A Year After Gadhafi, Can Libya Tame Militias?
As I continue to absorb the available information on the killing of our ambassador, I saw this opinion piece. If correct it shows a country much unlike the place where AQ can flourish. Very unlike Yemen, Afghanistan etc.
AQ would have the 9/11 anniversary motive, a local militia would not.
A Year After Gadhafi, Can Libya Tame Militias?
(CNN) — A year ago, Libyans celebrated the death of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. I wrote then that despite enormous challenges, the country’s prospects were actually pretty good. Its small, relatively well-educated population and abundant oil wealth certainly gave it a leg up on neighboring Egypt, which has to make its transition under dire economic circumstances.
Libya’s path was never going to be easy, but its trajectory since Gadhafi’s death has defied the worst predictions of chaos and civil war.
There has also been a flowering of civil society in a country that for decades had almost none. Dozens of new organizations focusing on issues such as democracy building, the environment and women’s rights have formed in the past year. Some groups played an important role in advocating for a female quota in the electoral law. As a result of that preference — which required political parties to alternate male and female candidates on their ballots — women won 33 of the 200 seats.
And thousands of Libyans shared their opinions of the draft law through the council’s website and phone line and through social media. Libyans went from being barred from any kind of organized activity outside the reach of Gadhafi’s ne