Libya: 40 Years under the Erratic Leadership of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi
Libya, an oil-rich nation in North Africa, spent more than 40 years under the erratic leadership of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi before a revolt pushed him from power in August 2011 after a six-month struggle. On Oct. 20, Colonel Qaddafi was killed as fighters battling the vestiges of his fallen regime finally wrested control of his hometown of Surt.
The country was formally declared liberated three days later by the provisional government, the Transitional National Council, setting in motion the process of creating a new constitution and an elected government. Members voted to name as prime minister Abdel Rahim el-Keeb, an electronics engineer and Qaddafi critic, who spent most of his career abroad.
But in the months that followed Libya began to founder, torn by the militias who helped the revolution triumph.
There remains optimism in Tripoli, not least because the country sits atop so much oil. But the government has found itself virtually paralyzed by rivalries that have forced it to divvy up power along lines of regions and personalities, by unfulfillable expectations that Colonel Qaddafi’s fall would bring prosperity, and by a powerlessness so marked that the national army is treated as if it were another militia.
The issue of legitimacy remains the most pressing matter in revolutionary Libya. Officials hope that elections in May or June can do what they did in Egypt and Tunisia: convey authority to an elected body that can claim the mantle of popular will. But Iraq remains a counterpoint. There, elections after the American invasion widened divisions so dangerously that they helped unleash a civil war.
A sense of entropy lingers. Some state employees have gone without salaries for a year, and Mr. Shamis acknowledged that the government had no idea how to channel enough money into the economy so that it would be felt in the streets. Tripoli residents complain about a lack of transparency in government decisions. Ministries still seem paralyzed by the tendency,
The country was formally declared liberated three days later by the provisional government, the Transitional National Council, setting in motion the process of creating a new constitution and an elected government. Members voted to name as prime minister Abdel Rahim el-Keeb, an electronics engineer and Qaddafi critic, who spent most of his career abroad.
But in the months that followed Libya began to founder, torn by the militias who helped the revolution triumph.
There remains optimism in Tripoli, not least because the country sits atop so much oil. But the government has found itself virtually paralyzed by rivalries that have forced it to divvy up power along lines of regions and personalities, by unfulfillable expectations that Colonel Qaddafi’s fall would bring prosperity, and by a powerlessness so marked that the national army is treated as if it were another militia.
The issue of legitimacy remains the most pressing matter in revolutionary Libya. Officials hope that elections in May or June can do what they did in Egypt and Tunisia: convey authority to an elected body that can claim the mantle of popular will. But Iraq remains a counterpoint. There, elections after the American invasion widened divisions so dangerously that they helped unleash a civil war.
A sense of entropy lingers. Some state employees have gone without salaries for a year, and Mr. Shamis acknowledged that the government had no idea how to channel enough money into the economy so that it would be felt in the streets. Tripoli residents complain about a lack of transparency in government decisions. Ministries still seem paralyzed by the tendency,