By Diana Eltahawy, Special to CNN
Editor's note: Diana Eltahawy is Amnesty International’s Libya researcher. The views expressed are her own.
Two years ago, when Asma Sariba wrote articles for Libyan opposition websites based abroad, she put herself and her family at great risk.
Back then, she did not shy away from using her real name, even posting her picture. Today, she is one of the 33 women serving on the 200-member General National Congress after Libya’s historic national elections on July 7, which followed four decades of repression under Moammar -Gadhafi.
Asma Sariba realizes that a great deal of responsibility lies on the shoulders of the Congress, which inherited a country struggling to break the legacy of systematic human rights violations and a population severely damaged by eight months of armed conflict.
By Christopher Chivvis, Special to CNN
Christopher S. Chivvis is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and teaches at the Johns Hopkins, School of Advanced International Studies. The views expressed are his own.
A year since Tripoli fell to NATO-backed Libyan rebels, progress in achieving lasting security remains elusive and could even be faltering. Recent attacks suggest that Libya’s stability – and one of the Obama Administration’s biggest foreign policy successes – could be in danger. The countries that helped topple Moammar Gadhafi a year ago have a special obligation to ensure the new Libyan government gets all the help it needs to respond to these new threats effectively.
Gadhafi’s death last October marked the end of the war and the beginning of a new age for Libya. But progress on all fronts since then has been slow and hard-won. While Libya held successful national elections last month, a recent spate of terrorist-style attacks in Benghazi and Tripoli indicate the Libyans are not out of the woods yet.
By Daniel DePetris, Special to CNN
Daniel R. DePetris is the senior associate editor of the Journal on Terrorism and Security Analysis. The views expressed are his own.
With insurgents from the Free Syrian Army making inroads into areas that were once regarded firm bases of regime support, states backing the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appear to be accelerating efforts to forge an alternative leadership with the potential to take over once the uprising is done.
This task has taken on even greater urgency as more Syrian diplomats defect from the al-Assad regime, and as the Syrian National Council struggles to figure out how a post-al-Assad Syria should be governed. With European diplomats seemingly giving up on the SNC as a force with the potential to serve as an interim government in the event of al-Assad’s fall, the United States, Europe, and Arab states appear to be searching for viable alternatives.
By Paul Wolfowitz and Mark Palmer, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Mark Palmer is a member of the board of Freedom House. Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and a former U.S. deputy secretary of defense under President George W. Bush. The views expressed are solely those of the authors.
The recent elections in Libya were an emotion-filled celebration of the Libyan people’s thirst for self-government after four decades of extreme tyranny. Admittedly, those elections are only a first step on what will be a long road. And they weren't perfect, but then neither was the NATO military intervention that made those elections possible.
Nonetheless, those elections wouldn’t have happened without that NATO action, which in turn would have been impossible without U.S. support, hesitant and halfhearted though it was. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can take some quiet satisfaction in the elections, since she was a leading advocate of U.S. military action within the Obama administration, reportedly taking on her very powerful Pentagon colleague, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Mohamed Eljarh is a UK-based Libyan academic researcher and political/social development activist. He is from the city of Tobruk in Eastern Libya. Follow on Twitter: @Eljarh. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mohamed Eljarh.
By Mohamed Eljarh, Special to CNN
In less than 40 days, Libya is set to witness the first elections since the ouster of the late Moammar Gahdafi. But are the elections coming too early?
Post-conflict elections should mark the pinnacle point in the recovery and reconstruction of Libya. Libyans and the international community look at the election on June 19 as a milestone toward peace and democracy.
But some studies show history can paint a gloomy picture of elections held soon after bloody armed struggles, when political institutions may be weak or non-existent. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Isobel Coleman is a Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy, Director of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative. This blog post is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.
By Isobel Coleman, CFR.org
Libya’s emergence from years of dictatorship is predictably a rocky one. The country is moving toward its first post-Gadhafi national elections next month, but the process is marked by considerable confusion and deep disagreements.
On Tuesday, Libyan candidates and voters began registering for June elections for a constituent assembly that will be tasked with writing a new constitution. However, a recent law restricting political parties has sparked some bewilderment.
Last week, the NTC banned political parties “based on religion or ethnicity or tribe,” but the implications are not clear. When the law was first announced, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated party complained, “We don’t understand this law… it could mean nothing or it could mean that none of us could participate in the election.” FULL POST
Editor's Note: Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation. You can read more from Barak Barfi at Project Syndicate and be sure to check it out on Facebook and Twitter.
By Barak Barfi, Project Syndicate
Although Libyans are now celebrating the first anniversary of the revolution that toppled Moammar Gadhafi, they are increasingly frustrated with their new leaders. Libyans complain that the interim government, known as the National Transitional Council (NTC), has not moved quickly enough to purge and prosecute senior Gadhafi officials, or to rein in the militias that overthrew his regime.
Though the NTC is dedicated to implementing Libyans’ demands, it lacks the technical capacity and time necessary to do so before the elections tentatively scheduled for this coming summer. Facing such constraints, it must concentrate on a small number of important initiatives, before turning power over to an elected government. FULL POST
By Tim Lister, CNN
Amid growing outrage over civilian casualties in Syria, there are ever more urgent calls to aid - or at least protect - the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. There is renewed talk of creating safe havens and humanitarian corridors inside the country. And those demanding tougher measures are again asking why events in Syria should not prompt Libyan-style intervention by NATO and its Arab allies.
In Washington Tuesday, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said the United States "should consider all options, including arming the opposition. The blood-letting has got to stop."
So far, the international community's response to the violence in Syria has been limited. There has been diplomatic censure, with envoys withdrawn or "recalled for consultations," and Syrian ambassadors expelled from several Arab states. A growing raft of sanctions is draining the Syrian regime's coffers but only gradually sapping its strength. This is not a country that has relied on international trade for its survival. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation. You can read more from Barak Barfi at Project Syndicate and be sure to check it out on Facebook and Twitter.
By Barak Barfi, Project Syndicate
TRIPOLI – With the creation of a new government, Libya’s leaders should finally be able to focus on organizing the transition from the authoritarian state that they inherited to the more pluralistic one they envisage. But are they really able and willing to achieve that goal?
In the United States, the debate on Libya has focused on what steps its government should take next. Senator Robert Menendez argues it “must move quickly to embrace democratic reform,” while international development specialists, such as Manal Omar of the U.S. Institute for Peace, believe that success lies in the cultivation of a vibrant civil society.
These views, however, overlook Libya’s unique history, and treat Libya as though it were just another Third World country in need of generic solutions. In fact, remedying the country’s ills requires building strong state institutions. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, both professors of politics at NYU, are the authors of The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics.
By Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith – Special to CNN
Generally, acting like a dictator is the best way for political leaders to achieve their most sacred goal - staying in power. That’s the basic message of our book, The Dictator’s Handbook. Yet, dictators have been falling all over the world. Here we outline where one infamous dictator veered away from dictator guidelines:
Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi has been vilified by the West but his 42 year reign came to an end because he violated one of the basic rules of survival in office: In the few years running up to his end, he was too nice to the people. The wealth Gadhafi needed to pay his supporters came from his control of oil revenues. He did not need an educated and connected workforce to raise taxes. Yet, he gave Libyans considerably more education than his neighbors. As can be seen in the graph below (based on data from Reporters Without Borders), in recent years he also relaxed press restrictions. His "benevolence" allowed the people to organize against him.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. This is the first of several quick posts from the authors highlighting their counterintuitive views.
By Eric Lach, GlobalPost
How many 81-year-old retired Jewish florists in Brooklyn were pen pals with Col. Moammar Gadhafi? At least one: Louis Schlamowitz.
The New York Post published a story Monday in which Schlamowitz, who has made writing to world leaders something of a hobby, calls the former Libyan dictator "a good pen pal."
“I felt it was very nice of him to take the time to write back to me, because I’m nobody special," Schlamowitz said.
Schlamowitz says he first wrote to Gadhafi in 1969, after he took power in Libya. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Elliott Abrams is former senior director for the Near East and deputy national security adviser handling Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush administration. He is now a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he writes the blog Pressure Points.
By Elliott Abrams, CFR.org
After the death of Moammar Gadhafi, Administration spokesmen and those journalists who pretty much take dictation from them have been triumphant. This was, they have said, final proof of the exquisite brilliance of Obama policy in Libya (despite the “howling” of critics, to quote David Ignatius).
I would hold off on the triumphalism, for the Obama approach had many flaws. FULL POST
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