The New York Review Abroad (77 page)

Many of the former militiamen appear as mentally battered as the buildings they fought for in the eight months of bloodshed. “They returned from the front line, from war, to find no one wanted them,” I was told by a psychiatrist who ran a soup kitchen on the front. “They thought they were heroes, and were treated as troublemakers. That’s why they act so boisterously and aggressively. That’s why they say Libya needs another revolution.”

Their capacity for being spoilers is substantial, whether of the electoral process or the system of government. “Revolutionaries have to lead the country of the revolution,” says Hussein bin Ahmed, an oil engineer turned general coordinator for preventative security,
who acted as host for the militias’ congress in his headquarters. In their concluding session, delegates resolved not to hand over weapons “to those who killed us”—that is, the NTC’s formal army, which they see as recruited from old regime forces—and some delegates drew up plans for a united militia to protect the revolution.

Some at least seemed prepared to use force to defend their powers. When the UN’s Ian Martin arrived outside an Interior Ministry office in Benghazi to discuss plans for security sector reform, someone hurled a gelignite stick under his armored car. Two NTC members have been kidnapped for supporting—in view of widespread fraud—the cancellation by the council of handouts for militiamen. On May 8, two hundred militiamen opened fire on the prime minister’s Tripoli office with anti-tank guns, forcing the unfortunate al-Keib to briefly take flight.

Against such pressures, there are signs that the NTC is buckling. It has agreed to establish a Patriotism and Integrity Commission, a star chamber for de-Qaddafization, which will vet all appointments from officials to electoral candidates. Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, a Benghazi lawyer who announced the NTC’s formation in the early days of the uprising, lost his NTC post amid accusations of being an associate of Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam. Some want Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Qaddafi’s justice minister who replaced him, and his first prime minister, Mahmoud Jibreel, another of Seif’s appointees, to suffer a similar fate.

More sober voices caution that the root-and-branch elimination of all remnants of the old civil service and security forces will precipitate the country’s collapse, as happened for some years in Iraq. A poet I met at the Amazigh rally in Tripoli told me, “Everyone blames the vestiges of the old order for their woes, as if they had no association with it. But the truth is we were all complicit. We had to survive.” A Salafi car dealer, who spent years in Qaddafi’s torture
chamber of Bu Salim and has a job in the Interior Ministry, warns of repeating the mistakes of France’s postrevolutionary reign of terror. Quoting an eighteenth-century revolutionary who was subsequently guillotined, he warns, “Like Saturn, the revolution is devouring its children.” And then he adds, “A small country cannot afford such a loss of qualified staff.”

—June 21, 2012

ROBERT B. SILVERS
and the late Barbara Epstein are founding editors of
The New York Review of Books
, which this year celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its first issue in 1963. Before he was a co-founder of
The New York Review
, Mr. Silvers was Paris editor of
The Paris Review
and then associate editor of
Harper’s
magazine. In 2006, together with co-editor Barbara Epstein, Mr. Silvers was recognized by the National Book Foundation with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. In 2012 he was awarded an inaugural New York City Literary Honor by Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his contributions to the literary life of the city. He has edited several books for
The New York Review
.

CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUE
has written widely on political developments in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Among his books are
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, Rebel’s Land: Among Turkey’s Forgotten People
, and
The Struggle for Iran
.

MISCHA BERLINSKI
lives in Rome. His first novel,
Fieldwork
, was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award.

CAROLINE BLACKWOOD
(1931–1996) was an Anglo-Irish writer. Among her books are the novels
Great Granny Webster
and
Corrigan; On the Perimeter
, an account of the women’s anti-nuclear protest at Greenham Common; and
The Last of the Duchess
, about the final years of the Duchess of Windsor.

IAN BURUMA
is the Henry R. Luce Professor at Bard College. Educated in Japan and the Netherlands, Buruma has written extensively on East Asian literature and history and, more recently, on globalization. His books include
Murderer in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents
, and the novel
The China Lover
.

MARK DANNER
is an American journalist and scholar of American foreign policy. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bard College. Danner’s books include
The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War; Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War
; and
Torture and Truth
(New York Review Books).

JOAN DIDION
is an American novelist and critic. She has received the National Book Award and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Among Didion’s novels are
Play It As It Lays
and
A Book of Common Prayer
; her nonfiction works include
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Miami, The Year of Magical Thinking
, and
Blue Nights
.

ROSEMARY DINNAGE
is a British essayist, playwright, and literary critic. Her books include
One to One: Experiences of Psychotherapy, Annie Besant, Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women
, and the one-act play
The Ruffian on the Stair
.

AMOS ELON
(1926–2009) was an Israeli journalist, historian, and essayist. Born in Vienna, he emigrated in 1933 to Palestine; he devoted much of his career to the history of European Jewry and of Zionism. His final book was
The Pity of It All: A Portrait of Jews in Germany, 1743–1933
.

HELEN EPSTEIN
is an American writer and scholar of public health. She has devoted much of her career to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the developing world.
The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa
recounts her experiences as a medical researcher in Uganda in the early 1990s.

JONATHAN FREEDLAND
is a British journalist. He writes a weekly column for
The Guardian
and a monthly article for
The Jewish Chronicle
. Freedland is the author of
Bring Home the Revolution: How Britain Can Live the American Dream
and
Jacob’s Gift
, as well as numerous best-selling thrillers published under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
is Professor of European Studies and Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Among his books are
The Magic Lantern
, an eyewitness account of the velvet revolutions of 1989, and
Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name
.

NADINE GORDIMER
is a South African writer and political activist. An unwavering critic of racial and economic injustice in her homeland, Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. Her novels include
Burger’s Daughter, The Conservationist
, and
No Time Like the Present
.

ALMA GUILLERMOPRIETO
is a Mexican journalist. She has written extensively on Latin American culture and politics for
The New Yorker
and
The New York Review of Books
. In 2001 Guillermoprieto received a George Polk Award for the anthology
Looking for History
. Among her other books are
Samba
, an account of her time at a samba school in Rio de Janeiro, and
Dancing with Cuba
, a memoir of a year spent in Cuba.

ELIZABETH HARDWICK
(1916–2007) was a literary critic and co-founder of
The New York Review of Books
. Among her works are
Sight-Readings, American Fictions, Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays, Seduction and Betrayal, Herman Melville
, and the novel
Sleepless Nights
.

NATALYA VIKTOROVNA HESSE
was a longstanding friend of Elena Bonner and Andrei Sakharov. Before emigrating to the United States in 1984, she visited Bonner in Moscow and Sakharov under house arrest in Gorky.

TIM JUDAH
is a British journalist. He reports on the Balkans for
The Economist
. Judah is the author of numerous books about the region, including
The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia
and
Kosovo: War and Revenge
.

RYSZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI
(1932–2007) was a Polish essayist, journalist, and poet. Among his translated works are
The Soccer War, The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, Travels with Herodotus
, and
Shah of Shahs
.

AVISHAI MARGALIT
is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books include
The Decent Society
and
On Compromise and Rotten Compromises
.

MARY MCCARTHY
(1912–1989) was the author of the novels
The Group, The Groves of Academe
, and
Birds of America
; among her nonfiction books are
Venice Observed, The Stones of Florence, Vietnam
, and the autobiographies
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
and
How I Grew. A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays
, a collection of her literary, cultural, and political writings, was published in 2002 by New York Review Books.

V. S. NAIPAUL
was born in Trinidad in 1932 and emigrated to England in 1950, after winning a scholarship to University College, Oxford. Among his novels are
A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River
, and
In a Free State
. Naipaul has also written several nonfiction works based on his travels, including
India: A Million Mutinies Now
and
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
. He was knighted in 1990 and in 2001 received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

NICOLAS PELHAM
has reported on the Arab world for twenty years and currently writes for
The Economist
. He has lived in, among other cities, Damascus, Cairo, Rabat, and Baghdad. He recently wrote a report about Sinai for the Royal Institute for International Affairs entitled “The Collapse of a Regional Buffer.”

JERZY POPIEŁUSZKO
(1947–1984) was a Roman Catholic priest and political activist. An outspoken champion of the Solidarity movement, he was murdered in 1984 by agents of the Polish Communist government. More than 250,000 people attended his funeral. Popieluszko was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.

YASMINE EL RASHIDI
is an Egyptian journalist and editor. She is a contributing editor of
Bidoun
, a quarterly on Middle Eastern arts and culture. Her book
The Battle for Egypt: Dispatches from the Revolution
recounts her time in Cairo during the Arab Spring.

WILLIAM SHAWCROSS
is a British writer and political essayist. His 1979 study
Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia
was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Shawcross’s other books include
The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience
and
The Shah’s Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally
.

SUSAN SONTAG
(1933–2004) was an American critic, essayist, novelist, film and theater director, and human rights activist. Her work addressed subjects ranging from camp, pornography, and fascist aesthetics to AIDS and photography. Her books include
Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others
, and the novels
The Volcano Lover
and
In America
.

STEPHEN SPENDER
(1909–1995) was an English poet and essayist. As a young man, he befriended W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Christopher Isherwood, a loose gathering often referred to as “the Auden Group” or “MacSpaunday.” Spender published many collections of poetry, including
The Still Centre
and
Ruins and Visions
, in addition to volumes of literary criticism and autobiography.

VLADIMIR TOLZ
is a Russian journalist and regular contributor to Radio Free Europe.

KANG ZHENGGUO
is a Chinese scholar and poet. He is the author of
Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China
.