Libya Today

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Ms Ann Marlowe gives us an assessment of Libya, one year one form the revolution that overthrew Dictator Muammar Gadhafi (or Gaddafi).  Here is the beginning of the article.

Nearly a year after the fall of the hated Gadhafi regime, this city and much of Libya seems caught in a post-revolutionary malaise.  Indeed, the situation here evokes the dreaded words "failed state."  Security is weak at best, and nonexistent in places.  The economy is hardly better than it was during the war.  There are burnt-out cars in the central business district, and trash everywhere.

Two months since the election of a new government—notable for its rejection of Islamic extremists—sectarian clashes are on the rise.  Two of Libya's oldest and most revered Sufi shrines were destroyed last month in broad daylight—one on Aug. 25, just outside my hotel room in Tripoli; the other, a 500-year-old shrine and library housing thousands of early Islamic texts, the day before in Zilten, a town 90 miles east of the capital.  The extremists believe it's sinful to locate a Sufi saint's tomb inside a mosque.

After the attacks, a special session of the newly elected National Assembly resulted in the minister of the interior, Fawzi Abdelal, admitting in a statement that the new government is weaker than the fanatics.  He later resigned.

Little would seem to stand in the way of the Salafis moving on to destroy Libya's classical antiquities, if they target them.  Already some Roman statues in Sabratha's great archeological site had to be removed from public display to protect them from attack.

Sadly, the issues bedeviling Libyans as they go about trying, largely with great goodwill, to set up a functioning country run deeper and broader than religious extremism.  Four decades of dictatorship have resulted in widespread indolence and a lack of a sense of ownership of the public sphere.  It's a toxic mix common in the Islamic world. Often Libya seems able to rise above it, as in its largely free and fair July 7 national elections.  But it is glaringly obvious in Libya's treatment of the history of its recent revolution.

One of the things I noted was the tension between the Sufi (inner, mystical dimension of Islam) and the Salafi (literalist, strict and puritanical approaches to Islam).  These two groups mix like oil and water.  On the other hand, this is all Sunni Islam and doesn't include the Shia branch.  We should note that al-Qaeda is a Salafist oriented group.

All very interesting, and cautionary.  As we contemplate Syria we need to ask ourselves what we expect to be the situation a year on.  I remember a quote attributed to Herbert Marcuse, "Destroy the Weimar Republic.  Whatever follows has to be better."  What followed was The Third Reich and its leader, Adolph Hitler.

Regards  —  Cliff