It says it will move to Tripoli properly soon, citing lingering logistical and security considerations. Tripoli is the most cosmopolitan city in Libya where tribes and cultures have long coexisted more or less happily side by side - a valuable unifying element for the country.
The streets of Tajoura, a small, sandy town on the eastern edge of Tripoli, are lined by portraits of dozens of people killed during those early protests. Tajoura was alive with crowds of smiling families and the smell of barbeques and fresh coffee replaced gunfire and burning tires. He will grow up in a new Libya. Quietly, life is returning to normal even as the nightly parties go on in Tajoura and elsewhere.
As people danced and watched fireworks in Tripoli on Sunday night, street sweepers could be seen quietly cleaning street corners. The network was established in March to chip away at Gaddafi's support in areas still under his control.
After the Arab League instructed Arab satellite providers to stop transmitting Gaddafi's state-run Libyan television on their frequencies in May, many of the country's residents relied on Libya al-Ahrar and its prorebel slant for their news.
In explaining that his country's aid was purely altruistic, the Qatari emir said he wanted "to ease the suffering of the Libyan brethren and to meet their humanitarian needs. But with Gaddafi dead and his regime a distant memory, many Libyans are now complaining that Qatari aid has come at a price.
They say Qatar provided a narrow clique of Islamists with arms and money, giving them great leverage over the political process. During deliberations to choose a new Cabinet in September, a senior Qatari official was seen huddled with the outgoing Defense Minister, allegedly trying to guide appointments to sensitive security positions. NTC members complain that actions like these are undermining the fragile transition to democracy the NTC has promised.
They need to stop their meddling. An eager disciple of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt he even adopted the same military rank, promoting himself from captain to colonel after the coup , Gaddafi first set about tackling the unfair economic legacy of foreign domination. For Nasser, it was the Suez Canal. For Gaddafi, it was oil. Significant reserves had been discovered in Libya in the late s, but the extraction was controlled by foreign petroleum companies, which set prices to the advantage of their own domestic consumers and benefited from a half share in the revenue.
Gaddafi demanded renegotiation of the contracts, threatening to shut off production if the oil companies refused. He memorably challenged foreign oil executives by telling them "people who have lived without oil for 5, years can live without it again for a few years in order to attain their legitimate rights". The gambit succeeded and Libya became the first developing country to secure a majority share of the revenues from its own oil production.
Other nations soon followed this precedent and the s Arab petro-boom began. Libya was in a prime position to reap the benefits. With production levels matching the Gulf states, and one of the smallest populations in Africa less than 3m at the time , the black gold made it rich quickly.
Rather than persevering with the doctrines of Arab Nationalism, or following the glittering excesses of Gulf consumerism, Gaddafi's innately mercurial character led him and Libya on a new path. Born to nomadic Bedouin parents in , Muammar Gaddafi was certainly an intelligent, resourceful man, but he did not receive a thorough education, apart from learning to read the Koran and his military training.
Nevertheless, in the early s he set out to prove himself a leading political philosopher, developing something called the third universal theory, outlined in his famous Green Book. The theory claims to solve the contradictions inherent in capitalism and communism the first and second theories , in order to put the world on a path of political, economic and social revolution and set oppressed peoples free everywhere.
In fact, it is little more than a series of fatuous diatribes, and it is bitterly ironic that a text whose professed objective is to break the shackles imposed by the vested interests dominating political systems was used instead to subjugate an entire population. The result of Gaddafi's theory, underlined with absolute intolerance of dissent or alternative voices, was the hollowing out of Libyan society, with all vestiges of constitutionality, civil society and authentic political participation eradicated.
The solution to society's woes, the book maintains, is not electoral representation - described by Gaddafi as "dictatorship" by the biggest party - or any other existing political system, but the establishment of people's committees to run all aspects of existence. This new system is presented diagrammatically in the Green Book as an elegant wagon wheel, with basic popular congresses around the rim electing people's committees that send influence along the spokes to a responsive and truly democratic people's general secretariat at the centre.
The model that was created in reality was an ultra-hierarchical pyramid - with the Gaddafi family and close allies at the top wielding power unchecked, protected by a brutal security apparatus. In the parallel world of the Green Book, the system is called a Jamahiriyya - a neologism that plays on the Arabic word for a republic, Jumhuriyya, implying "rule by the masses". But morgue worker Haroun Salem, who has handled the bodies of men accused of being mercenaries, bears them no ill will, and has washed their bodies and prayed for them at the cemetery.
God have mercy upon them. World News Updated. By Mohammed Abbas 5 Min Read.
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