Editorial
End of Gaddafi era
New Libya should be shaped by its people
Tragically cruel as has been the end of Gaddafi, the truth is, as he lived by bullet, so he died by it. It was his hubris that dragged the end-game on. It thus fuelled a civil war claiming stupendous cost in terms of human lives, property and displacement of people.
The original tipping point had come after a UN resolution backed Nato air strike relentlessly pounded Gaddafi's power base emasculating it in the process. It bolstered the rebel forces under banner of National Transitional Council to bring the despotic Gaddafi regime to an end. Then when Tripoli fell, Gaddafi's fate was effectively sealed. He was sent on the run making several futile last stands only to delay the inevitable which came devouring him.
But for the NATO air strikes till the very end, the NTC couldn't have disposed of the Gaddafi regime. So the lesson here is, as has been in Afghanistan and Iraq, that indigenous forces through the sheer strength of their will and self-galvanisation couldn't have achieved liberty and freedom from discredited rulers on their own.
Gaddafi's eventful and versatile career originated in a bloodless coup he led to abolish the pro-western Idris monarchy in 1969. He then advanced through embracing Arab nationalism (influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser) and positioned himself as a revolutionary which he never ceased to claim himself to be till the very end. His pan-Arabism failing, he tried to be a proponent of African cause. Meanwhile, he would shelter fugitives and aid some dissenting voices overseas.
Domestically, he broke the traditional administrative structure placing the entire country into the hands of local committees and shoving in his brain child of a Green Book for their guidance. It was an abjectly authoritarian rule he led through distribution of favours to coteries in his oil rich country. Although he was something of a glue to his multi-tribal society, the common people's lot did not improve much. Remember that Libya is a country of six million people. With the natural wealth it has it could have been a prosperous country for the whole people with intellectual and democratic advancement coming in tow.
Now that Libya is freed from the Gaddafi regime, in realising the dream of new Libya, its people must be the final arbiter of their destiny.
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