BENGHAZI, Libya — “One Libya, with Tripoli as its capital” is spray-painted on walls around this rebel city and glides off the tongues of opposition leaders. Moammar Gaddafi will fall in a week, they predict, two at the most, and they’ll build a new country then.
But as weeks stretch into months and progress on the battlefield stalls, this rebel-held area of Libya is settling into its status as a de facto separate state.
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Since the February uprising that ended Gaddafi’s rule here, schools and many businesses have remained closed. But police are back on the streets, hospitals are functioning and shops are slowly reopening. Behind the scenes, opposition leaders are feverishly courting international partners as they work to set up a political and economic system for a period of division that some quietly admit may stretch on indefinitely.
A tanker arrived in the rebel-held port of Tobruk on Tuesday to load oil for export, the first time that has happened in nearly three weeks. Although it is unclear whether the rebels will be able to export enough oil to keep the east afloat economically, the tanker’s arrival marked a symbolic step in the rebels’ journey from accidental revolutionaries to governors and statesmen.
Also on Tuesday, rebel leaders for the first time welcomed to Benghazi an official U.S. envoy, who is here both to meet opposition leaders and provide assistance to the fledgling council that runs affairs in the east.
For the United States and other Western powers, the rebel efforts to build the rudiments of a nation in eastern Libya reflect the reality of a military stalemate — one in which NATO could be ensnared for months or more.
“We don’t like it, we don’t want it, but this scenario might happen,” said Fathi Baja, the rebels’ head of international affairs.
When the uprising began, “people didn’t have a slight idea of what they wanted to do, other than that they knew they wanted Gaddafi to go,” Baja said. “Now, as we start to create some political entities here and there, and we try to start some economic life and create an army, we find ourselves in another stage, and we understand that it might take a little time.”
It is no small task. During nearly 42 years of rule by Gaddafi, economic and political power was entrenched in Tripoli and civil society was virtually nonexistent. The east, which had long been resistant to Gaddafi’s rule, was badly neglected.
“The whole of Libya is living in the Middle Ages,” said opposition spokeswoman Iman Bugaighis, “but especially the east.”
Mustafa Gheriani, an opposition spokesman, said that when Gaddafi’s forces pulled out amid the uprising, “we thought it would be like Egypt — that we have ministries, we have an institution that was running. And we found that there was nothing.”
Now, the Transitional National Council — composed of 31 representatives, nominated by each of the towns in the east — is responsible for creating a political, economic and military infrastructure from scratch, a task complicated by the fact that a war is going on just a couple of hours’ drive away.
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