How Green Square became Martyr Square
As preparations for a post-Gaddafi era are underway, by a just-about triumphant opposition movement, and as celebrations by the Libyan Diaspora are upon us, we find that the 6-month journey to Tripoli has been a long one, full of setbacks, false-hopes, false-starts, and even now false-finishes! Saif al-Islam, declared captured by the Opposition, is now back out on the streets manically ranting about the fight not being over and expressing his disdain for the barely ripened National Transitional Council, showing impunity and delusion, while possibly displaying his 'second' or last wind.
Just as the tone of the whole saga to Tripoli had been elevated or dignified by a note of triumph and gravity by mid-Ramadan - with a bloody and gruelling chapter coming to a sombre finish in Tripoli, the tone has once again descended into a note of farce as that set by the clownish Muammar Gaddafi act this last 6 months. Like father like son. With Saif al-Islam emerging earlier today on the streets of Tripoli in a show of 'I'm still standing', we are reminded of his father's surreal umbrella-appearance, made to deny reports of his fleeing Tripoli earlier in the revolution. The father has found his name in blasting and cursing and disdaining all opposition elements, from NATO to Al Jazeera, to his own people; so the son now leaves us with his own parting shot of 'Tooz' ('blast') the Council.
The well-organized revolutionary National Transitional Council armed with a new flag is striding forward, abroad, and in Libya – meeting foreign diplomats and cutting deals. And the last thing they would want just now is to be not taken seriously for all their noble courageous efforts to get this far. They were neither a professional and trained or supplied army, unlike say the American army who conquered Baghdad in 2003. Instead, they were an amateurish collective of people volunteering to free their country from the Gaddafi grip that was choking them this last 40 years.
They rose up from nowhere, and, from several-times-the throes of defeat at Benghazi, to returning and mobilizing, to just-about running a regime. Here is the story of the Libyan people's Revolution, 2011: A plot in pictures of the sequence of events leading to the Tripoli of Today, swarming with new Libyan flags and an overwhelming desire to be rid of this stubborn man, who will not budge from a Libya that is fighting for a clean future, free of this old guard of almost 42 years.
Moreover, the fact that, as today's news testifies, they didn’t kill Saif il Islam, reveals they are constructively trying to keep up their negotiations with many groups and fronts in order to operate sustainably for a brighter future.
