20110904
Reuters
PARIS (Reuters) - When the officials guiding Libya's post-Gaddafi transition list their most urgent tasks, they talk about supplying water, paying salaries or exporting oil, and then add something quite different -- fostering reconciliation.

The focus on forgiveness might have seemed out of place at meetings in Paris on Thursday and Friday where world leaders and Libya's new administration discussed problems of democracy, investment and the unblocking of Libyan funds held abroad.

But the example of Iraq, which plunged into chaos and bloody strife after the United States-led invasion in 2003, convinced the Libyans planning the transition from dictatorship and war that the country's needs were more than just material.

"You cannot build a country if you don't have reconciliation and forgiveness," said Aref Ali Nayed, head of the stabilisation team of the National Transitional Council (NTC).

"Reconciliation has been a consistent message from our president and prime minister on, down to our religious leaders and local councils," he told Reuters in an interview.

The stabilisation team, about 70 Libyans led by Nayed from Dubai, was so versed in the mistakes following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that they made sure they didn't repeat one of the more shocking -- the looting of Baghdad's main museum.

"I'm happy to report that no museum was looted in Tripoli," said Nayed, stressing the country's cultural heritage had to be protected. "The banks were also safeguarded early on."

WRONG ROAD TO TAKE

In contrast to Iraq, where the U.S. decision to sack all members of Saddam's military and Baath party helped drive men into an armed insurgency, Tripoli will keep almost all Gaddafi-era officials in their posts to ensure continuity.

"Destruction and disbandment is the wrong road to take," said Nayed. "It's better to take a conservative approach, even if it's not perfect, and build on it slowly."

The focus on reconciliation comes naturally to Nayed who, apart from being the head of an information technology company and the new NTC ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, is an Islamic theologian active in interfaith dialogues.

He is a prominent member of the "Common Word" group of Muslim scholars in dialogue with Christian churches, runs a theological think tank in Dubai and teaches Islamic spirituality in a traditional madrasa in his hometown of Tripoli.

Nayed was in Tripoli when the army cracked down on the first protest there in February. He and other Muslim scholars issued a fatwa urging Libyans to oppose Gaddafi and then he left to start organising international aid for the rebels.

"It started with a small team in Dubai," he said, and soon expanded to a network of Libyans abroad. Exiles in Bahrain, London and Geneva drew up plans for the economy while others in Tunisia, Egypt and Malta tracked humanitarian needs.

More exiles in the United States and Britain tackled human rights, education and women's issues, a group in Doha looked after logistics and Libyans in Canada, Germany and elsewhere focused on communications. All, including Nayed, worked without pay.

FOCUS ANGER ON GADDAFI

Within Libya, Muslim scholars and "intellectuals ranging from leftists to Islamists" expanded the planning group, Nayed said. "It was a networking exercise. People joining the network brought in their people," he added.

From his interfaith work, Nayed also tapped colleagues at Cambridge, Yale and Princeton universities to lobby their governments to support the anti-Gaddafi cause.

After the NTC established itself in the western city of Benghazi, the network came under NTC Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, who named Nayed head of the stabilisation team.

The team's 150-page report on Libya's urgent, mid-term and long-term needs is now the blueprint the NTC is implementing.

After 42 years of dictatorship and six months of fighting, the stabilisation team knows calls for reconciliation can only work if the new government also brings justice for victims and their families. "It cannot be cheap forgiveness," Nayed said.

Popular anger also has to be channeled, he said. "The approach has been to focus animosity towards Gaddafi himself and his immediate accomplices, and see even the people who fought us as the victims of Gaddafi rather than criminals."