TRIPOLI — Libya today is at the crossroads between a rocky process of transition to democracy and the real chance of collapse of state structures and rising violence. The next six months will be crucial, say analysts based in the country. The optimists see the elected government gradually extending its reach nationwide, as ex-militiamen continue either to return to civilian life, or to be absorbed into the police and army.
Political leadership will be key, as will a willingness by Libyans to work together in ways they had little experience of doing under a dictatorship. The legacy of distrust left by the Gadhafi regime hangs heavily over this nation of 6.7 million people, and the intensity of its post-revolutionary drama makes developments in next-door Tunisia look sedate by comparison.
The pessimists look out onto an urban landscape of shattered concrete, where unidentified bodies are still being disenterred from newly discovered mass graves. The checkpoints outside towns which until recently were manned by "thuwar" ("revolutionaries") are now more often manned by men in army or police uniforms, but gunfire is still heard at night in Tripoli, Benghazi and smaller towns like Gharyan. Last year's fighting has sown bitter new enmities. And for the pessimists, regional instability emanating from northern Mali could yet undermine Libya's transition.
The July election produced a National Congress dominated by no clear party bloc — the result of an electoral system which reserved for independent candidates 120 of the 200 congressional seats. Prime Minister Ali Zidan has succeeded in putting together a cabinet, and together with congress president Mohammed Magarief is holding together a fragile political consensus. But there are concerns that congress's Transparency Committee, which has been vetting ministerial candidates, is not allowing a sufficiently strong government to emerge and itself lacks transparency over its decision-making.
Advice will not be lacking from foreign NGOs and experts on the mechanisms for a successful democratic transition on transparency and media freedom, judicial reform, "transitional justice" and so on. But the precondition for progress will be a government whose writ runs throughout the country, and an easing of the underlying tension that is inevitable in a society that is still to a large extent under arms.
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