With bold albeit Machiavellian leadership and external support can the NTC succeed in running Libya efficiently, or is it merely a tool of empire, ponders Gamal Nkrumah His Green Book philosophy was Muammar Gaddafi's métier. We needn't imagine him rootling around in the theological issues facing his adversaries himself at this historical juncture. He is purportedly roaming the sprawling Sahara Desert but he has long warned of the dangers inherent in the composition of the National Transitional Council (NTC) that is scheduled to move headquarters from Benghazi to Tripoli next week. The heart of the matter is can a country "liberated" by Western military might be truly transformed into a viable democracy? Gaddafi was the self-styled secular guarantor of religious authority. He described the NATO attack against him as a Crusade. The war he waged was a jihad of sorts, but he eschewed the ecclesiastical authority of his enemies that he likened to that of medieval Europe. The bulk of the NTC leadership seems to be fixated on political Islam, the Turkish model rather than the Saudi or the Afghan under Taliban. There is no love lost between Gaddafi and his foes. The ecclesiastical animosity that Gaddafi harbours towards those he accuses of being Al-Qaeda members within the NTC contains a grain of truth and might not be as far-fetched as his detractors believe; the religious dogma and rhetoric that certain members of the NTC exude matches Gaddafi's own paranoia. The bigger question is whether the NTC will now talk peace with the remnants of Gaddafi's once invincible fighting force, bureaucracy and political hangers-on. But talk about what precisely? The NTC is a hodgepodge of disparate ideological groups of varying degrees of political cohesion and strength. There is also the rivalry between those Libyan dissidents who long ago fled the country to seek political exile overseas and those members of the NTC like its leader Mustafa Abdel-Jalil and the late Younis Abdel-Fattah, both of whom served Gaddafi for many years. For Libyan politicians of every political and ideological shade, however, religion remains a dangerous subject. Libya is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, but Libyans belong to the open-minded and middle of the road Sunni Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence and its legal precedence and interpretation of the Sharia Islamic laws. The Maliki creed is radically different from that of, say, the chillingly and austere Hanbali Wahabism of Saudi Arabia that propagates a puritanical version of Islam. So the much hyped, and derisively mocked, admonition of Gaddafi that once he goes, Al-Qaeda will take charge in Libya and turn the country into a base for international terrorism and mayhem. The dying days of the Gaddafi regime were ominous in that Libya's former strongman's prophecy may well come true. Simplistic solutions to complex questions always mislead. It was hard not to be awed by the spectacle of the swiftness with which Tripoli was overran in Ramadan. The National Transitional Council (NTC) derives its legitimacy from patriotism, and to a lesser extent its Islamist ideological orientation. Take the case of Abdel-Hakim Bel-Haj, whose nom de guerre when he was fighting in Afghanistan as a member of the Mujahideen was Abu Abdallah Assadaq. According to the Qatar-based Pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, CNN and the BBC he might have a member of Al-Qaeda. This, of course, the international media insists is a matter of conjecture. Bel-Haj himself has consistently denied this. He is today the commander of the Tripoli military council under the auspices of the NTC. He directed the un-Islamically named "Operation Mermaid Dawn" in which the NTC's Liberation Army in conjunction with NATO stormed Tripoli on 21 August. What is certain is that Bel-Haj was the emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a dogged foe of the Gaddafi regime. And, precisely one of the very characters that Gaddafi warned the West against. Indeed, it was Western intelligence agents that led to Bel-Haj's arrest in Thailand in 2004. He was interrogated by the CIA and tortured before being handed over to Gaddafi who promptly imprisoned him. Bel-Haj claims that he was tortured further during his incarceration. Yet it was Gaddafi's relative leniency with the Islamists, his understanding that Libya was a hybrid nation and that Libyans a naturally moderate Maliki people that gave politicians and activists like Bel-Haj a new lease on life. Gaddafi fathomed that he was a benign dictator, and may be in retrospect he was. Now it has become clear from WikiLeaks that during the closing years of the Gaddafi era, Western intelligence collaborated closely with Gaddafi and his cohorts. The CIA fed Libyan interrogators with information about suspect Libyan Islamists and other dissidents during the past decade when Gaddafi mended fences with the West. Western leaders turned a blind eye to torture claims by Libyan Islamists. The NTC would be foolish to underestimate the enormous challenges it faces. However, would the NTC leaders now whole-heartedly forgive the West and forget the past dubious association between Gaddafi and the West? And, why did the West suddenly drop Gaddafi like a hot potato? There are numerous precedents. They did so with the late Shah of Iran. So why not Gaddafi? It seems a simple enough question. But it was Gaddafi himself who saw the even simpler logic behind his fate. His venom will implode over the months to come if he is not captured and ideological convictions drive him to political conclusions that might not suit the NTC. Gaddafi projected himself as being fixated on the cruelty of the New World Order and the toll on human dignity he sees in both the industrially advanced nation of the West as much as in the developing world. Gaddafi announced in a radio broadcast that he was ready for a "long war". Whether he is capable of waging a protracted armed struggle is a different matter all together. All across the Arab world, the powers that be are heaving a sigh of relief. Gaddafi is ousted from office and is on the run. The bonanza could not have come at a better time for these countries. Only Algeria which now hosts Gaddafi's wife Safiya, his daughter Aisha and two of his sons Mohamed and Hannibaal together with his grandchildren has reservations about the NTC. Seif Al-Islam is still at large. His inflated sense of his own pre-imminence neither endeared him to his kith and kin at home nor to his Western business partners. His name was a code word for cruelty and callousness, and yet he feigned enlightenment as the champion of democratisation and political reform in Libya. When the regime was actually in real danger, he showed his true colours. He was not among those trying to create an alternative Libya. His less bellicose siblings, enjoying safe haven in Algeria, hope that Seif Al-Islam might again come to his senses. He is Gaddafi's last hope. Just as the civil war in Libya was finally winding down, Gaddafi appealed to the tribes of Libya. Only his own Gaddadfa, and certain clans of the Werfalla, Libya's largest tribe numbering some one million, and the Tuareg of the Sahara who are spread throughout Africa and the World's largest desert came to his rescue by championing his cause. The hardy Tuareg inhabit countries as far afield as Mauritania in the west, Algeria in the north and Chad and Niger in the east. Libyan Tuareg are in cahoots with their kith and kin across the Saharan countries. Libyan tribes are not necessarily confined to Libya, and the Tuareg are a case in point. How might such a hybrid Libyan identity be defined? Oil is the buzzword. So why was the West so determined to topple Gaddafi? A shimmering vision of Green Book anti-imperialism led him on. The tribes of Libya are no longer the force that they once were, with the notable exception of the Tuareg whose loyalty Gaddafi carefully cultivated largely through his largesse. Tribal leaders could modulate the divisions within the NTC by assimilating into the new system just as Gaddafi did with them by his generosity and beneficence. But in the end the tribes let Gaddafi down. Files of spying against and infiltrating the NTC were unearthed in Gaddafi's bunkers. These files were supercilious and judgmental about certain NTC leaders, and a clear picture of utter confusion comes to light. A comprehensive interpretation of such evidence reveals the NTC as incapable of setting up a truly democratic dispensation in the post-Gaddafi Libya. Defectors, especially some of Gaddafi's most trusted henchmen and high officials are highly suspect as sudden converts to true political reform in Libya. When the tide went against Gaddafi in the end, they deserted him to join the NTC, from ministers and close political associates, to life-long personal friends and diplomats. Without his right-hand men it must be a lot lonelier at the top. It is no secret that the very Mafia surrounding him betrayed Gaddafi. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, the desert town of Bani Walid, south of Tripoli and one of the few remaining strongholds of the Gaddafi regime, was being besieged by the forces of Libya's interim NTC government. The others are Sebha in the south, the largest city in Fezzan, Libya's southernmost province. The NTC promise the Libyan people an end to schism. Yet it is difficult for the West to differentiate the wheat from the chaff, while anyone who was anyone in Gaddafi's Libya could tell them apart. Whether that goes far enough is unclear. Will Gaddafi disappear, fade into political obscurity? Will he be unceremoniously captured and butchered like a sacrificial ox or ram at Eid Al-Adha, like Iraq's Saddam Hussein, taking his many secrets to the grave? As for the NTC, will it be able to heal these many schisms, unite the tribes around a Western-style pluralist democratic order that is not merely the latest incarnation of neo-imperialism?
