@bnnNEWSLIVEWAR IN LIBYA
ANALYSIS | After the revolution, Libya's challenges - CBC.cagoo.gl/fb/6jDv4 #libya
When they heard the loud booms of the explosions, they would hide. The sound of machine guns sent them running into their parents' arms. For months, the young boys and girls of Homs — front and centre in Libya's hard-won liberation — lived in fear.
That was then. On Sunday, these same young people clapped and screamed in delight as the sounds of explosions, this time fireworks, filled the air.
Over the next years and decades, they will be the ones to help transform Libya from dictatorship to democracy.
Mansoor Jarrai, 17, stopped going to school back when the civil war started in February. Now, he says, "we will help rebuild our country so as we grow older it will be a country we are proud of."
He also says he wants to go to university and study engineering, which, given the amount of destruction during the eight months of fighting, seems like a viable career choice.
Homs is about an hours drive west of Misrata, the city that was arguably hardest hit during the conflict.
Face painting the colours of the revolution at Tripoli University on 'Liberation Day.' The future is in their hands, these students say. (Derek Stoffel/CBC)Forces loyal to the now-dead dictator Moammar Gadhafi went street by street, building by building, to try to wrest Misrata from rebel control this past spring.
The battles were intense and charred tanks still sit on Tripoli St., Misrata's main drag.
Almost every building on the road bear the scars of war — huge holes blown through living room walls by artillery shells, and blackened concrete caused by the ensuing fires.
Conservative estimates by human rights organizations put the number of dead in Misrata at 2,000. Everyone here, it seems, knows someone who was killed in the war.
From the rubble
On my first visit to Misrata in August, an architect-turned-rebel fighter told me that it would take up to 10 years to rebuild this city. As we spoke, workers from an international aid agency were pouring through the rubble checking for unexploded ordnance.
But Misrata is not alone in this predicament. In almost every city and town, there is destruction.
Several neighbourhoods in Tripoli will likely need to be bulldozed before they can be rebuilt. Many Libyan families, forced from their homes, now live with relatives and friends, or have left the country until the situation improves.
Driving out of Libya, I saw many people still in the makeshift refugee camps set up in Tunisia. It will be months, if not years, before they will have new homes.
Transitional council
Rebuilding Libya's institutions will take time as well.
The National Transitional Council, the interim authority in Libya, has started work on getting the government ministries running again.
In war-ravaged Misrata, liberated Libyans look on at the weapons the pro-Gadhafi forces used in their assault on the city last spring. (Derek Stoffel/CBC)Bureaucrats, who went without pay cheques for most of the eight-months-long revolution, are again being paid.
Banks are open again, too, while businesses and shops are slowly returning to normal.
Oil production, vital to the country's economy, is now at 500,000 barrels a day, according to Ali Tarhouni, the minister of finance in the interim government. That is about a third of what it was before the fighting started.
Still, the real challenge in Libya will be to give people here proof that their lives, post-revolution, are improving.
Talk to anyone on the street, and much of the anger the Gadhafi regime centred on the fact that Libya, because of its oil wealth, is considered one of the better off countries in the region. Yet, little of that wealth trickled down to the average Libyan.
People here seem to be willing to give the interim government some time to make things right, but they will not likely be patient forever.
"We got rid of Gadhafi and the corruption of those around him," said Bashir Bouzede, an engineer. "But these men running the government are not immune to corruption. We must keep close watch."
Starting fresh
With the fighting now over, the situation in Tripoli's hospitals has calmed to controlled chaos.
The doctors and nurses here are understaffed and overworked, and lack proper equipment, such as MRI machines. When I visited one of the main hospitals in August, patients were in beds out in the hallways.
The poor medical system here is one reason so many Libyans look for care outside their own borders, mostly in neighbouring Tunisia.
On one trip here during the fighting, I ended up finding a young Libyan doctor to work with me as a translator. The system wasn't able to properly schedule all its doctors, despite the obvious need, so Nassir fell through the cracks.
He was frustrated, but says he will stick it out in Libya, hoping the system improves. Other doctors, however, aren't as patient and are looking for work elsewhere.
Libya's educational institutions need work, too.
"We don't even have a real library here," says Mustafa Taghdi, pointing across the sprawling campus of Tripoli University. "Until the revolution, this school taught mainly propaganda for the government."
Taghdi is one of many Libyans who had been living abroad but who have now come back to help rebuild their homeland.
In his case, he had been living in Mississauga and was teaching engineering at York University in Toronto. His daughters remain in Canada, where they study.
"They get a much better education there," he said. But his goal is to try to change that, so the Libyan students here will have the same advantages as those studying abroad.
Libyans are still celebrating the death of Moammar Gadhafi, the man who ruled over their country and their lives for nearly 42 years. But behind the flag-waving, the singing and the fireworks, there is a tacit recognition of the hard work ahead.
"It will not be easy," a man told me in Tripoli's Martyr's Square a few nights ago. "But we have an advantage. We ripped the head off the entire regime here and got rid of it. That means we can start fresh."
