The second observation, whatever the protestations to the contrary, is that politics is starting in earnest. The last time I met Tarhuni, back in June, he was finance and oil minister. Today, he has added the position of deputy prime minister to his twin portfolios, an appointment that occasioned a certain raising of eyebrows. As one Tripoline puts it, "We never had finance and oil under one minister, let alone deputy prime minister too." Earlier in the month, Tarhuni announced the formation of a new Supreme Security Committee for Tripoli and said he had been appointed its chairman, concentrating additional powers in his hands.

Jibril insists it's still too early for politics. Speaking to journalists on September 8 after his long-awaited arrival in Tripoli, he rebuked "some colleagues" for starting "the political game", reminding them that the war against Gaddafi had not yet finished and the country was not entirely liberated. If the politicking continued, he hinted, he would step down and withdraw from the fray altogether. He reiterated his pledge not to seek office beyond the transitional period of 20 months, by which time Libya should have a new constitution and be set for national elections. 

Perhaps the most interesting and telling point Jibril made, however, was not so much the no-politics-please-we're-Libyan-revolutionaries as the emphasis on future challenges. Libyans had to dwell on future nation-building, he said, rather than be drawn into a destructive concentration on the past. "The most difficult battle is against ourselves. How can we achieve reconciliation, how can we achieve security and agree a constitution that dictates the boundaries of the political game?"

To get a first-hand understanding of the balance between reconciliation and reprisal in Libya, I travelled with a Libyan friend and his family to the southern oasis of Ghadames, home to a mixed Arab-Berber population that has, for many centuries, coexisted with the Touareg, an ancient desert people. The relationship has often been fraught. For the past six months, armed and funded by the Gaddafi regime, a youthful portion of the local Touareg, supplemented by fellow Touareg from Algeria and Mali, policed the small town of 12,000 with an iron rod — and electrical cables for beating suspected rebels.