Andrew Hammond: Libya Risks Extremism if the War Drags On!

A protracted struggle for Libya could leave it in the hands of extremists instead of the liberal economic technocrats who now lead its rebel movement, the World Bank's representative for Libya said on Thursday: "If this civil war goes on, it would be a new Somalia, which I don't say lightly," said Marouane Abassi, World Bank country manager for Libya, who has been in Tunisia since February. "In three months, we could be dealing with extremists. That's why time is very important in this conflict, before we face problems in managing it." Abassi, who is Tunisian, said the World Bank had been working with Libya since 2006 on plans for economic reforms led by leader Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, although many of those reform plans were scuppered by Gaddafi. He described some of the leaders of the rebel "Transitional National Council" as among those most strongly associated with economic reform plans. "We know them, we did good work with them," Abassi said, citing Ali Issawi, a former economy minister and ambassador, and Mahmoud Jebril, who resigned from a state economic think-tank after Gaddafi overruled his suggestion for liberalizing the economy. "These guys tried inside Gaddafi's government. In 2009, Gaddafi stopped the connection between us and them," said Abassi. Nevertheless, parts of Gaddafi's government and local councils were still seeking World Bank advice up to February, when pro-democracy protests broke out, he said. "In the last two years it was a battle between reformists and the old guard, but even the last minister of economy who was against us accepted the rules of the game," he said.