Libya after Gaddafi: Experts fear chaos, see opportunity.Although many experts fear post-liberation Libya could spiral into civil war, others contend the Libyans have been gifted with a tabula rasa upon which they can build a stable society, especially if the country’s economic assets are properly leveraged and power is equitably distributed.Lisa Anderson, president of the American University of Cairo, believes there is a risk of "regionalist triumphalism", in which local movements each proclaim privileged positions within the new Libya.However, Jason Pack, president of Libya-Analysis.com, points out how the movement’s fragmentation is also its strength.Writing in The Guardian, Pack asserts that because a “diffuse periphery dominates the center” of the Libyan revolution it differs from Egypt and Tunisia where power is at risk of simply being consolidated and transferred within the military and societal elite.Hence, those revolutions are “unlikely to fundamentally change the connection between the state, citizens and army or to invert the social classes as the French or Russian revolutions did”.Pack argues stability in Libya can only be achieved through avoidance of the factionalism Anderson fears and equitable localization of power: "Today's Libyan revolutionaries want locally accountable power and institutions that govern them according to a rule of law, but not in a western way. Rather, many of them appear to wish for traditional kinship and local networks to create a social web connecting all Libyans to the state and to each other."
Libya After Gaddafi: Experts Fear Chaos, See Opportunity