Editor’s note: Andrew Reynolds, UNC’s chairman of global studies, is in Libya advising the Transitional National Council on its plans for an interim government. The following is a first-person dispatch written Sept. 15 from Tripoli, Libya. This is Reynolds’ second update. Read the first here.
In Benghazi, the heart of the revolution, we meet with 17 parties in two days — some serious, but others not much more than a name and a logo. Most of these fledgling politicians are well-intentioned but almost all will become footnotes to history.
Even the political party names remind one of Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” satirical take on rebel movements. We meet with the Libyan National Party and the National Libya Party. At the same table, there are leaders of the Democratic Libya Gathering and the Libya National Democratic Gathering. Most comically, the February 17th Group hates the Rebel Union of the 17th February. One party leader argues that parties shouldn’t be allowed — a bold and somewhat surprising stance.
After Benghazi, I take the U.N. flight to Tripoli, arriving only 19 days after the capital city’s liberation from the forces of Gadhafi. I see more guns and weapons in the first 30 minutes than I have seen in my entire life. But it is not only men with guns that give one pause. We meet with 20 women who personify the established and educated elite — teachers, doctors, professors and lawyers. The discussions are held around a conference table in the huge office of the deposed head of Libyan state TV, Abdullah Mansour. He was one of the most hated men in Libya and now is one of the most wanted. Since the revolution, the state TV offices have been controlled by the rebel movement.
One of our hosts is older than the rest and it turns out that she had been the headmistress of Tripoli Secondary School for Girls when it was the leading institution for wealthy and secular Libyans to send their girls to learn more than just obedience.
On my first night in Tripoli, interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril addresses the crowds for the first time in Green Square. Gunfire echoes through the night. It is amazing how quickly one gets used to gunfire at close quarters when you know (or at least believe) it to be celebratory.
Every Libyan we meet is standing straight to “protect the revolution.” All are fearful that the revolution can be “stolen.” But by whom and how is not clear. Some argue the transitional government is already too powerful and secretive, others that Islamists will steal the show. Still others that Benghazi has domineered the revolution. But the reality is that revolutionary change from the Gadhafi era will come slowly. The upper echelons of power have indeed been swept away, but social transformation — the ways of doing political business — might take generations to change. Libya has made a remarkable start, and its prospects are good, but “protecting the revolution” will take decades of struggling to build fair institutions that cannot be knocked down by the whims of one man.
