For Libyan rebels, democratic rule will be huge challenge

For Libyan rebels, democratic rule will be huge challenge
UNITING THE OPPOSITION Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, a former justice minister, enjoys respect among Libyan rebels but is not considered a strong leader. UNITING THE OPPOSITION
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, a former justice minister, enjoys respect among Libyan rebels but is not considered a strong leader.

CAIRO - Libya’s rebels began as a disparate group of former government insiders, Western-leaning intellectuals, businessmen, and even a smattering of ex-Islamist militants. But they were united by one goal: to unseat Moammar Khadafy.

They won international recognition by forging a leadership council that espoused democracy. With Khadafy’s regime on its last legs, the question now is whether the opposition can take over the plundered country and lead it effectively.

The task of putting Libya back together after six months of civil war and 42 years of Khadafy rule is all the more difficult because the nation has no experience at the ballot box or with democratic institutions. Khadafy ran the country according to his whims and idiosyncratic political philosophy. And he brooked no dissent.

“The rebels want a Libya reconciled with itself, that is democratic, whatever that may mean,’’ said George Joffe, a Libya analyst at Cambridge University. “But the way in which they’re going to do that isn’t clear. . . . There are absolutely no basic structures they can use.’’

Without any practical experience to fall back on, the council has done an imperfect job of managing the territory under rebel control since the uprising began Feb. 15, when youth activists started protesting in Benghazi. As the demonstrations spread and the revolt gained steam, more experienced hands rushed to join the movement and fill the leadership void.

Eventually, the rebellion formed the National Transitional Council. Members are representatives from each rebel-held city, and are selected by similar local councils.

Heading the NTC is Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, a pious former justice minister who joined the rebels in the uprising’s first high-level defection. Despite past links with the Khadafy regime, he enjoys the respect of broad swaths of the rebel public for his criticism while minister of the tight control of security forces. But he is not considered a strong leader or a dominating personality.

Abdul-Jalil is one of several former regime members who make up a powerful bloc on the council. The group includes the head of the rebels’ acting Cabinet, Mahmoud Jibril, as well as the rebels’ chief diplomat, Ali al-Essawi.

Jibril, educated at the University of Pittsburgh, helped draw up ambitious visions for the future. One of them, titled “Libya 2025: A Look Ahead,’’ called for a restricted role for the state, free expression, and the opening of the free market.

Past efforts inside Khadafy’s government have earned former regime members respect in rebel-ruled eastern Libya. They say they strive to create a democratic state, but they are not natural politicians, and the long periods many spent abroad make them distant figures.

The movement also has sought help from Libyans who have returned from exile eager to play a role in the nation’s rebirth. Chief among them is Ali Tarhouni, a straight-talking economics professor who left his teaching job at the University of Washington to become finance minister in the rebel Cabinet.

The rebellion has also found space for Islamists, including former members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a radical Islamist organization that staunchly opposed Khadafy. Some high-ranking officials in the rebel security apparatus and military have backgrounds in the group.

Some divisions have already emerged in the rebel camp, and those could expand if Khadafy falls.

Joffe said the national council’s relationship with Libya’s Berber minority in the western Nafusa Mountains is unclear. The Berbers have spearheaded the offensive on Tripoli, as well as the uprising in the western port city of Misurata that played a central role in the war.

“We don’t know whether they’ll be prepared to accept leadership of the council’’ down the road, he said.

The National Transitional Council was on the brink of collapse as recently as late July, with the killing of military chief Abdel-Fattah Younis.

Younis was a highly divisive figure who served as Khadafy’s interior minister until he defected to the rebellion early in the uprising, bringing his forces into the opposition ranks.

His move raised hopes among rebels and Western allies that the uprising could succeed. But some rebels remained deeply suspicious that he retained some loyalties to the dictator.

His body was found dumped outside Benghazi. The rebel leadership has insisted the assassination was the work of the Khadafy regime, but several witnesses say Younis was killed by fellow rebels.

Libya Offers Controlled Tour of NATO Bombing Sites in Tripoli

NATO, Libyan officials said, had dropped one of three bombs that struck the compound in the early hours of Thursday within 150 feet of a children’s playground in a parkland corner of the sprawling Bab al-Aziziya compound. Two other bombs, they said, had fallen randomly deeper into the compound, damaging roadways and administrative buildings of no military significance.

As if to make the point more starkly, reporters arrived at the playground site to find children swirling about enthusiastically on a fairground carousel no more than a stone’s throw from the main crater left by the bomb. Some of the children were waving portraits of Colonel Qaddafi.

Not more than 100 yards away, reporters were led past a tented camp for refugees, including men, women and children from sub-Saharan Africa, many of them gathered, with the encouragement of accompanying government minders, to chant the praises of Colonel Qaddafi as a background chorus to the reporters’ visit.

Officials said 3 people were killed and 27 others were wounded in the bombings of the leadership compound in southern Tripoli, all of them civilians. They named the dead as two Libyan reporters and a guide who was accompanying them to “celebrations” of an unspecified nature that were being held in the park at the time.

That people should have been in the area at 3:30 a.m., when huge blasts from the bombings shook the otherwise deserted districts of central Tripoli, was not unusual, the officials said, since Libyans were a nocturnal people who often gathered at that hour.

Moussa Ibrahim, the Qaddafi government’s chief spokesman, called the attacks a further example of NATO spending “billions of dollars on death,” in the latest instance “in front of a children’s playground.”

“People are being killed every day, every night, and nobody is reporting this,” he said. “NATO is enjoying a conspiracy of silence.”

But acting as a sort of truth squad in weighing the authenticity of the Qaddafi government’s accounts of the bombings is an essential part of the job description for foreign journalists, and the notion of reporters lingering in a children’s playground in the pre-dawn hours was not the only element in the official story of the compound bombing that raised serious doubts.

There was, too, the fact that the three huge water-filled bomb craters shown to the reporters, and other features close by, appeared to point to the real target of the bombings as being a vast network of underground bunkers running for a half a mile or more beneath the compound — a network that is believed to have been well known, for years, to Western intelligence agencies tracking the largely clandestine life of Colonel Qaddafi.

The other features that pointed to an attack on the compound’s subterranean tunnels and bunkers included bomb fragments strewn around the craters that indicated that they came from bunker-busting, 2,000-pound bombs that were used by American aircraft in the attack on Baghdad in 2003, according to a Western security adviser accompanying one of the television crews who said he was familiar with the bombs.

Also, smaller craters at the bomb sites were tangled with what appeared to be the punctured wreckage of massive concrete and steel structures reaching deep underground, and at least one large aboveground ventilation shaft. Close to the children’s playground, there was a concrete stairway descending to a steel door, flanked by green-painted steel railings.

An official determination to disguise the stairway’s presence was betrayed by what appeared to have be a carefully marshaled gathering of a crowd of protesters around the stairway, and a frenzied push forward by the protesters whenever a reporter or a camera crew approached to get a closer view.