The end, that is, of the Libyan regime, is, or rather seems, near.
The latest news from the region says that towns quite near to Tripoli have now suddenly changed hands. One day they were under the Gaddafi soldiers, then, the Gaddafi soldiers seem to have disintegrated into thin air, and the opposition forces made their way in.
In the East, the Benghazi National Front seems every day to have consolidated its hold and there have not been any attacks over the past weeks.
The frontline somewhere near Brega has however remained rather static.
The city of Misurata, Libya’s third city, is now recovering from the terrible siege it endured for weeks at a huge cost in human lives. There is still some fighting on the outskirts, but mainly the city is quiet now.
Reinforcements are flooding to the west with Tripoli as their destination as more and more recruits are trained in Benghazi. More arms are coming, it was said.
The Nato bombardments have been effective and also the helicopter attacks, used for the first time in the past days, seem to have been very effective.
More and more soldiers, even top officials, have been deserting Gaddafi and finding their way to other countries, such as Italy, where some of them gave a press conference some days ago.
It is only a matter of days, they all say, before the Gaddafi regime crumbles. Maybe that is too optimistic, as most of the comments made by the Opposition in this long struggle have been. But it does seem that the Gaddafi regime is on its last legs.
Even supposing it retains the parts of Libya under its control now, this is a rump regime over a rump country. Most of the country is now free of the Gaddafi regime and breathing the fresh breeze of democracy after so many years prisoner of a dictatorial regime.
This however does not mean that Libya is out of danger. Between now and when the regime will have totally collapsed there may be still deaths to be suffered, fighting to be done, families to lose their loved ones. Heaven knows what the cornered dictator will do in his last hours: One can only speculate. Will he unleash chemical weapons? Will he submit the entire Tripoli to the final conflagration?
As we all wait for what is coming in the next days or weeks, we on our part must prepare ourselves for what will happen once the regime collapses.
Predictably, the first days will see chaos and confusion as the Gaddafi forces seek to escape from the wrath of the families whose sons they massacred, whose daughters they raped. Presumably, there will be a spike of people fleeing from Libya, but with a crucial difference: While the people coming this way and to Italy have been mostly sub-Saharan individuals fleeing a war that did not concern them, those coming here following the collapse of the regime may well include people who are or may be sought for crimes against humanity, so they need to be vetted carefully by the country where they make landfall.
Over time, the situation, one hopes, will stabilise. The needs of reconstruction will be enormous, and this does not relate solely to rebuilding bombed buildings, roads, airfields, etc. Even before the uprising, (and this may have contributed both to the uprising, and also to the difficulties encountered by the opposition fighters) the social infrastructure of Libya was markedly lacking. Education, for instance, was quite rudimentary, as was real employment.
The country relied almost totally on immigrant workers. There were no human rights in practice, no workers’ rights, nor that legislation required for the operation of a free market.
Malta, also as a member of the EU, can do much, given its proven friendly relationship with the people of Libya. Malta has already given proof of this with regards to the other neighbouring country, Tunisia, especially since the former colonial power, France, proved too near to the Ben Ali regime. Malta can do more to help Tunisia and when the end of the Gaddafi regime comes, it can do a lot to help the people of Libya.