaddafi’s first idol was Naceur, the Egyptian leader with whom he tried to work out a kind of union or coalition.
Once this latter disappeared, he turned to toher side and tired to build a union with Tunisian leader Bourguiba in the 70’s.
None of these plans could lead to any construction first of all because of the lunatic character of the person.
Even the Maghreb Union between the five countries of North Africa (except Egypt) could never be effective because of the lake of empathy between the leaders.
His last plan was the Union of African Nations. It led also nowhere because it never had a real fundement but was based on capricious megalomaniac and pathetic search of leadership.
New dreams
A new Libya with a new political framework could lead to new real regional plans that could profit to the all populations.
The Maghreb union could be relouched with new perspectives. Three on the five members would achieve their democratic process. After Mauritania, few years ago, it is now time for Tunisia and lately Libya.
A new democrtic Libya could have a leading economic role for the region.
It was already a workers host country. A lot of Egyptians, Tunisians, Somalian, Chadian… used to make their living by working in Libya.
One could easily imagine that a free rich country will offer a lot of opportunities to investors and workers of the region.
Will Libya be for the north of Africa like South Africa for its South? Nothing is less obvious regarding many parameters.
The most important of them is the political islamism that everybody fears.
Until now in Tunisia and Egypt, there is a kind of fight between Islamism and secularisme.
The two countries have a strong progressist elite which is able to resist to the strong religious feelings and foreign influence
It is not sure that the same balance is possible in Libya.
The big challenge
The dream of democracy and prosperity has a big handicap: the islamist influence coming from the east and precisely from the wahhabite version led by Saoudia Arabia.
Historically there was always a will not to let the Maghreb countries progress out of the saudian influence as a centre of Sunnite version of political Islam.
The wahhabism stands behind the emergence of the islmaic political movements called: “Muslim Brotherhood” and fights against the Shiite growth.
The first is led by Saudia Arabia and the rich countries surrounding it; the latter by Iran and now by the new Iraqi Shiism.
In North Africa the wahhabism has always a huge influence through different programs of help and investment in the region.
The uprising is a danger if it leads to real democratic regimes. But at the same time it is an opportunity to control it completely by boosting islamist partys to power.
This can be already obviously witnessed in Tunisia where the muslim brotherhoods movement, Annahdha is showing a big financial strength and quite invading the country.
Rumours say that the party is financed by the Quatari and Saudian govenements in order to take the power in the country.
The same Qatar is directly participating to the international military operations against Gaddafi.
There is a big paradox in this revolution. The uprising is tending to two opposite directions.
On the one hand, it is winking to the modern democratic western ideas by association to the western big democracies.
On the other hand, it can’t get rid of the reactionaries ambitions of the religious influence.
Two scenarios are possible: a bizarre synthesises of the two like it is in the Golf countries or a continuous unrest not to say a civil war.
What is sure is that we are going to wait for a while until we see something really coming out of this mess.