1 Year

Tomorrow it will be 1 year since "The Day of Rage", a memorable day with demonstrations against the government in Libya. In the week leading to it there was a lot of talk about it between expats and I checked the stories with my Libyan friends to find out how much of an impact it would have. Rumour was that Gadhaffi himself (still strange to be able to write his full name and not refer to him as The Leader or Mr. G.) was behind the demonstrations because he wanted change of government anyway and this made him look like one of the people. The fact that demonstrations were allowed suggested it was all orchestrated by The Ruler anyway. Usually busloads of people were dropped at the Green Square and handed banners to "demonstrate", always pro-Gadhaffi of course.

Nobody seemed to sense this was going to become the start of the revolution, but it did. I would love to say: "And the rest is history", but it isn't. It has been the beginning of a long process. Gadhaffi is gone, but Libya is still struggling to find it's way to become a free and democratic society. After more than 40 years of dictatorship, with no freedom of expressing your own opinions, always being scared you would be overheard and thrown into jail (or worse), and a strong tribal influence on society, the whole political infrastructure has to be build from scratch.

The past year has been traumatic for a lot of people that are connected one way or the other to Libya. I know that we were lucky to be able to leave the country just in time and we didn't have to live through a civil war, but even after a year we still are affected by it. It has had a big impact on our lifes.

I am not sure if it is appropriate to say Happy Anniversary to Libya, but I do hope and pray the 17th of February will prove to be the day that things turned out for the better!

Alif Mabrouk Libya!!!