It was a year ago that first rumblings of the Libyan conflict began. Within six months, Muammar Gaddafi had lost power; within eight he was dead. Considerable tension remains among the victors, however, as international reports remind us.

...the weak authority of the (National Transitional Council) is central to understanding the news- Ranier Fsadni

On Tuesday, two items of news were reported. The allocation of parliamentary seats, to the various localities, was announced. And the various militias of western Libya announced that they were forming an association so that they would guard the revolution against the National Transitional Council, which they accused of being corrupt and recycling members of the old regime.

How did we get here?

I’ve been reviewing the main events of the Libyan revolution last year to see how my weekly commentary and guesses fared. On the whole, not too badly, especially when I decided to guess against the trend of the immediate international press reaction.

One of the key early stages was Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’s TV speech to the people of western Libya. The international press called it rambling. I said it was designed to play to people’s fears of tribal division, of which there were historic instances. I added, however, that tribes themselves were not quite what he was supposing them to be. They had changed partly as a result of the country’s development under his father’s rule.

Fears of division in fact haunted the conflict. Col Gaddafi tried to exploit it but largely failed. What happened was that many tribes decided to stay neutral.

A second key stage concerned the decision, in March, on the imposition of a no-fly zone. While much of the press were repeating claims about the popular uprising being everywhere, I pointed out that there were huge areas in the interior, covering some of the largest Libyan tribes, which had conspicuously stayed out of the conflict. I also said that Nato bombing might have the effect of shifting opinion, among the tribes of the interior, in favour of Col Gaddafi as it could be perceived as a neo-colonial enterprise.

This turned out to be half right. That is, opinion was evenly divided about whether it was preferable to support Nato’s intervention against Col Gaddafi or vice-versa. It was one reason why many tribes decided to stay neutral. It’s a factor that continues to be salient today, when certain civil society organisers are wary of appearing to be receiving major funding or support from Europe or “the West”. During the long months of fighting, the press largely wrote about the armed rebels and the NTC as though they were the military and civilian wings of the same movement. In July, I wrote, however: “For the Council, the race is to win the war before the civic revolution it promises is lost, before, that is, the country is so changed and brutalised by conflict that the power and authority of the commanders will persist into the peace.”

Today, the weak authority of the NTC is central to understanding the news. The militias refuse to recognise the NTC’s monopoly over law and order.

Similarly, during the conflict there was much commentary about the “historic” rivalry between western and eastern Libya. I reported that this was true of the post independence period but the real historic rivalry lay between the coastal cities and the interior.

We see this played out in today’s politics: in the rivalry between Misurata and Zintan and between Bani Walid and the government in Tripoli (and the interests in Misurata).

The west-east axis is a factor in a different sense: the lack of contact prevents tension from building up but also gives rise to fears in the east that it will be isolated. The demand coming from there is not a rejection of Tripoli as a seat of government but that some ministries are located in Benghazi.

As the last vestiges of pro-Gaddafi control over Sirte came tumbling down, the international press described the other hold-out, Bani Walid, base of the Warfalla confederation, as a pro-Gaddafi stronghold. It still does. A couple of weeks ago it described a shoot-out as a takeover by a pro-Gaddafi group against the pro-NTC militia.

Although the idea that Bani Walid is a stronghold of the old regime is widespread in Libya itself, it is, however, mistaken. And some of the reports I made at the time are relevant.

The refusal to give up men accused of repression to the NTC, I had said, was motivated by a lack of trust in whether any due process of law existed. That attitude has since been expressed explicitly and reported of a town like Zintan, whose anti-Gaddafi credentials cannot be doubted.

In fact, the fight in Bani Walid was between two anti-Gaddafi groups, one based on an uprising in 1993 and another based on an uprising on May 28 (which I had reported). The tension continues, with fuel not being delivered to Bani Walid from the weekend up to the time of writing (Wednesday morning). Meanwhile, several checkpoints on the road to Bani Walid have been set up.

There was much that I missed, as well, some of which I pointed out last week. But, on the whole, the record isn’t too bad.

ranierfsadni@europe.com