When Colonel Muammar Gaddafi decided to run away and hide in his hometown, Sirt, his aim was not to get reconciled with the tribe that had had its share from the injustice of his power, which recognized no laws, traditions, or ethics. He rather aimed to ignite a tribal fanaticism that would lead to a confrontation between the remnants of the ousted regime and the values of the modern state. Before the world could witness the end of the regime and the end of the ruler, Gaddafi could have taken advantage of several exits that would have secured his departure, just like any dictator abandoning his people. Many have said that he had no authority and was unable to take his own decisions. He could have given his affiliates the chance to decide their own fate, and he could have thus relieved himself and the others. However, like any symbolic figure, he could not bear wisdom or criticism. Thus, he imagined that one must be loyal to individuals rather than to principles, regardless of whether these individuals deviated off the right road or messed with their responsibilities. This is beyond the mere action of a fugitive escaping justice or his conscience; it is an attempt at reviving a very extreme tribal fanaticism. Ever since the launching of the February 17 revolution, this point of view has prevailed over the actions of Colonel Gaddafi who kept hiding behind a divisive tendency that split the country according to what he considered as a loyalty to his regime. It is indeed a paradox that the man who kept people busy with his failed unitary experiences, has turned into the number one opponent of the unitary dimension in his country just because the revolution broke from the extreme east in Benghazi all the way to the west, the south and everywhere. The reason for that is that he was so mesmerized by power and he did not want to remain the ruler of a square extending over a few kilometers, even if his country had to be exposed to the highest levels of division. He was seeking power and authority and he distributed that power to his family members instead of distributing it in an expert, balanced, and legal manner. Before the collapse of his regime, Gaddafi revoked the concept of the national unity and tried to replace it with a new kind of non-religious sectarianism, the sectarianism of loyalty to the regime. But when he failed to do that, he brought in non-Libyans to fight for him. This implies that he did not consider his people as tools for sovereignty but rather as groups on which he can impose the conditions of loyalty or take them away if these groups were to reject his tutelage. According to him, there is nothing wrong in bringing in a different “population” that knows nothing but the authority of the colonel and his beyond-the-imagination madness. This was nothing new for the author of the Green Book. The man who once asked the Libyans to dye their faces in black in order to turn African – this was his definition of African affiliation – was in reality fleeing from his country's Arab and Islamic affiliation. And when his excesses did not help him in finding a spot within the Arab League, he threw himself in the arms of the African delusion as “Africa's King of the Kings.” As he denied the Arab affiliation and the components of the state's unity through its natural borders, as well as the state's unity with its homogenous entities, Gaddafi was personifying the highest degrees of fanaticism: a fanaticism that is always connected to the loyalty to people, the use of violence, rejecting dialogue, and abiding by obsolete and rejected values. Similarly, other rulers tend to use religious and social fanaticism in order to control their people especially when they link stability to the rule of some specific individuals or sects. This implies that the Gaddafi experience is due to the lack of democracy, which allows for the appearance of practices and ideas that aim at decreasing the people's awareness and their aspiration for change. Tribes do not rime with co-existence and evolution according to the rules of the present day and age. It is wrong to imagine that any tribal or sectarian regime is capable of surviving without a peaceful transfer of power and without relying on the values of good governance. The problem of some rulers is that they work on creating social sedition in order to imply that, without them, there will be chaos, sedition, and killings. These concepts are very close to tyranny and the current Arab revolutions are directed against tyranny and not against the tribes and their social components. One must conclude that the bet made by Gaddafi in the period extending between the end of the regime and the end of the man must be put aside. Indeed, some wounds lead to others, just like wars and crises. The Libyan revolution must smoothly move to the era of the state under the prevalence of the law, the concepts of pluralism, dialogue, and tolerance. Indeed, the people of Sirt and other tribes are Libyans first and they are dreaming of a better future that will unite them under the dome of harmony, reconciliation, and the democratic will of the people. The latter must be reflected through the voting ballots in a way that makes no distinctions except in the selection of ideas and men.
