I would love to buy my next smartphone with the label “made in Libya.”
Photo: Reuters
Libya’s Rebels Give 4-Day Ultimatum to Gadhafi Forces
TNC leader Jalil threatens, rebels will resort to military action in Sirte if they get no indication of peaceful resolution to conflicts.
I wonder about this threat.
Once built, armies are hard to take apart. For example, America’s adventures in Mexico may have been a build up for our own civil war. The cold war was built on the machinery that defeated Hitler.
The new Libya, if it is well led, is obviously not a threat in quantity to Egypt, but ..depending on Libya’s new leadership, the heroes of this summer could be a a force for order. Imagine Libyan, Egyptian and South African troops making oeace in the Congo! Imagine the new Egyptian leaders and the Libyan leaders meeting to create common agendas.
Of course Libya could become a Mahgreb version of Iran or Afghanistan? I doubt both of these ideas. First, the involvement of NATO and the elegant way NATO has given Libya the lead, suggests that the new leaders will see the huge advantage to them of being a force for order in Africa. Second, Libya’s neighbors, unlike the powers bordering Afghanistan, have no self interest in a conflict within Libya.
The real danger in Libya, it seems to me, is of a protracted nativist/tribal war with Gaddafi’s tribes or other southern tribes acting like the tribal peoples of Pakistan. This, combined with the new Libyan military could push Libya into a situation like Turkey, where a liberal military enforces order and keeps the country headed toward democracy or like Pakistan where the military is a two edged sword .. threatening to become Islamist..
I hope we see a new alliance of Turkey, Egypt, Libya and … Allah permitting .. Syria. That quartet, especially if it managed a real peace with Israel, could turn the region into an economic dynamo very able to compete with US Europe, the new Asian Chinese sphere, India, and Brazil.I would love to buy my next smartphone with the label “made in Libya.”
in the meantime:
High price of Libya’s deadly celebrations
Libyans are being urged to stop shooting into the air to celebrate their new-found freedom. Euronews correspondent, Mustafa Bag, met victims of stray bullets at a hospital in Tripoli. Abdul Karim had just left a mosque and was on his way home when he was wounded by a bullet fired in celebratory gunfire…