A new stream of good jokes has been coursing through post-Gaddafi Libya in which the main butts are the mountain town of Zintan, which rebelled early, and Bani Walid, which insisted on special negotiations with the rebel fighters till the very end.

...there are two big obstacles in the way of sustainable democratic development, both Nato legacies- Ranier Fsadni

In the old joke-stream, the main butt used to be Tarhuna, a large agrarian town about 65 kilometres southeast of Tripoli. No one ever claimed the jokes – usually featuring country bumpkins in the city – were fair. Indeed, people were ready to admit they were borrowed from Egypt and that Tarhuna had done nothing special to deserve it.

Likewise, no one’s claiming much fairness for the jokes about Zintan’s rapacity and the softness of Bani Walid.

And that’s a good sign. The Zintan jokes have a basis in events that saw some Zintani former freedom fighters involved in violent incidents and on reports that a spate of robberies in Tripoli was carried out by people suspected of being Zintanis.

The Bani Walid jokes could have been aimed at other towns, like Tarhuna, which never took an anti-Gaddafi stand.

The jokes, in other words, are based on failures of law and order and on national divisions during the fighting.

It’s a good sign that such subjects are being treated with good humour.

It shows a general willingness to give the National Transitional Council some slack in establishing order. And targeting just one town for its stance during the fighting actually shows a willingness to forget that of others.

I’m told that last Sunday’s celebration of Islam’s major feast, the Eid al-Kabir, went well in Libya.

That said, however, there are two big obstacles in the way of sustainable democratic development, both Nato legacies.

One concerns the huge number of weapons in the country. Many of them were distributed by Muammar Gaddafi but many too by Nato members.

The problem is not so much the sheer number of Kalashnikovs in every household. In large parts of Libya, acts of violence (including individual killings) are routinely subjected to peaceful mediation. One needs to mobilise a great many fighters to destabilise a country with light weaponry alone.

Nor is it necessarily a huge problem – though some Libyan politicians would disagree – that many towns now have military councils that rival the political ones. Obviously, it’s not ideal and the political process is being vitiated. Misurata is said to have issued barely veiled threats during the recent election of the new Prime Minister, effectively vetoing one leading candidate. However, if the fear of reversion to fighting serves to generate a search for consensus, the effect can be positive if limited to the transition.

The problem arises rather with two issues. First, if the military dimension remains permanent, it would damage the prospects for women’s equal political participation. Across the world, militarisation tends to come at the expense of women’s rights. In a country such as Libya, where the resolution of violence is men’s traditional responsibility, women would be cut off from an important arena of politics.

There is a more immediate danger. The non-collection of light weaponry might not be too dangerous; the availability of rocket launchers is. A disgruntled extremist, displeased with the evolving dispensation even if not enjoying much of a following, can fire a surface-to-air missile at a passing passenger plane and wreak political and economic havoc.

The second Nato legacy concerns the division of opinion it caused in western Libya. It has unintended implications for the present arguments over how political representation should be weighted, eventually, in a democratic Parliament.

Some are arguing – mainly Misurati politicians – that representation should be determined not just on population density but also (among other criteria) on the basis of “priority in liberation”. In other words, the prestige gained from one’s participation in the revolution will be sanctified by the Constitution.

The inequality of military glory will translate into disproportionate seat allocation.

How does Nato come into this? Its intervention greatly affected how different towns reacted. In some cases, towns did not take a stand because they were internally split, with many people, even if they detested Col Gaddafi, genuinely believing that Nato was conducting a neo-colonial intervention. In other cases, liberation would have come sooner if Nato had focused its firepower on them earlier.

The point is not to blame Nato but to notice the unintended consequences. If Misurata gets its way, the Constitution would permanently enshrine a system of political privilege based on what happened – partly thanks to Nato’s identity and decision-making – over a six-month period in 2011.

This would be unfair. Not only but not least because Nato’s rescue of Misurata was greatly aided and legitimised by the fact that it was not intervening in a civil war. Those towns that stayed out of the fighting, to avert pitting families against each other, kept the repression from turning into one despite Col Gaddafi’s efforts (he did succeed in two or three places). The fence-sitters actually smoothed Misurata’s path to liberation.

Translating military prestige into political weight would also make the path to democracy unsustainable. Some areas would have fewer stakes in the new dispensation.

In practice, it would revive the old rivalry, in Tripolitania, between the coastal towns and much of the interior. Far from spreading the democratic revolution, it would curtail it.

Let’s hope good sense prevails. In Tripoli, there already are some faint rumblings against Misurata. But not too many jokes.

ranierfsadni@europe.com