A Guide To Libya's New Political Landscape

This Post is Brought to You by Ghaffar Hussain, of Quilliam, and First Appeared in the Guardian

The ousting of the Gaddafi clan and the collapse of their jamahiriyasystem, has left many feeling unsure about Libya's political future. After all, the National Transitional Council (NTC) is not a political party and won't exist beyond the first elections. Many of its members, being having been officials in Gaddafi's regime, are unlikely to seek executive political positions.

The systematic suppression of civil society and all forms of opposition by Gaddafi has also left the country weak and fragile. So who will dominate Libya's political scene in the coming years?

The political scene in Libya today comprises four broad camps: nationalists, liberals, Islamists and secularists, according to Noman Benotman, an analyst at the Quilliam Foundation who is also a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

A Victory for Liberal Interventionism?

This Post is Brought to You by Talal Rajab, of The Urbanite

Having been kept up by the scenes in Tripoli last night I could not help but smile for the people of Libya.  In what was described as a surprise for the international community and the rebels themselves, it seems that the torturous reign of Colonel Gaddafi is finally at an end. His sons have been arrested and most of his army have all but given up, although there have been reports today of sporadic fighting on the border between Libya and Tunisia and in some neighbourhoods near Tripoli.

Although it will be very difficult to predict the future for Libya, as a team of rebels with no experience of running a country will inevitably run into many complications, what this does signal is a victory for those of us in Britain (both on the left and right) who called for and supported liberal intervention when Gaddafi began to brutally crack down on protests earlier this year.  This was not like Iraq and Afghanistan, we argued.  The Libyan people badly needed us and if we stood by and let Gaddafi massacre his people we would have missed an important historical moment.