Libya now has multiple “governments” that draw massive amounts of the nation’s resource wealth to themselves, creating an endless amount of make-work and no-show jobs to secure the loyalties of their clients. Libya is essentially functioning as a Mediterranean gas station, the purpose of which is to provide enough revenue to perpetuate a civil war to determine the gas station’s ownership.
As per usual in this region, Sunni radicals are moving in to the power vacuum. Libya now has clerical thugs like Grand Mufti Sadiq al-Ghariani issuing fatwas against women’s rights. Perceived agents of “foreign” influence, many of them workers brought in by the Gaddafi regime, are being expelled or oppressed in popular uprisings. All in all, civil war tends to be a loser for minorities, women, and children.
Juan Cole argued last month that Libya is “messy” but has an “open future.” One upside of the Libyan war is that it has revealed that formerly sharp critics of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, like Cole, can be just as glib as the people they hated a decade ago. Yes, Libya’s future is wide open, just as a mass grave is.
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