????坐在一輛轎車后排，阿里?塔胡尼吸了口煙，透過車窗凝視著利比亞東部城市班加西的景致。僅僅8個月前，他還在華盛頓大學（the University of Washington）商學院擔任高級講師。革命爆發后，他放棄了這份工作，飛往自己的祖國，投身革命洪流。如今穆阿邁爾?卡扎菲已經喪命，作為利比亞臨時石油與財政部長，塔胡尼今后面臨的任務極為繁重。車窗外，堆得高高的垃圾無人清理，建筑因戰火而殘破不堪，路燈也根本不亮，但潮水般的人群圍著他的座駕歡呼，“阿里博士！阿里博士！”狂喜之情溢于言表，仿佛他是個搖滾巨星。“請看，”他對我說。“這是個富裕的國家，但走到哪里都能聞到污物的臭味。人們希望我有一支魔棒，能改變這一切。”

????改變利比亞的現狀——貧困、失業及經濟增長停滯——需要的不僅僅是魔法。可是，經濟改善至關重要：它將決定這個廣袤的石油富國成為民主國家——及跨國公司的穩定市場——還是陷入混亂。

????目前看來，兩種情況都有可能出現。戰亂中至少有2萬名利比亞人喪生，其中許多都是平民。從石油化工重鎮扎維亞到港口城市米蘇拉塔再到卡扎菲10月20日殞命之地蘇爾特，許多居民區都毀于戰火。

????盡管戰亂之災相當嚴重，但卡扎菲42年的獨裁統治留下的傷痕更深。經濟社會政策扼殺了土生土長的企業，使難以計數的優秀利比亞人流亡國外——塔胡尼正是其中之一。多年來，卡扎菲禁止學校教授英語，聲稱它是西方邪惡勢力的象征，就連路牌都只允許用阿拉伯語標示；失業率超過20%；財政收入的征集很不規律。“我收到了一張大概一年前的電費賬單，”尤瑟夫?薩萬尼笑稱。直到今年2月份，他還是卡扎菲握有大權的兒子賽義夫?伊斯拉姆旗下基金會的負責人，伊斯拉姆本人直到十月下旬仍在逃亡，新政府武裝未能找到他的下落。“我為什么要付錢呢？根本沒人會付錢。”

????在這一切背后，利比亞其實沐浴在海量財富之中。據一些機構的估計，該國外匯儲備約達到2,500億美元，考慮到利比亞只有640萬人口，這個數字令人震驚。利比亞已探明能源儲備在非洲冠蓋群雄，擁有464億桶原油和約1.49萬億立方米的天然氣。內戰使石油生產受到很大影響，在戰亂之前，該國每日原油產量達160萬桶（相比之下，美國每日原油產量為970萬桶）；到了10月份，這一數字已降到原來的大約三分之一。

????Hunkered down in the back of a car, Ali Tarhouni sucks on a cigarette and gazes out at Libya's eastern city of Benghazi. It's been just eight months since he ditched his job as a senior lecturer at the University of Washington's business school and flew to his native country to join the revolution. Muammar Qaddafi is dead, and as Libya's interim oil and finance minister he's contemplating the daunting tasks ahead. Outside the window garbage is piled high, buildings are crumbling, street lights are out. And people are mobbing the car, screaming ecstatically, "Dr. Ali! Dr. Ali!" as if he were a rock star. "Look at this," he tells me. "This is a wealthy country, yet you can smell the sewage everywhere. And people expect you have a magic wand to change things."

????Changing Libya -- its poverty, its joblessness, or its lack of economic growth -- will require more than magic. But change is crucial: It will determine whether this vast, oil-rich country becomes a democracy -- and a stable market for global corporations -- or slides into chaos.

????Right now both scenarios seem possible. At least 20,000 Libyans have been killed, many of them civilians. Neighborhoods stand shattered, from the oil refinery town of Zawiyah to the port cities of Misurata and Sirte, where rebels killed Qaddafi on Oct. 20.

????Bad as the toll is, Qaddafi's 42- year dictatorship left deeper scars. Repressive socialism stifled homegrown enterprises and drove countless smart Libyans, like Tarhouni, into exile. For years Qaddafi banned schools from teaching English, claiming it embodied Western evil; road signs are still Arabic-only. Unemployment exceeds 20%. Revenue collection is patchy. "I got an electricity bill about a year ago," laughs Youssef Sawani, until February the director of the foundation of Qaddafi's hugely powerful son Saif al-Islam, who was still on the run from rebel fighters in late October. "Why would I pay it? No one does."

????And yet Libya is awash in money. Its foreign-currency reserves are by some estimates about $250 billion -- an astonishing sum for a nation of just 6.4 million people. It has Africa's largest proven energy reserves, with more than 46.4 billion barrels of oil and about 1.49 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Until the civil war halted oil production, Libya pumped about 1.6 million barrels a day (by comparison, the U.S. pumps about 9.7 million barrels daily); by late October it was sputtering back with about a third that volume.