Death of dictator brightens light at end of Arab tunnel

However, the photographs of his corpse quickly tempered that exhilaration with a reminder of the many still-unresolved conflicts that the Arab Spring has also unleashed.

“This isn’t justice,” Mustafa Haid, 32, a Syrian activist, said as he watched Al Jazeera’s broadcast in a Beirut office.

Gaddafi should have been put on trial, his crimes investigated, Libya reconciled to trust in the law, he said, as though he still hoped for better from the regional uprising that began with peaceful displays in Tunis and Cairo.

Across the region, Gaddafi’s bloody end has brought home the growing awareness of the challenges that lie ahead: the balancing of vengeance against justice, impatience for jobs against the slow pace of economic recovery, fidelity to Islam against tolerance for minorities, and the need for stability against the drive to tear down the pillars of old governments.

“For all of us, it is a hard road, because our battle is against ourselves,” said Ahmed Ounaies, a former Tunisian ambassador who served briefly as minister of foreign affairs after the removal of president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

“We have to listen to our values, our aspirations, our present, against all the past that we have lived. It is a hard test, and success is not assured.”

Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said that Gaddafi’s death sent a “huge signal” to others in the region that the sins of “grotesque dictators” catch up with them.

Libya’s path is, in many ways, the most tortuous of those of the North African revolutions.

When Gaddafi gained power 42 years ago, Libya was divided among three loosely confederated provinces and dozens of insular tribes.

He forged Libya into a single nation. He did not build any national institutions; he insisted that Libya was a direct democracy of people’s committees with no need for a government – that might challenge his power.

Even after he fled from Tripoli, the quest to capture him served as a glue holding together the loose confederation of local brigades that toppled his government.

The provisional government in Benghazi, unable to resolve a contest among various power centres over government positions, put off a promised reshuffling until after the capture of Gaddafi’s last stronghold and hideout, Sirte, which means they are due to resume that work now.

Tunisia, poised to hold its first free elections tomorrow, may be the Arab state best positioned for a successful transition to a liberal democracy.

Among factors in its favour are its relatively small, homogenous population of about 12 million, comparatively high levels of education, a large middle class, an apolitical military, a moderate Islamist movement and a long history of a unified national identity. However, with the removal of Ben Ali’s strong hand, the Tunisian elite has been bitterly divided by many of the questions soon to confront Libya, especially the role of Islam in their new society, law and government.

Nor have Tunisia or Egypt resolved the frustrations of jobless youths who enlisted in the revolts for reasons of bread and butter, not civil liberties.

In the hard-pressed southern Tunisian town of Kasserine, for example, many say that they are so disillusioned with the lack of change – lack of jobs – since the revolution that they no longer plan to vote.

“They want me to vote so they can get a seat?” said Mabrouka Nbarki, 43, whose 17-year-old son was one of the dozens of young people killed in Kasserine during the revolt.

“Why would I vote?” she said. “There is no point.”

Egypt, in addition to far greater poverty, is also wrestling with deep sectarian tensions. Its Islamist movement is divided among factions eager to incorporate Islamic moral codes into the civil law and others committed to liberal tolerance. The open debate over the country’s future has added to tensions with its Coptic Christian minority, which makes up about 10 per cent of the population.

Some in the region now say they hope that the success of the Libyan insurrection without the aid of an institution like the Egyptian military, and by force of arms rather than moral persuasion, could reinvigorate activists in violent struggles elsewhere, especially Syria and Yemen.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Yemen, with its weak state, splintered national army and strong tribal affiliations, may be the region’s closest analogy to Libya – without oil, said Paul Sullivan, a political scientist from Georgetown University in Washington.

“The brutality of the Assad regime in Syria and the Saleh regime in Yemen is still being felt,” he said. “With the demise of Gaddafi, the light at the end of the tunnel is a lot less dim.”

Or, he added, Libya may yet follow Yemen to chaos.

Still, Mr Ounaies, the former Tunisian ambassador, argued that in some ways Gaddafi’s government had prepared the Libyan people to avoid that fate.

“Now they are very well-trained not to accept the rule of one unique leader or party,” he said.