Two days before Gadhafi was killed, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the first senior American visitor to the new Libya, stepped off a plane at Tripoli military airport Tuesday, Oct. 18, to face a row of irregular militiamen.

Among them were officers of the militia commanded by Mukhtar al-Akhda from the western town of Zintan.

On Oct. 10, this militia pledged earnestly to hand Tripoli military airport over to the National Transitional Council – the NTC. Ten days later, the Secretary of State arrived to find that same militia very much in charge of this strategic facility along with splinters of other irregular fighting groups.

After driving into Tripoli city, Clinton met with NTC chairman Mustafa Abdul Jali and promised his interim administration more US financial and diplomatic aid, saying: “I am proud to stand here on the soil of a free Tripoli, and on behalf of the American people I congratulate Libya. This is Libya’s moment, this is Libya’s victory. The future belongs to you."

But fresh from her impression from Tripoli military airport, she also urged the NTC to get control of the armed militias and loose weapons, for the tracking down of which a large slice of the next US aid package has been earmarked.

Clinton saw the NTC chairman, but not Abdulhakim Belhaj, the ex-Al Qaida operative who controls central Tripoli at the head of the strongest Islamist militia. He goes through the motions of deferring to Abdul Jalil while in fact holding out against transferring central Tripoli to the interim government almost two months after the Libyan capital fell to anti-Qaddafi forces on Aug. 23.

Then today, rebel fighters killed (in crossfire?) former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi earlier today outside the town of Sirte. His body was brought back to Misurata, where it was filmed being dragged through the streets. Several close aides, including family members, have been reported killed or captured as well.

Gadhafi’s death is symbolically important for the rebels, but the fall of Sirte is even more significant for the effect it will have on the future stability of Libya. With the final holdout of the pro-Gadhafi resistance overtaken, the National Transitional Council (NTC) can now move to form a transitional government. But multiple armed groups across the country will demand a significant stake in that government, which will have serious implications for the future unity of the people who heretofore were referred as the Libyan opposition.

Though the Benghazi-based NTC has been widely recognized in the international community as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people, this has long since ceased to be the case in the eyes of many Libyans. The NTC is one of several political forces in the country. Since the rebel forces entered Tripoli on Aug. 21, there has been a steady increase of armed groups hailing from places such as Misurata, Zentan, Tripoli and even eastern Libya itself that have questioned the authority of leading NTC members.

These groups have been occupying different parts of the capital for two months now, despite calls by the NTC (and some of the groups themselves) to vacate. They also have been participating in the sieges of cities in which pro-Gadhafi remnants continued to hold out after the fall of Tripoli. Throughout this period, the NTC has repeatedly delayed the formation of a transitional government, in recent weeks citing the ongoing fight against Gadhafi as the reason. NTC leaders said that once the war was finally over, the official “liberation” of Libya would be declared and a transitional government would be formed. The fall of Sirte means this moment is at hand.

With so many armed groups operating in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya, a peaceful resolution to the question of who should take power is unlikely. The main groupings come from Benghazi, Misurata, Zentan and Tripoli, but there are other, smaller militias as well that will want to ensure they are represented in the new Libya. The divide is not simply geographic but also exists between Islamists and secularists as well as between Berbers and Arabs.

The shape of the new Libya is highly uncertain, but what is clear is that the NTC is not going to simply take control where Gadhafi left off. Certain members of its leadership may play a key role in any transitional government, but not without serious compromises or, even more likely, violence occurring in the process. Pro-Gadhafi tribal elements in the last region to fall to rebel fighters also will be a potential source of violence in the coming months, as they will fight to make sure they are not left out of the future power structure.

Even a day before Gaddafi's death, interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril said he planned to resign this week, citing the emerging power struggle as his reason. "We have moved into a political struggle with no boundaries," explained Jibril, a Western-trained technocrat without an obvious mass base. "The political struggle requires finances, organization, arms and ideologies. I am afraid I don't have any of this."

The foreign powers backing Libya's rival militias

Getting control of the armed militias is as tall an order as finding the loose weapons, the bulk of which has been smuggled outside Libyan borders to line rebel pockets. This is because the uprising against Gadhafi has spawned a militia hydra with many heads, serpentine allegiances and a mixed stew of foreign patrons.

A few hours before the Clinton visit, the Wall Street Journal published a long article which described how, in the second half of September, various militia heads controlling bits of Tripoli met to establish a single governmental and military system for managing the Libyan capital.

Their meeting was rudely interrupted when two individuals burst in: Abdulhakim Belhaj and Maj. Gen. Hamad Ben Ali al-Attiyah, the chief of staff of the Qatari armed forces.

The Qatari general did not have anything to say but Belhaj warned the gathering: “You will never do this without me."

He was as good as his word: Tripoli still has no coherent, functioning government.

The NTC chairman only spends a few hours in the capital when foreign dignitaries arrive, before hurrying back to Benghazi.

According to the WSJ, the Qatari ruler Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani is playing a divide-and-rule game in Libya. Bypassing the Transitional Council, he sends money and arms to certain Muslim militias thereby stunting the NTC's ability to establish centralized government in Libya and confining the interim government to the rebel capital of Benghazi.

Of course the Qatari ruler is not the only player. The three NATO powers, the US, France and Britain, for example, may speak with one voice in endorsing Mustafa Abdul Jalil. But on the quiet, each sponsors individual, tribal and militia favorites - even though some are foes of the NTC.

Washington's pet Libyan contact is the interim government's oil and finance minister Ali Tarhuni, the current behind-the-scenes strongman of the NTC, our Libyan sources report.

He was recently promoted to interim Deputy Prime Minister, evidence of his growing clout.

It is by now an open secret in Libya – shared too by Muammar Gadhafi and his clique - that seekers of a path to US patronage or aid must first go through Tarhuni who sits tight on the only direct channel to Washington. But he has a problem: No one in Tripoli or Benghazi is certain his hands are clean.

Some Western diplomats who have met him describe how in the darkest days of the Libyan war, he would sulk and threaten to boycott aid conferences if NATO governmental contributions fell short of his demands.

The interim oil minister is taking the same line towards foreign bidders for contracts to repair and operate Libya's oilfields.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s man in Libya is interim premier Mahmud Jibril. His power has waned steadily since the Qaddafi regime was thrown out of Tripoli – so much so that he has promised to resign as soon as anti-government forces capture Sirte and Wadi Walid, Qaddafi's last bastions in western Libya.

Amid rebel celebrations over Qaddafi's death, the fighting continued Thursday night in Sirte although the NTC had earlier claimed the city had fallen.

Ignoring the Elysée Palace in Paris and its political protégé, French military intelligence in Libya is working through certain West Libyan militia chiefs, some of whom control districts in Tripoli. Their only common denominator is their antipathy for the National Transitional Council and its leaders.

The West may be said to have opened the door to the Qatari emirate as early as March by insisting on Arab input for strengthening the legitimacy of NATO's military intervention in the Libyan contest on the side of the rebels.

By and large, Arab governments resisted the call with the exception of Qatar.

(Jordan sent a small number of commandoes as part of the Qatari contingent. The few United Arab Emirates fighter jets deployed at NATO bases in Italy never received orders from their rulers to take part in NATO air strikes over Libya.)

With Libya's post-Qaddafi future so uncertain Western powers must come to terms with Qatar's looming presence at the heart of the Islamist-dominated twin centers of power in Tripoli and Benghazi.

It has placed the Obama administration in a quandary: Unwilling to stand squarely behind Qatari domination, Washington can hardly contest it, since Sheik Hamad goes about arguing that the new Muslim rulers, however extremist and tied to al Qaeda, will moderate their radicalism in time if helped by the right quarters to establish their rule.

This argument is hard for Washington to resist because it approximates President Barack Obama's philosophy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power in Arab lands on the grounds that time in government and friendly US and Western help will eventually modify its extremist bent.

On the face of it, therefore, the US and Qatar share a common mind-set on Libya.

France, Britain and Italy do not sympathize with this point of view because it leaves them no room to assert their influence on the affairs of the new Libya. And not all parts of the Obama administration are at one with this policy either, for two reasons:

- The skeptics in Washington see the Middle East on the point of being drowned under a Muslim avalanche: The momentum would be accelerated by a Syrian Muslim Brotherhood victory against President Bashar Assad and wins for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic parties in the parliamentary elections slated for late November – both on top of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Libya.

The entire Mediterranean region from east to west would end up under Muslim Brotherhood rule. They wonder if this is what the United States wants and needs.

- Washington needs to know most urgently where the Saudi royal house stand on the Qatari domination of Libya, especially with respect to the danger facing Moroccan king from spreading Islamic control of government in North Africa.

But US intelligence has not been able to plumb this mystery and all of Washington's questions to Riyadh have been met with obfuscation.

Hence, on her visit to Tripoli, Secretary of State Clinton was deliberately vague about future US policy on Libya and any possible cooperation with Qatar - or its alternative, action to cut down its influence in Tripoli and Benghazi.

Thus across the Middle East, Gadhafi's death is expected to be polarizing -providing some Arab protesters with a model of a successful overthrow of a brutal dictator, while giving others a sobering reminder of its costs.

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