Welcome to our racist 'democracy'
The African Union (AU) will not recognize the TNC; in fact, it charges the NATO rebels of indiscriminate killing of black Africans, all bundled up as "mercenaries".
According to the AU's Jean Ping, " ... the TNC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries ... [They seem to think] all blacks are mercenaries. If you do that it means one-third of the population of Libya which is black is also mercenaries."
The small port of Sayad, 25 kilometers west of Tripoli, has become a refugee camp for black Africans terrified of "free Libya". Doctors Without Borders found out about the camp on August 27. Refugees say that since February they started to be expelled by the owners of the businesses they were working in, accused of being mercenaries - and they have been harassed ever since.
According to rebel mythology, the Muammar Gaddafi regime was essentially protected by murtazaka ("mercenaries"). The reality is that Gaddafi did employ a contingent of black African fighters - from Chad, Sudan and Tuaregs from Niger and Mali. The majority of black Sub-Saharan Africans in Libya are migrant workers holding legal jobs.
To see where this thing is going, one has to look at the desert. The immense southern Libyan desert was not conquered by NATO. The TNC has no access to virtually all of Libya's water and a lot of oil.
Gaddafi has a chance of "working the desert", of negotiating with a number of tribes, to buy or consolidate their allegiance and organize a sustained guerrilla war.
Algeria is involved in a vicious fight against al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Algeria's vast, porous, 1,000 kilometer-long border with Libya remains open. Gaddafi can easily base his guerrillas in the southern desert with a safe haven in Algeria - or even in Niger. The TNC is already terrified of this possibility.
NATO's "humanitarian" operation has unleashed at least 30,000 bombs over Libya over these past few months. It's safe to say that many thousands of Libyans have been killed by the bombing. The bombing never stops; soon NATO may be targeting some of those - civilians or not - it was in theory "protecting" until a few days ago.
A defeated Big G can reveal himself to be even more dangerous than a Big G in power. The real war starts now. It will be infinitely more dramatic - and tragic. Because now it will be a Darwinian, northern African, war of all against all.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).