The fulfilment of the aspirations of the Libyan people marks the epitome of their ambitions, notes Gamal Nkrumah The National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya was launched on a wing and a prayer. The wing -- NATO I presume -- has fallen off, but God, it seems, is listening intently to the prayer of the NTC leaders. Bani Walid, the stronghold of a handful of Muammar Gaddafi stalwarts fell to the NTC's Liberation Army and it appears that Sirte, the hometown of the ousted Libyan leader, is about to fall into the Liberation Army's hands. Gaddafi fans across Libya will be tempted to raise a glass this week to their leader on the run. Yet before the toast gets out of hand, it is worth noting that the pro-Gaddafi glass may only be half full. The remnants of the Gaddafi regime have devised a survival strategy. They try desperately to drive a deeper wedge between the different factions of the NTC. The militant Islamists and their bases of support throughout the country have emerged as a formidable force against Western-style democracy. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is often cast as a champion of human rights and civil liberties. She crossed the cuesta landscape of Libya carefully avoiding the ethnic Tuareg oases of Ghat and Ghadames just in case she does not bump in Gaddafi and his bellicose progeny. She paid a surprise visit to Libya this week, an unprecedented one for one of the highest-level US officials to Libya. Clinton, it appears had an Avatar moment when she suggested that the US deepen its engagement with civil society organisations in Libya. Which societies, one wonders did she have in mind, surely not the militant Islamist groups. Clinton made an impassioned plea for Libyan women lamenting that there were not enough women in the NTC. Her appeal fell on deaf ears. Having dug a rhetorical hole, Hillary Clinton now has to lie in it. She spoke of discovering a dangerous stockpile of chemical and biological weapons in Libya and her hosts listened politely to her pontificating about exporting American- style "Freedom" and "Free Trade". Clinton unveiled plans to prop up the nascent democratic process in post-Gaddafi Libya. Gaddafi's ominous prophecy that the country will be taken over by militant Islamists may well prove to come true, much to the consternation of Western-style secularists and multi-party pluralists within the NTC. So far, it has not been fulfilled, but the fact is that every Friday at noon the faithful congregate for Friday prayers in what used to be called Green Square, now appropriately called Martyrs' Square. Secular activists within the NTC should not be under the illusion that the Libyan Revolution will be free of militant Islamist influences. There is no appetite in the West for fighting militant Islamists in Libya especially because oil supplies are not likely to be impaired whether or not the Islamists come to power. So far, the secularists -- as much as the Gaddafi loyalists -- have drawn strength from the Islamists' lack of unity. It is against this contentious backdrop that NTC leader Mahmoud Djibril announced in an interview with the London-based Pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat that Gaddafi intends to proclaim an independent state in the south of Libya. Two months after the ouster of Gaddafi, the NTC's Liberation Army has failed to pacify the entire country. Sounding a little like an ineffectual dilettante, Djibril complained bitterly about his colleagues within the NTC. Leaders like Djibril may resist saying what's really happening for fear that doing so would force the NTC to pull the plug on Libya's post-Gaddafi rescue package. No safe options exist for the NTC. Gaddafi's threat stokes instability fears in other parts of Libya as well. Cyrenaica, eastern Libya, is the stronghold of anti-Gaddafi forces. Southern Libya remains defiantly loyal to Gaddafi. The Tuareg tribesmen of southwestern Libya owe allegiance to the Gaddafi regime and are prepared to set up a rival Libyan government in the southern part of the country with Gaddafi as its leader. The supposed new state will have a vast territory, but will lack oil and other vital mineral resources. Moreover, in spite of its vast territory, the area under forces loyal to Gaddafi has a rather sparse population of one million scattered over a desolate moonlike landscape. So what will happen if Gaddafi does announce the formation of an independent state in southern Libya? The NTC leaders prefer not to consider that question. Whatever the formal status of the NTC, there are many in post-Gaddafi Libya who do not recognise it as the sole and representative government of Libya. Gaddafi's call for an independent political entity in southern Libya comes as the country is divided over the extent to which it devolves power to the NTC. Libyans are also disunited on whether it is ready to embrace the hardline militant Islamist ideology that has gained sway over other political groupings within the NTC. What makes adjustment to a post-Gaddafi democracy more difficult is that it involves two sides. The secularists are wary of further Islamisation of the political system in the post-Gaddafi period. The Islamists are in the ascendant and are determined to steer the country into an anti- Western direction. "All the decisions we as the NTC collective leadership make are thrown into the dustbin," protested a disgruntled Djibril. Taken on its own, the NTC is a clumsy conglomeration of motley groups vying for political supremacy. The repercussions of the power struggles within the NTC will not be clear until a fully-fledged democracy will be established in Libya. It is often possible to reach consensus on a course of action even if there are different reasons for and objectives behind such action. The NTC realises that changes are inevitable, but that if the NTC leadership desires to be trusted they should desist from dictatorship and reaffirm their commitment to democracy. They also must pledge to set out an electoral timetable and stick firmly to it. Too much is at stake, both for the Libyan people and for Libya's trading partners across the Mediterranean. The NTC cannot be seen as foundering within sight of a new democratic dispensation in Libya. Riding a wave of rising oil demand, Libya's new leaders must create an economy conducive to prosperity, social justice and an equitable distribution of income. It is not enough for the NTC to restore water, power and petrol services. After eight months of a devastating civil war there is the dire need to reinstate the smooth functioning of the health, education and social services that were the hallmarks of the Gaddafi regime. There is a larger lesson for the NTC, and the Libyan leadership knows this. The strength of the Gaddafi regime was that it guaranteed a sense of social justice, even though it fell short on the human rights scale. The importance of social justice was not lost on Gaddafi. Lesser leaders seem to sleepwalk into oversight. And, the NTC leadership knows that such cynicism and blighted hope as displayed by Djibril is no way to behave in a crisis. A start would be to say what is clear for everyone to see: that the NTC has not got its act together yet. One of the NTC's few winning cards is that it claims to be all-inclusive. The challenge may be put to the test in Misrata, Libya's third largest city, which held out against the Gaddafi regime in a heroic stance and defied the Gaddafi diehards by resisting a siege that crippled the social fabric of the Mediterranean seaside port. Misrata has captured the imagination of young Libyans and has come to be seen as a symbol of the Libyan Revolution. Misrata's resistance undermined the resilient regime of Gaddafi and his henchmen. Pro- Gaddafi protesters have taken to the streets in Tripoli. So far activists of the ancien regime have not surfaced in Misrata. But can the city that has come to symbolise the steadfastness of the Libyan uprising demonstrate that the NTC cannot fudge its falling short of targets?
