This piece by Darfur expert Rob Crilly makes clear that the Libyan NTC rebel facade is crumbling. The people are getting to know the rebels and slowly come out of their shell.
While still absolutely afraid to express themselves in the presence of armed rebels, the Libyan people are beginning to talk to Western reporters.
A stranger fell into step alongside me... "We don't all support the NTC here," he said, referring to the rebel National Transitional Council which now controls Tripoli.
My new friend didn't say much more, other than to praise Saif Gaddafi and the office he ran as a sort of government ombudsman, helping petitioners sort out their local disputes.
He wasn't the only one. A few days earlier, several hundred marchers had demonstrated against the country's new leadership. At about the same time, I had been in Ras Lanuf, where a girl -- not much older than five I would guess -- was sitting on the curbside. The town had only recently been taken by rebels. "Gaddafi for ever," she shouted at me in Arabic, which my fixer translated for me before explaining that the town's residents had done well from the oil boom years.
In fact, the whole of the country had done well. That was Gaddafi's deal. He would rule as he wished... but at the same time he provided good roads, schools and hospitals and a standard of living that was the envy of much of the rest of Africa. On the edge of Benghazi, Saif was building an entire new city of apartment blocks to replace old, dilapidated buildings in the centre. This unstable-seeming equilibrium lasted almost 42 years.
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