<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/22/reconciliation-libya-rebels-gadaffi-nato

Reconciliation is crucial to rebuilding Libya

The rebels have so far shown restraint with Gaddafi's allies – good news for a Nato fearful of a repeat of Afghanistan

Jonathan Steele

Guardian/UK: August 22, 2011

Now that the military battle for Libya is all but finished, the challenge for Nato is enormous. Britain, France and the United States, in particular, have acted as the decisive weapon on the rebel side and they bear a huge responsibility for ensuring a calm and orderly transition.

It has long been apparent that Nato's agenda was regime change rather than the humanitarian imperative of protecting civilians on which it based its pleas to Russia and China not to block a UN security council resolution to set up a no-fly zone in March.

Nato air power played a vital role in destroying Gaddafi's fixed-wing aircraft in the early days after the resolution was passed. Later, Nato attacks on his helicopters helped to level the pitch and make it easier for the rebels to pursue their advance. Although the rebels often complained that Nato was not doing enough, it is clear that without Nato they would have been able to do very little at all.

The supply of radios and other communication equipment from Nato over the spring and summer was vital and in the past few weeks British, French and other special forces have been on the ground in Libya, helping the rebels to co-ordinate the various anti-Gaddafi fronts and providing intelligence to Nato helicopter pilots and the alliance's other target selectors.

It is an almost exact repetition of the way US aircraft and missiles enabled the Northern Alliance warlords to capture Kabul from the Taliban a decade ago. Three weeks later, with the help of US special forces as well as massive bombing, Hamid Karzai and other anti-Taliban commanders entered Kandahar, Afghanistan's second city.

Thanks to its crucial role in tipping the military scales in Libya, Nato and the rebels are inextricably linked. Gaddafi had few supporters in the Arab world but there is a justified perception on the Arab street that the rebels are over-reliant on western support and that the overriding western motive is access to Libya's oil. Hence the rebels' attempt to distance themselves by calling for Nato to leave now.

Even among the nine states of the 22-member Arab League that voted in March to support a no-fly zone (the rest were absent or voted against), discontent with Nato's stretching of the UN resolution had become visible. For the same reason the Syrian opposition is adamant that it does not want foreign military support in its struggle against the Assad regime.

The best revolutions are homegrown as they were in Tunisia and Egypt. Those who took to the streets in Tunis and Cairo's Tahrir square wanted to regain their country's national dignity after decades of seeing their rulers doing the bidding of France and the United States.

The new rulers in Libya face a long road ahead in establishing their legitimacy on the Arab and African stage. The west will repeatedly insist, as Barack Obama said on Sunday night, that Libya's future is in Libyan hands. Nato cannot be expected to micro-manage every detail of the post-Gaddafi arrangements, and the rebels' political leadership in the National Transitional Council will not allow it anyway. But Nato cannot pretend it has no responsibility for the way its allies behave.

The risk of score-settling and unjustified reprisals against members of Gaddafi's tribe will be high. They may also be excluded unfairly from the new dispensation as it moves towards a decent constitution and elections.

So far the rebels' actions have been correct and balanced. They have not tortured or assassinated Gaddafi's two captured sons. Calling on their own supporters to show restraint, their leaders are pledging that the new regime will be inclusive.

The real test will come in the next few weeks, when the international spotlight is off. The experience of post-Taliban Afghanistan is not encouraging. Succumbing to triumphalism and impatience, a new administration was put in place which marginalised large parts of the Pashtun population of the south and restored warlords in power in Kabul, thereby undermining the value of the expensively organised but easily manipulated new electoral system. The Taliban soon found it had a fertile soil on which to reorganise.

Libya's ethnic makeup is obviously different, but the fact remains that it is a disparate country with significant tribal differences which has never had a central government that commanded much respect. Reconciliation must be the key value in the forthcoming transition. In July, General Abdel Fattah Younes, who spent years in Gaddafi's inner circle before defecting to become the military chief in the rebel National Transitional Council, was murdered by other rebels. It was not a good omen.

Even as Tripoli and Benghazi celebrate today, it is vital that the world does not lose interest in the weeks ahead. If things go wrong, Nato will share the blame.