Libya's rebel leadership is starting to rupture

Behind the scenes and off the record, officials close to the NTC describe the fissures that have opened up between top military commanders and political officials. Tensions between Western-backed liberals and homegrown Islamists are on the rise, bolstered by the international community’s fears that Islamist militant groups will hijack the revolution. On Al Jazeera just an hour after Jalil’s speech, Ali Sallabi, a popular Islamist cleric, denounced the NTC as composed of “extreme secularists” and warned that they were taking the country into “a new era of tyranny.” Sallabi has ties to Tripoli’s military commander, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who once led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant group with links to al Qaeda…

But several other highly placed NTC insiders were more candid in private. One said, “Jibril is appointing family members and businessmen to high positions. That’s exactly what Qaddafi did and exactly what we don’t want.” The insiders pointed to Aref Nayed, the ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and head of the stabilization team, as an example of a Jibril loyalist who has been given a free ride. Others complained that Jibril is working to gain control over Qaddafi’s frozen assets, which a few countries including the Netherlands and Spain have started to release back to the NTC.

“If he does that, he will be the most powerful man in Libya, even if he doesn’t have a position, because he’ll have everybody that is in position under his control and he will manage to get his hands on most of the money,” one official told me.