Qadhafi on the run: Now what?

It appears Libya is close to falling to the anti-regime rebels, with much of Tripoli now under their control and leader Muammar Qadhafi reportedly having fled the capital.

With the rebels—or, more accurately, the Libyan mujahideen, as one realist calls them—having met comparatively little resistance as they swept through Tripoli, some are warning that Qadhafi loyalists may resort to guerrilla warfare. Most, however, concede that he is gone.

But what exactly does the fall of Qadhafi mean?

One blogger wrote on Monday,

Should we celebrate? Is it really the birth of a new democracy in the Arab world as some seem to think? Or is it merely the removal—with a lot of help from nato—of an evil regime to be replaced by another whose quality is dubious to put it mildly? Do we really trust the leader of the Transitional National Council (tnc), Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who before Qadhafi named him minister of Justice in 2007 was the president of a higher court that twice confirmed the death sentence of the Bulgarian nurses who were accused of poisoning Libyan children with hiv? Or must we put our trust in a council that contains monarchists, former Qadhafi trustees, Islamists and of which 18 of its 31 members are not even known, because they live in territory that till yesterday was still in Qadhafi-held territory?

A report that a French commission of inquiry issued in May indicated that the West was on the side of Islamic terrorists in Libya. The report concluded that jihadists have played a predominant role in the Libyan rebellion, and that “true democrats” represent only a minority.

The report revealed that the Libyan National Transitional Council (ntc) is comprised of four factions: “true democrats,” which are a minority; partisans of a restoration of the monarchy that was overthrown by Qadhafi in 1969; Islamic extremists seeking the establishment of an Islamic state; and former figures in the Qadhafi regime who defected for opportunistic or other reasons. Many of the monarchists are also Islamists. The president of the ntc is a “traditionalist” who is “supported by the Islamists,” according to the authors of the report.

The al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group is the “main pillar of the armed insurrection,” the report said. “Thus the military coalition under nato leadership is supporting a rebellion that includes Islamic terrorists,” the authors wrote. “No one can deny that the Libyan rebels who are today supported by Washington were only yesterday jihadists killing American GIs in Iraq.”

Victor Davis Hanson writes that things will now get interesting:

As for outcomes, there are many scenarios, but these two may be the most likely: either a sort of on-again-off-again chaos until a military-backed clique or strongman emerges and the same old cycle resumes, or some sort of constitutional system in a decidedly Islamic context, analogous to the Turkish model. In the latter case, we could expect the new state’s foreign policy to be anti-Western, friendly to China and Russia, virulently and actively anti-Israel, and more accommodating with Iran and its subsidized terrorist appendages.

Daniel Pipes fears that Western forces may have “brought civilization’s worst enemies to power”:

Many are ready to party about the political demise of the hated, eccentric, and foul Muammar Qadhafi as rebel troops move into Tripoli. I am not partying. Here’s why not.The nato intervention in March 2011 was done without due diligence as to who it was in Benghazi that it was helping. To this day, their identity is a mystery. Chances are good that Islamist forces are hiding behind more benign elements, waiting for the right moment to pounce, as roughly happened in Iran in 1978–79, when Islamists did not make clear their strength nor their program until the shah was well disposed of. Should that be the case in Libya today, then the miserable Qadhafi will prove to be better than his successors for both the Libyan subjects of tyranny and the West.

It appears the military campaign in Libya may well facilitate that country falling to Islamists and into the Iranian orbit—an outcome prophesied by the Prophet Daniel. As editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in May, an Islamic takeover of Libya “is imminent.”