Exit Gaddafi
Oct. 20th, 2011 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynSo, Gaddafi is gone. One of the world's most flamboyant, strangest, and altogether craziest dictators is now not only out of office, he's finally departed this world for the next.
This is a time of celebration for the people of Libya, and for those who believed in the Arab Spring. It's a moment to reflect on how far the people of Libya have brought themselves in these past months.
But it's also a time to ask what their future is going to hold. Gaddafi is gone, but that doesn't mean that everything is going to start coming up roses. A lot of people are asking questions about what happens next, and are feeling very nervous by the answers they're getting. Here are the questions I think the Libyan people should be asking themselves now:
Who's Running the Office? A lot of people are asking who is going to be in charge of Libya now that this is over, how new leaders will be chosen or elected, and how the state of Libya will evolve. Although important, those are probably not the most important questions to ask now.
Thousands of people formerly from Gaddafi's government are now persona non grata in Libya. Many of them were cruel, venal, and corrupt. But they also did a variety of useful tasks, keeping the water running, keeping the electricity on, scheduling road construction, that kind of thing. Someone has to step up to the plate and take that job over now, and that's not always an easy thing. Collecting the trash and sweeping the streets is hardly glamorous work. It's not what comes to mind when you think of revolutionary government. But it has to get done.
The vital question for Libyan government now is probably not how the big things are going to get done, laws passed and justice restored, plenty of people are working on that. It's how they're going to keep the system that sustains the state running before the inertia that's keeping things in motion now runs out.
Who Gets the Spoils? It's obvious that Gaddafi's family and his closest confidants, having risked everything in a civil war, are not going to be keeping much of the wealth and power they've accumulated over the years. The question now becomes: who will? A lot of this is metaphysical - Qaddafi hoarded power which will now have to be distributed to a new government and new ministries. But he also hoarded material goods as did many people in his close circle. Things like cars and private military vehicles are easy to deal with, but not so easy are things like physical property and capital.
Does the government just inherit all property sequestered by various friends of the regime? Does it get shared out? Is it distributed for local use or for national? How about companies? Do they get nationalized? Privatized? And who runs them?
An early test for any regime like this is to see where the spoils go. It will be very tempting for various people to enrich themselves at the till now that they've opened it up. A good indication as to what Libya will do with its future can be drawn from what they decide to do with the riches of the past. If you start seeing members of the new government driving around in Gaddafi's cars, well, I wouldn't buy into Libyan bonds at that point.
Who Builds the Army? The largest problem facing Libya may not be the leftover Gaddafi loyalists, but various unhappy rebel groups. There's a large foreign perception that the rebels in the east did most of the talking, and the rebels in the west most of the fighting. Certainly most of the combat occurred in the western mountain regions and around Misrata. If the rebel council in Benghazi starts taking most of the credit, the western rebels might take things into their own hands.
The greatest challenge for post-war nations is often figuring out how to disarm the bands of soldiers who ended up fighting in it. There are simply too many groups, too many organizations and ethnic tribes, all of them with weapons, for things to work out quite so easily. One of the problem with war-torn, badly organized, and lightly populated nations it that it becomes very easy for any group that feels maligned to take their weapons, go out into desert, and declare war on the government.
Remaining to the government is the challenge of somehow establishing their monopoly on force, roping in all (or at least a solid majority) of the groups that could cause them trouble. Libya is now a country awash with rebel groups, armed, experienced in their own form of warfare, who have just lost the cause that kept them moving in one direction. Someone better figure out how to establish a new direction that they can compromise on fast, or else you could be looking at Yugoslavia all over again.
This is a time of celebration for the people of Libya, and for those who believed in the Arab Spring. It's a moment to reflect on how far the people of Libya have brought themselves in these past months.
But it's also a time to ask what their future is going to hold. Gaddafi is gone, but that doesn't mean that everything is going to start coming up roses. A lot of people are asking questions about what happens next, and are feeling very nervous by the answers they're getting. Here are the questions I think the Libyan people should be asking themselves now:
Who's Running the Office? A lot of people are asking who is going to be in charge of Libya now that this is over, how new leaders will be chosen or elected, and how the state of Libya will evolve. Although important, those are probably not the most important questions to ask now.
Thousands of people formerly from Gaddafi's government are now persona non grata in Libya. Many of them were cruel, venal, and corrupt. But they also did a variety of useful tasks, keeping the water running, keeping the electricity on, scheduling road construction, that kind of thing. Someone has to step up to the plate and take that job over now, and that's not always an easy thing. Collecting the trash and sweeping the streets is hardly glamorous work. It's not what comes to mind when you think of revolutionary government. But it has to get done.
The vital question for Libyan government now is probably not how the big things are going to get done, laws passed and justice restored, plenty of people are working on that. It's how they're going to keep the system that sustains the state running before the inertia that's keeping things in motion now runs out.
Who Gets the Spoils? It's obvious that Gaddafi's family and his closest confidants, having risked everything in a civil war, are not going to be keeping much of the wealth and power they've accumulated over the years. The question now becomes: who will? A lot of this is metaphysical - Qaddafi hoarded power which will now have to be distributed to a new government and new ministries. But he also hoarded material goods as did many people in his close circle. Things like cars and private military vehicles are easy to deal with, but not so easy are things like physical property and capital.
Does the government just inherit all property sequestered by various friends of the regime? Does it get shared out? Is it distributed for local use or for national? How about companies? Do they get nationalized? Privatized? And who runs them?
An early test for any regime like this is to see where the spoils go. It will be very tempting for various people to enrich themselves at the till now that they've opened it up. A good indication as to what Libya will do with its future can be drawn from what they decide to do with the riches of the past. If you start seeing members of the new government driving around in Gaddafi's cars, well, I wouldn't buy into Libyan bonds at that point.
Who Builds the Army? The largest problem facing Libya may not be the leftover Gaddafi loyalists, but various unhappy rebel groups. There's a large foreign perception that the rebels in the east did most of the talking, and the rebels in the west most of the fighting. Certainly most of the combat occurred in the western mountain regions and around Misrata. If the rebel council in Benghazi starts taking most of the credit, the western rebels might take things into their own hands.
The greatest challenge for post-war nations is often figuring out how to disarm the bands of soldiers who ended up fighting in it. There are simply too many groups, too many organizations and ethnic tribes, all of them with weapons, for things to work out quite so easily. One of the problem with war-torn, badly organized, and lightly populated nations it that it becomes very easy for any group that feels maligned to take their weapons, go out into desert, and declare war on the government.
Remaining to the government is the challenge of somehow establishing their monopoly on force, roping in all (or at least a solid majority) of the groups that could cause them trouble. Libya is now a country awash with rebel groups, armed, experienced in their own form of warfare, who have just lost the cause that kept them moving in one direction. Someone better figure out how to establish a new direction that they can compromise on fast, or else you could be looking at Yugoslavia all over again.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-21 12:02 am (UTC)Egypt is flailing on the brink, and if the Egyptians can't pull it together odds are none of the other rebelling nations can either. Don't get me wrong, I don't like to see them under the yoke, with their citizenry suffering. I just don't think there is a better alternative necessarily available without considerably more tribulation. Possibly for generations. :(
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-21 02:11 pm (UTC)I do think that we've passed the point at which we can say that dictatorship is "productive" for the Arab world. For a certain amount of time, as much as I hate to admit it, dictators get the trains running on time, not to mention the water, the power, and everything else. However, after a point dictators stop building up the national institutions that keep things going and start tearing them down, so that their power structure isn't threatened. I think the Arab world as a whole has crossed the point where dictators can really move anything forward, and that at this point some kind of revolution is inevitable.
My guess is that Libya will end up looking less like America after the American Revolution, and more like England after the signing of the Magna Carta. There are still very powerful local groups in play, and they'll probably have a few minor civil wars to straighten things out. Libya may have an advantage over Egypt in this matter - their population centers are fairly spread out, grouped roughly into different regions (Trpolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan), and dispersed in power. No region has an overwhelming military advantage, or overwhelming economic leverage. What I'm hoping is that this will end up looking more like a loose confederation, with a government forced to let the locals go their own way. Over time then (decades) the economic power of the cities may force the entire country to eventually fall into the orbit of Tripoli and Benghazi and the rest of the coastal cities, which may then lay the grounds for a more stable government.
I do admit that it's probably a good idea to be pessimistic at this point, but I don't think optimism is impossible. I can still hope for a relatively peaceful confederation. Even with a bickering, hostile confederation, I can believe (and it is an act of faith) that time will slowly enhance the power of the urban middle and working class and eventually give them economic, and then political, dominance. It's the oil that complicates things. That and all the people with guns. I'll be watching closely.