Despite its population of only 6m and the great wealth brought by having Africa’s largest crude oil reserves, Libya has not markedly progressed. … Instead of producing good government, Libya’s unique political system has created rule-by-committee on a scale so bewildering that the only effective institutions are reckoned by many weary Libyans to be the Qadaffi clan and the pervasive, nasty and capricious secret police.
Yet Libya has lately been changing, in many ways for the better. … Having crushed a home-grown jihadist insurgency in the 1990s, it has joined America and its allies in the global struggle against al-Qaeda and its allies. Libya’s sharing of intelligence, its decision in 2003 to scrap a secret nuclear- weapons program, and its willingness to free five Bulgarian nurses whom its courts had sentenced to death for allegedly deliberately infecting hundreds of children with HIV/AIDS, have been rewarded by a sharp upgrading of diplomatic ties. …
If [Colonel Muammar] Qadaffi’s son Seif has his way, some more fundamental revamping may be in store. Though he holds no official post except as head of a charity foundation, the younger Qadaffi has emerged as the champion of a kinder, gentler Libya. … Last month, speaking before 20,000 youths in Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, he called for Libya to adopt a constitution and to make both the judiciary and the central bank independent…
His idea of an ecological park, though limited to a single region, could represent an even bigger break with Libya’s isolationist, xenophobic past. … But… it is not clear that his good intentions can produce more than cosmetic change. Seif al-Islam has several siblings. Some are closer to their father, and several are less nice than their visionary brother. Access the full article>>