By Ochereome Nnanna
War is a mess, besides being a tragedy. Today, as I write, the forces of the National Transitional Council, NTC, of Libya (still termed “the opposition forces” because they had yet to assume power) had taken over the famous Green Square in Tripoli. The capital of Libya saw scenes of delirious jubilations by both elements of the victorious rebel forces and the ordinary people.

NTC sources disclosed that the name of the Green Square (which is similar to Egypt’s Tahrir Square in Cairo and our own Eagle in Abuja) was quickly renamed Martyrs’ Square. There were two obvious reasons for this. Number one was that the victorious rebel forces were made up mainly of elements of the civilians that came out at the outset of the Libyan chapter of the 2010/2011 “Arab Spring”.

They later took up arms when they were hectored by Gaddafi’s security forces. With the support of NATO’s bombardment of Gaddafi’s forces, these former civilians eventually were on the brink of triumph over a much more fancied and equipped Libyan army. Obviously, a lot of these volunteers and irregulars, as well as many civilians, paid with their lives, and hence the decision of the rebel leaders to rename the Square in their memory.

Secondly, renaming the Square was a declaration that the revolution was more conclusive and decisive than what took place in Tunisia and Egypt, which were termed “incomplete revolutions”. This was due to the fact that elements of the respective establishments took over power. In Tunisia, when dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was dethroned he was replaced by regime element, Beji Caid Essebsi as interim Prime Minister. Also in Egypt, following the sacking of Hosni Mubarak by the army after a prolonged popular standoff, the army appointed its leader, General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi as the leader of the transitional military council whose main assignment is to help create a path to a new democratic order.

On the other hand, in Libya it is a clean-up revolution. It is a new order and the renaming of the Green Square is a clear indication that the days of the quasi-Baathist Green Revolution of the Gaddafi era is gone for good. Gaddafi, who took over the reins of power at the youthful age of 27 in 1969, sought to model his revolution as a cross between Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt (Arab and African nationalism) and Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s peasant revolution.

He later published his often excoriated three-tome “green books” to spell out his vision of Libya, and the Arab and African worlds within a world then split between the East and West. Sure enough, Libya under Gaddafi was also an Islamic Republic, with many aspects of the social, political and economic lives of the republic patterned on Islamic tenets. The country’s great oil wealth and sparse population helped guarantee a stable and contented population until the recent age of the Internet and Al Jazeera, which were chiefly implicated in the Arab Spring phenomenon.

The question on the lips of many worried watchers of the Libyan revolution is: After the ouster of Gaddafi, what next? After 42 years under a dictatorship, the prospects of a smooth transition to a genuine democracy are bleak. There are many who believe that strong dictatorship is about the only viable means of holding Arab societies together over sustainable periods. There are also many who fear that since what is happening in Libya is more akin to what took place in Iraq where a strong, long-standing dictatorship was forcefully dislodged the temporary vacuum that might ensue could lead to power struggles which could rive the country into entrenched tribal and religious realms pitted in bitter rivalries.

In the case of Iraq, nearly 10 years after Saddam Hussein was toppled, we continue to receive stories of bomb blasts and terrorist attacks which spell the fact that multi-party democracy has not found an answer for stability.

The vexed issue of Islamic terrorism is also a factor to watch. The world’s foremost terrorist outfit, Al Qaeda Network, would surprise many if the unfolding situation in Libya had not tickled its fancy. If anything, it is already active in Mauritania and neighbouring Mali through its agents, the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM, while in North Eastern Nigeria, it has a murderous cell which goes by the name: Boko Haram. To the Libyan south east is strife-torn Sudan with many loose elements roaming its open country. Libya looks like an ideal place to drop anchor, especially as Afghanistan and Pakistan were unable to give its later leader, Osama Bin Laden, sustainable hiding place. The Sahara Desert is a much more open place, and the Libyan end of this great wilderness is one of the harshest and least policed parts of the Desert.

If al Qaeda is able to anchor effectively in the Libyan Desert it will be within easier reach of the sub-Sahara and Europe. The import of this is that the new regime must quickly take control of the government and territory of Libya or else the al Qaeda virus will infect and undermine it, thus, destabilising the entire region.

Unless the new leaders take immediate charge, the West may discover, too late, that the dethronement of Gaddafi which it encouraged with NATO’s air campaigns, was a grievous tactical error. If this happens, the West may have no alternative other than to send troops to Libya to fight al Qaeda and help the new hands to stabilise the country. If this happens, that will be Iraq all over again! This holds a negative prospect for President Barack Obama’s re-election next year since he would be accused by the Republicans of dragging America into a needless campaign in Libya.

That was the Democrats’ main armour against George Bush’s Republicans in 2008. It will be the shoe now on the other foot.