The “dust has yet to settle on the streets of Tripoli”, but a lengthy wish list is already being drawn up by British commentators for the new Libyan authorities, says Malcolm Rifkind in The Daily Telegraph. It includes the return of the Lockerbie bomber; the assurance that Gaddafi will be sent to the International Criminal Court; that the killers of WPC Yvonne Fletcher will be brought to justice and that British companies will get a “juicy share” of future contracts.
These demands are “grossly premature” and the last is unacceptable. The Libyans’ priorities are clean water, food and medical supplies. After that come stable government, security and an independent judiciary. That a European neighbour develops a stable, friendly government should be reward enough.
And that opportunity now exists, says The Observer. Libya is the 17th-biggest nation in the world and has a population smaller than that of Switzerland. “It has oil and the riches that, properly shared, may make it a leader in African development.” There is the “lingering Gaddafi menace”, tribal tensions and the possibility of anarchy now the old brute forces of law and order are gone, but there is also hope.
The effect of events in Libya should not be underestimated, says Robert Kagan in The Washington Post. Had Gaddafi triumphed, it would have sent a “terrible signal” to countries across the region. As it is, of the best-known dynasties – Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Assads in Syria, the Husseins in Jordan, the Saudi royal family – four have fallen. “Of those that remain, some may be wise and nimble enough to respond to popular demands. Those who don’t will ultimately fall.”
Call me pessimistic, but I wouldn’t be so sure, says Sir Andrew Green, former British ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia, in The Daily Telegraph. The destruction of regimes – or shaking them to their foundations – has left many populations wondering how to put their shattered lives back together. What will replace dictatorship in Libya? This is a revenge culture and many people “have every reason to seek it”. There is a “serious risk of chaos”, and it may spread.
Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad is certainly not about to “meekly hand over power” to “democratic forces”. Syria, like most other countries in the region, is a society made up of myriad ethnic and religious communities held together using traditional brute force. As a result many Syrians are fearful of what might happen if the regime were to fall. If it does, there is a danger that the Muslim Brotherhood may emerge to be the prime opposition, an “unwelcome eventuality”.
The best way to “inoculate populations against Islamism” is democracy, says Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph. The peace and stability of the world depends on spreading democratic government where it is longed for. We were right to intervene, and we “cannot consign whole countries to the Middle Ages”. If the West stands back and does nothing, it will “put itself on the wrong side of history”.