Libyans Fear for Their Future In Rocky Transition to Democracy
Libyans are split on whether the fragile transition will lead to better days, or further instability and strife, reports Eileen Byrne from Tripoli. She visited Tripoli as a guest of the Libyan Culture Ministry's Media Development Centre, which paid for her accommodation there during its First International Media Forum.
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.
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.
