IMO, the Gaddafi government will be gone in no more than six months. If nothing else, Tripoli will be starved into surrendering, eventually.
What then? Whatever the Libyans want, presumably. But what do they want? It’s really hard to know the state of public opinion in a country where communication and civil society have been so tightly state-controlled for so long. It’s hard even for the Libyans to know it – remember Iraq, where the Sunni minority were astonished to lose the first post-Hussein national elections, relative to the Shi’ites, because the Sunni had always actually believed they were the majority.
Under Gaddafi, the people have been taught his Green Book ideology. After he goes, will anyone still believe in it enough to fight for it, politically, in the elections? What other political parties and factions and forces might emerge?
Looking at what might divide Libya politically:
Ethnic divisions? Not much. Almost everybody is an Arabized Berber. There are still Berber-speaking groups and other non-Arabs in the southern deserts, maybe they’ll push for greater cultural autonomy or something. I doubt they’ll try to secede.
Religious divisions? I don’t think there are any that matter – yet. Almost everybody is Sunni Muslim. But, a revival of the Senussi movement (very strong in Libya pre-Gaddafi, and still has a massive popular following) is conceivable – and could conceivably be linked to a bid to restore Libya’s short-lived monarchy, since the late King Idris was also the hereditary head of the Senussi Order, the Grand Senussi; and the current Grand Senussi, Mohammed El Senussi, is also the heir/pretender to the throne.
Would revived Senussism leave room for the more up-to-date Islamist conservatism of the Muslim Brotherhood? How would the two relate?
Regional divisions? There must be a reason why Tripolitania and Fezzan were more or less loyal to Gaddafi for a long time while Cyrenaica was always a center of opposition, but I have no idea what it is. If a matter of tribal ties and loyalties, then those will remain relevant after the revolution. The rebels in Benghazi have insisted they want a united Libya with Tripoli as its capital, and I don’t doubt them; but I rather expect that they rather expect that their region will be a bigger political player after the revolution than it was under Gaddafi, and I wonder if the Tripolitanians will have any problem with that.
Class divisions? Hard to know what social classes there are in Libya, in particular what upper class there is independent of (and likely to survive the fall of) the governmental/institutional elites. And is there any permanent underclass? Gaddafi is supposed to be some kinda lefty but I don’t know how redistributionist or welfare-statist he actually has been.
That leaves purely political ideological divisions . . . and in that regard there is just no telling, because it all depends on how individual Libyans (and organizations and groups) end up deciding they feel/think about things they have never even been allowed to discuss in public before. Whatever range of opinions they come up with will surprise Libya no less than the world.
