With the killing of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, the graph of the Arab action in Northern Africa is complete and the picture is clearer throughout the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the Algerians are so far uneager to engage in the experience despite the existing demands. During the nineties, they shed a lot of blood, witnessed wide-scale destruction and wasted the wealth. They are still trying today to heal the wounds in parallel to the ongoing reforms, despite the fact that these reforms are not exactly to the liking of the country's youth, its parties and forces. Still, they are afraid to go through the Libyan neighbor's predicament. As for Morocco, just like Jordan in the Arab Levant, it is trying to calmly feel its way through reforms that would distance the cup of anarchy, although they do not respect the demands of mature partisan entities. In the meantime, it is estimated that the Moroccan Kingdom's “move” to the Gulf Cooperation Council will alleviate the impact of the economic and social crises, while both Morocco and Algeria are expected to settle their disputes, at the head of which is the Polisario issue, in order to lead the entire region from one era to another. Gaddafi tried another path to confront the revolution in the Jamahiriya after he had blamed the Tunisians and the Egyptians for having relinquished their presidents and praised these president's accomplishments. He thus etched a third course when he felt the rope tightening around this neck, one which he had feared the moment he saw Saddam Hussein standing in front of the noose. He thus carried out a full turn and presented his credentials, as well as all his known and secret files to the Europeans and the Americans just to remain in power. He also turned his back to his Green Book and all the slogans that allowed him to reach the rule, but failed to change his miserable fate. With Gaddafi's departure, another page of this generation of leaders who jumped to power while inspired by the Egyptian “July Revolution” and the leadership of Gamal Abdel-Nasser – whom they tried to inherit – has been turned. Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi are gone, along with Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. And the train will not stop. Since 1976, the slogans related to “Arab unity,” “Freedom and Socialism” and the “timeless message” have been suffering one setback after the other. Throughout half a century, the putschists relied on the Palestinian cause and the “dream” of unity to access the palaces. This is why the youth on the liberation squares are currently rising in favor of their dignity, rights, freedoms and the liberty of the generations that preceded them and were wasted by useless slogans that did not free Palestine. Now, the priority is given to the domestic arena and the issues of the people before dealing with the major issues that can only be resolved through development, justice, rights, freedom, equality, power transition and plurality. Hence, the days of individual leaderships and the one ruling party are gone. The days of the “Arabs voice from Cairo” mobilizing the street “against colonialism” are gone. It is the era of the “liberation squares” to get rid of the tyrants. The Colonel tried to stop the train of the Arab action, thus engaging in a battle of rejectionism and resistance amid fears that this “model” might succeed. He gave some kind of hope to the regimes that collapsed and the ones still struggling to persist. The remnants of the ousted Egyptian regime thought they could try to turn the clock backward, while others were drawn to the idea after they were terrified by the image of Hosni Mubarak lying on his hospital bed in the accusation cage. Gaddafi presented another archetype during the last eight months, but the outcome was more desolate than what was seen in Tunisia and Egypt. Consequently, as much as Gaddafi's resonating defeat frightened the others, it left a wide echo throughout the Arab world as the archetype collapsed, along with the wall which the Colonel's Jamahiriya tried to raise in the face of the Arab storm. On the other hand, relief was obvious on the Yemeni and Syrian squares whose voices rose after they regained their energy, confidence and momentum in the aftermath of the tyrant's departure. Gaddafi's attempt to push the train of the Arab Spring off its course failed and his collapse constituted a lesson and a turning point in the Arab regimes' confrontation of the Arab streets and squares. Did we not see Sana'a dealing positively with the call of the Security Council upon President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down? Did we not see Damascus welcoming the delegation of the Arab League which granted the regime two weeks to stop the violence and the killing, after all it had said about the League's decision? Did the Libyan archetype truly offer a lesson or is it just another attempt to gain time and pointlessly flee forward? Nonetheless, Libya's future remains more important than the wide echo caused by the turning of Gaddafi's page. The new phase is filled with dangers and threats, while Tripoli has a construction workshop to tend to on more than one front, domestically and abroad, on the close and remote levels. Moreover, the eighteen months separating it from the first elections in 42 years might witness deadly conflicts, unless the Libyans anticipate the situation and draw the lessons from the Iraqi experience. We all saw the governmental change idea obstructed a few weeks ago following Tripoli's liberation, as the voices that rose from all sides – whether partisan or regional ones – shifted the national council's attention away from the formation of a transitional government. What is required is certainly not the “quotas system” or the “division” of power and wealth as much as it is non-exclusion. This is a difficult task for generations that never learned how to work in the context of institutions and never knew the taste of elections and the meaning of plurality, power transition, the recognition of the other and the respect of its rights. Gaddafi eliminated the bases of the state, annihilated all the institutional frameworks, destroyed all the powers and turned the army into a militia and familial brigades. We thus warn the Libyans against committing the Iraqis' mistakes, especially at the level of the quotas and the division of power and wealth, but also at the level of de-Baathification which excluded wide factions and powers that played a role in fueling the violence and civil war that hit the country in the middle of the last decade. Libya's position might be more merciful on its future than Iraq's, as the latter – throughout its old and modern history – constituted a friction line, even a line of fire between Persia and the civilizations that governed the Middle East, and is still a friction line between the Arabs and Iran. This is now rendering its soil the object of lethal international and regional bickering, which is delaying and obstructing the democratic experience, often fueling sectarian, racial and ethnic conflicts and tempting the neighbors to interfere. Libya's neighbors' preoccupation with their own affairs might give Tripoli a calmer opportunity to launch the process of change and reform. But what is important is for the demon of tribalism and regionalism to remain dormant in a country that established its modern unity between the East, the West and the desert South – the land of vacuum – at the beginning of the fifties, and for the arms in the hands of the militias and the recruits not to turn into a tool serving the political conflict over the shares. The Libyans have a long march and strenuous work ahead of them, in order to build the state's institutions and authorities from scratch. Such a task requires protection across the wide border, by reconsidering the relations with the neighboring states which were exploited by Gaddafi on every occasion through interference and the provocation of strife. An understanding must be reached with the desert belt states to handle illegal immigration and block the way before the drugs and arms smuggling operations, both of which constitute problems that have been and are still raising the concerns of the EU southern states and especially Italy. Moreover, it is known that the Islamic extremist movements, at the head of which is Al-Qaeda, are finding a safe haven on the border with Niger, Mali, southern Algeria and Libya. There is no doubt that the establishment of tight cooperation in the context of the Maghreb Union would reassure Europe, revive the tourism sector with the African north and encourage joint industries in these countries that enjoy cheap labor which is needed by the European industrial states, as it used to be (and still is the case) with Tunisia in the pre-revolution phase. In this context, Libya was always – and is now – the destination of incoming labor, and the need for such labor will increase to reconstruct the country which was neglected by the former regime and was further destroyed during the last eight months.
