One year after the eruption of the Libyan revolution, the reproaches against it are focusing on NATO's role in its settlement, but also on its inability to handle the tribal conflicts, which was reflected in the postponement of the ending of the transitional phase. The first reproach is being issued by those who enjoy a static vision of Arab reality, one which can only demonize NATO and consider it to be a synonym of all evils around the world. In their opinion, NATO's intervention in Libya cannot be dissociated from a wider plan to control the Arab world and its capabilities, namely the oil, without taking into account what was done to Arab societies throughout decades under the rule of revolutionary families. Those advocating the aforementioned vision never discuss facts saying for example that the Arab regimes – from Saddam Hussein's to Muammar al-Gaddafi's among others – wasted their countries' wealth in fictive projects and (real) wars, in a way equaling what the West could pillage. In the meantime, the living standards of these states' populations are at the bottom of the international indicators. Moreover, they do not recognize that the Arab governments which were based on the idea of formal hostility toward the outside world, destroyed their local communities to add realism to this slogan. On the other hand, those blaming the ruling transitional committees in Libya for their delay in holding a constituent assembly, calling for a referendum over the Constitution or staging legislative elections, are basing their statements on palpable facts saying that the threat resides in allowing the structures established during the revolution to become stronger and more rooted, as it is being done by the revolutionaries' armed groups. Indeed, the latter each represents a side or a city, without being connected by a joint political program or vision for the future. In the meantime, the clashes in Libya and Bani al-Walid among other regions – in which the incidents seem to be spreading at a fast pace – are the result of the weakness of the state apparatuses, the dispersion of the authorities and the replacement of public administration and its tools by the tribes and local dignitaries who played specific roles during the revolution. All of this is causing the delay affecting the rallying and reconstruction of the state institutions. As to the disputes inside the National Transitional Council and the government's obstructed management of the country's daily affairs, they are revealing – without the shadow of a doubt – that the new Libya is facing a difficult and complicated exit from dictatorship and that this exit might feature blood, violence and regional and tribal conflicts which are always recalled by the demand to expose the truth behind the murder of the revolutionaries' military commander, Major General Abdul Fattah Younis. The controversy will not end between the tribal and regional components in Libya which – before Muammar al-Gaddafi seized power – had become accustomed to administrative and even political decentralization. These local tendencies are only confirmed by the revolutionaries' upholding of their weapons, the refusal by a number of their factions to exit the capital Tripoli and the Zentan revolutionaries' insistence on continuing to detain Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi. Hence, the vision placing the transformations in Libya, and consequently throughout the Arab world, in the context of a new Western invasion aiming at controlling the oil and acquiring a strategic position, is not enough to explain what is happening in the region. On the other hand, the major difficulties facing Libya require the recognition of the fact that the return to the world or the resumption of history that was obstructed by the totalitarian regimes will not be without a price, one of which being the awakening of sub-identities as it is currently seen in Libya.
