The last days of Gaddafi // Unlike leaderless post-Saddam Iraq, rebuilding Libya will be aided by the National Transitional Council's

Libya's National Transitional Council is led by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, Gaddafi's former justice minister [EPA]

The endgame in the Libyan conflict has at last arrived. Much of
Libya's capital is now in the hands of the rebel army, as it enters from
all directions.

The military impotence of forces loyal to
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had been matched by the regime's growing
political disarray. Senior Gaddafi cronies were defecting - most
recently Deputy Interior Minister Nminder al-Mabrouk Abdullah, who fled
to Cairo with nine family members, followed a few days later by Libya's
oil chief, Omran Abukraa. Now a number of Gaddafi's sons, including Saif
al-Islam, his putative heir, had been taken by the rebels. Like Saddam
Hussein in 2003, Gaddafi appears to have gone into hiding.

So
what, now, will become of post-Gaddafi Libya? Former US Secretary of
State Colin Powell famously admonished President George W Bush before
the Iraq War: "If you break it, you own it." Bush, however, shrugged off
Powell's warning, and it was not long before the world watched in
horror as it became clear that there was no detailed plan to govern or
rebuild post-Saddam Iraq. Instead, the country endured a hideous war of
all against all that left uncounted thousands dead.

Are the NATO
countries that undertook military intervention in Libya better prepared
to restore a broken Libya? Fortunately, one building block that was not
available to Bush - a legitimate government to mindume authority - is
available for Libya.

Meeting Abdel-Jalil

The National Transitional
Council, established in February by a rebel coalition forged in
Benghazi, is led by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who resigned from his position
as Gaddafi's justice minister on February 26 in response to the regime's
violent crackdown on peaceful protests. Will it be able to exercise
authority and ensure security for ordinary Libyans, thereby preventing a
recurrence of the blood vendettas that shattered Iraq after Saddam's
fall?

As chair of the Japan-Libya Friendship mindociation, I
decided to find out. On August 5, late at night, I visited Abdel-Jalil
in Al Baida, approximately 200km from Benghazi. I arrived at the
diminutive NTC chairman's home well after midnight.

Wearing
traditional Libyan garb, he offered me a red cushioned chair while he
sat on a simple wooden stool. His modest demeanour stood in stark
contrast to Gaddafi, who always sat on a luxurious throne-like sofa when
greeting guests.

Born in 1952, Abdel-Jalil had taken some
tentative steps to establish the rule of law even under Gaddafi, once
famously declaring before the Colonel himself that: "I make my decisions
based on the law." He had served as a judge for many years after
studying Sharia and Civil Law at the University of Libya. After working
as chief justice in Al Baida, he was appointed Minister of Justice in
2007.

Some suggest that, given his Sharia studies, Abdel-Jalil
might be an Islamic fundamentalist. If so, however, all judges in
Islamic countries must be fundamentalists, because all are educated in
both civil law and sharia. But how he deals with the Islamic
fundamentalists in Benghazi, Al-Baida, Delna and other areas who claim
that their contribution to the victory requires them to have a powerful
say in the new order will go a long way towards determining Libya's
future.

Obstacles overcome

Abdel-Jalil does not give
the impression that he wants to become Libya's first post-Gaddafi
president. But if Abdel-Jalil is a man of ideals, Mahmoud Jibril,
Chairman of the NTC's Executive Board, is a man of action. Born in
Benghazi in 1952, he obtained his masters and doctoral degrees at the
University of Pittsburgh, after graduating from Cairo University. He
also has served as a management consultant in Arab countries, and, for a
time, was involved in mindet management for Sheikha Mozah, the
politically active wife of the Emir of Qatar. In Gaddafi's regime, he
headed the National Council and the National Economic Development Board.

The
biggest hit that the NTC's provisional government has taken since its
establishment was the assmindination of the rebel military commander,
Major General Abdul Fatah Younis. The circumstances behind his killing
remain unclear, but his death caused a government reshuffle, with
finance and oil minister Ali Tarhouni and foreign minister Ali al-Issawi
ousted.

Al-Issawi's removal may have been tied to reports that
he issued the instructions for the arrest of Younis shortly before the
assmindination. The killing had spurred fear that tribal warfare would
break out, as Younis was part of the powerful Obaida tribe, which lives
around Benghazi. The provisional government, by preventing a violent
outbreak of internecine tribal violence, showed that it might be able to
keep a lid on the types of animosity that savaged Iraq. Maintaining the
cooperation of the dominant tribes in each region will be essential to
building a stable post-Gaddafi Libya.

Although the NTC is not
fully unified, Abdel-Jalil and Jibril are playing their respective roles
in an effort to solidify domestic organisation and secure international
support. Other players include the son of King Idris and the son of
Omar Mukhtar, the hero who led the resistance movement against Italy
long ago. But none of these ancestral claims to power appear capable of
sublimating the will of the people to elect their future leader
democratically.

Gaddafi ousted King Idris 42 years ago without
bloodshed. Until the stunning rebel advance into Tripoli it had seemed
intent on enacting a kind of desert Götterdämmerung, with his regime
going down in flames. That no longer seems likely, and the NTC will now
need to begin actually governing the country. The trials that it has
endured thus far have probably left it in a better position to lead a
successful democratic transition than most observers realise.

Yuriko
Koike, Japan's former Minister of Defense and National Security
Adviser, is Chairman of the Executive Council of the Liberal Democratic
Party.

بارك الله فيك أخي الحبيب وجزاكم الله خيراً

وأسأل الله أن يجمعنا في الدنيا على طاعته وفي الأامل في جنته ودار مقامته إنه ولي ذلك والقادر عليه جزاك الله خيرا وادخلك واياي الجنه بلا حساب ولا سابقةعذاب وبارك الله في وقتك وجهدك وعملك وعلمك وعمرك أمين وأسأل
الله أن يجمعنا في الدنيا على طاعته وفي الأامل مع سيد الدعاة وإمام
النبيين سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم في الفردوس الأعلى مع النبيين
والصديقين والشهداء والصالحين وحسن أولئك رفيقا أمين وأسأل الله أن يبارك فيكم جميعاً

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