Quote Originally Posted by TDB View Post
I'm really curious to see what the civil order situation is like Tripoli. Having studied at length policing post-conflict cities (Alice Hills), I'm interested to see if a natural form of order has emerged. People not looting stores etc, the looting seems to be confined to buildings owned by the regime unlike in Baghdad. I'm sure if such looting was going on the media would have seized upon it just to shove it in the face of the international community and say "YOU'VE DONE IT AGAIN!". So again unlike in Baghdad, people do not seem to be running amok after years of oppresion, perhaps because the fighting is still ongoing. Or is it just that people have a common understand along the lines of "we nearly have freedom, lets not ruin it". I know they were asking police to return to their jobs, as they did in Baghdad in 2003. These after all are the best people for it, with a little bit of SSR they should be ready to roll. I'm not really versed in the tribal schisms of Lybia, does anyone know if they run as deep as in say Afghanistan?
There has been a great deal of spontaneous community organization in Libya, which has offset much of the institutional disorganization (or even lack of institutions, which was a hallmark of Qadaffi's rule). There is also a widespread sense of 'ownership" of the revolution by the people themselves--a sharp contrast to US regime change in Iraq. Most of the "looting" has involved carting off souvenirs from Qaddafi palaces or regime security installations.

In Benghazi, I was struck by 1) how little formal SSR had been undertaken, although by that point the NTC had been in control for 5 months--most of the policing was still volunteer; 2) how well it worked--the place seemed considerably safer than a great many non-conflict cities.

Unlike Egypt (or even Iraq), the regular civil police do not seem to have been associated in the popular mind with domestic repression, which undoubtedly will help in reconstituting them.