BAYDA, Libya — The signs in Bayda still read the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab State of the Masses. It was never much of a state, nor did the people have much say. Now two weeks after its liberation, residents of this highland town have the task of making it so, a challenge that may prove pivotal to the course of Libya’s revolt.
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The rebellion here has proven far more violent, chaotic and unpredictable than the uprisings in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia, some of the consequences of an utterly unrepentant leader and a lot of men with a lot of guns.
Far from the front, in mood and reality, Bayda, an eastern city that was one of the first to embrace the anti-Qaddafi revolution, has now also embraced the work of what might follow: building a state on a landscape riven by divisions of tribe, piety and class in a country whose leader spent four decades in power dismantling anything that might contest his rule.
The new police chief has less than a third of his officers and worries vigilantes might not surrender their weapons. He has no prison. Hundreds have volunteered for work, but on Sunday, many sat under a tent watching the news channelAl Jazeera. With revolutionary fervor, and a resurgence of pride in running their own lives, residents have set up a slew of committees to impose order, distribute charity and run schools, but even its own members admit they have more enthusiasm than experience.
That it has gone as well as it has is testament to the strength of the society in a place like Bayda, where Col.Moammar Qaddafi conquered but could not divide.
“Our task isn’t easy,” said Mahmoud Bousalloum, a graduate student and one of the committees’ organizers. “We don’t have parties, we don’t have a constitution, we don’t have political organizations, we don’t have an effective civil society. We have to create a completely new state and we have to do it in the middle of a war and revolution.”
A city of roughly 250,000, Bayda spills across a plateau in northeast Libya called the Green Mountain, which takes its name from the pine, juniper and wild olives that are native here. It was one of the first cities to fall after two youths were killed in a clash on Feb. 16, and the graffiti of the moment still washes over walls and government buildings.
The slogans borrow from the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, but are more personal. There is no call for the overthrow of the government; only Colonel Qaddafi is mentioned, as lackey, tyrant and the man with really bad hair. The graffiti also hints at the anxiety in a city where tribal elders still hold sway and religious currents have cultivated a following.
“No to destruction and violence, no to corruption and tribalism,” reads one. “There’s no difference between East and West, we’re all Libyan,” intones another.
For decades, Bayda was run by the pretenses of Colonel Qaddafi’s Green Book, his supposed blueprint for a revolutionary state. There were Popular Committees that carried out the orders of the Popular Conference, but as Tawfiq Bughrara, a cleric here put it, “The head of it didn’t have the power to pick up a glass and set it back down.”
In reality, power was exercised by the security forces — internal security, external security and military intelligence — along with a more traditional police agency known as the security directorate. The loathed and feared head of internal security was Ali Saad al-Majaab, who residents say sought protection from his tribe soon after the uprising began.
Then there was Colonel Qaddafi’s second wife, Safiya Farqash, who was born in Bayda and whose family, from the city’s largest tribe, Birasa, acted as mediators between the city and the colonel himself. Her uncle, Jarah, long ran Bayda’s sole army battalion.
“No one in charge did anything without their permission,” Mr. Bughrara said.
At the height of Egypt’s uprising, Cairo exploded in fervor as popular committees sprung up to police neighborhoods and volunteers picked up trash and painted fences. It was largely symbolic, since the Egyptian military and bureaucracy remained intact. There was never that much bureaucracy in Bayda, where residents had to travel 750 miles to the capital Tripoli for something as simple as a housing loan or a business permit.
Days after authority collapsed, residents set up a local council. They said they avoided terms like popular and revolutionary because they smacked of Colonel Qaddafi’s statements. Of its six members, one is from a group called the Youth of February 17, the date people have given the uprising here. Two others are Muslim clerics, one a professor of agriculture and another a businessman. It is led by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, a former justice minister from Bayda touted as a transitional leader who is now in Benghazi.
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