Dirk Vandewalle

Libyans voted on Saturday morning in the first election in four decades under Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. By Sunday evening, returns showed liberals in the lead. This means that unlik...

After months of rebel uprisings and NATO air assaults on Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime in Libya, rebel forces reached a major breakthrough this weekend. Advancing to just seventeen miles outside Tripoli, the rebels pushed through the city’s outer defense lines, flooded into the capital and battled with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi loyalists last night. The rebels captured two of Gadhafi's sons, including Seif al-Islam, the assumed heir-apparent, and civilians celebrated in the streets over what may be the end of Quaddafi's 42 years in power of Libya. Does this spell the end for him?

As rebel forces press on towards the Libyan capitol of Tripoli, the BBC's Matthew Price has gone inside the beseiged city to report on conditions for the people living there. So far, he's reported there are frequent power outages, skyrocketing food prices, nighttime bombing attacks, and fuel shortages. One resident said people are selling their gold and cars and using the proceeds to buy generators.

President Barack Obama stood before the nation yesterday and explained our role in the allied forces air assault on Libya and its embattled leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi. While he recognized Americans' hesitation for more involvement in the Middle East, the President said that Libya represented a unique situation and a challenge to American ideas about freedom and human decency. Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, has reactions from Washington to the speech. Dirk Vandewalle, professor of government at Dartmouth and the author of, "A History of Modern Libya," looks at how President Obama's speech will impact the current situation in Libya. 

In the past week, the world has watched as Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces pound the opposition with gunfire and artillery from the skies. But despite intense deliberation at the White House and elsewhere, neither the U.S., NATO or others have been able to decide on a plan for intervention. Is Libya of national interest to the U.S.? And is it worth a potentially complex, long-term commitment? If not a no-fly zone: what should the United States do about Libya?

Dirk Vandewalle, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth University, discusses the 40-year rule of Libya’s Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. Professor Vandewalle’s most recent books are A History of Modern Libya and Libya since 1969: Qadhafi's Revolution Revisited.

Dirk Vandewalle, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College and author of A History of Modern Libya, discusses the power dynamics in Libya and how the uprising there now might play out.  Plus, Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, discusses the latest reports coming out of Libya.

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The latest reports out of Libya are cause for concern, whether you're asking the U.S. State Department or the son of Muammar Gadhafi, who in an address Sunday, said that the country was on the brink of being engulfed in "rivers of blood." The North African country, which is one of the regions most oil-rich, has many tribal factions, and some analysts wonder if Libya is in danger of civil war. Human Rights Watch has estimated the number of civilian deaths in the country is approaching 250. What is in store for Libya?

Verifiable updates have been hard to come by in Libya, where more protests have been reported over the past several days. There is a notable absence of independent journalists reporting from there because of iron-clad restrictions on the press and on the Internet. Protests were reported by ex-patriots around the world who have contacts in Libya. The protests were aimed Libya’s ruler, Moammar Gadhafi, who has been in power for 41 years. What is situation in the North African country today, and what does it say about Gadhafi's rule?