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"  Lawyers When you want to withdraw billions of dollars worth of assets that have been frozen by United Nations sanctions, it helps to bring in some quality professional counsel. Fortunately for the Libyan rebels, their National Transitional Council has the international law firm Hogan Lovells as its legal middleman, and today that partnership paid off. The U.K. released roughly $1.5 billion (950 million pounds)\u2014bank notes printed in Britain and frozen since March by the sanctions\u2014to the NTC. Hogan Lovells has 26 offices in 12 countries as of 2010, including strategic partnerships with firms in Saudi Arabia, China, Hungary and Croatia. The team of legal gurus advising the NTC is headed by New Zealand\u2013born Jeremy Brittenden, a Hogan Lovells partner who specializes in international infrastructure projects. And he&amp;#039;s working for free. &amp;quot;The team advised on a pro bono basis on contractual, constitutional and sanctions law and regulation, enabling the bank notes to be released to a branch of the Central Bank of Libya and under the control of the NTC,&amp;quot; the firm said in a statement. Call me cynical, but I expect the firm to make plenty of money on this pro bono case. Putting an infrastructure lawyer in this position close to the rebels leaves the firm in an ideal position to make money advising on internationally financed rebuilding projects. The NTC has said it will take a decade to rebuild Libya, and despite the country&amp;#039;s oil wealth, it&amp;#039;s asking the U.N. for help. Guns Obviously, the rebels could not have won without using NATO as a surrogate Air Force that paved the road to victory with air-to-ground strikes and intelligence gathering. But the regime&amp;#039;s vast arsenal gave rebels plenty of small arms. Even Swedish and German rifles, supposedly looted from Gaddafi&amp;#039;s warehouses, appeared in the hands of rebels. There are a couple of possible explanations: Either the regime got those guns on the black market and they indeed fell into rebel hands, or a secret weapons supply for the rebels made its way into Libya. (Other secret supply lines have been confirmed, including one land route that ferried gasoline to the rebels.)  With so many weapons around, you&amp;#039;d think that importing them would be unnecessary. But France has confirmed it airdropped antitank missiles and assault rifles for rebels to use.  There is a longer-term story here as well. Russian companies have $4 billion in proposed arms sales to Libya on the books, but those deals are probably up in smoke with Gaddafi out of the picture. Libya has some fairly friendly neighbors, but it still needs a modernized military, and now NATO nations will have a leg up in selling arms to the new Libyan government. Expect NATO to offer to help train and organize the armed forces, the sort of move that greases the wheels for future weapons deals.  Money Gaddafi was not a good neighbor. And so when it seemed that NATO&amp;#039;s intervention might actually work, several Middle Eastern nations, including Kuwait and Qatar, donated money to the rebels. The rebels have a financial fund to handle the loot, which is helping to hold the nation together.  The release of cash into Libya these days does two things. First, it allows public sector workers, nurses, doctors, teachers and police officers to get paid. With them on the job, a sense of order and normalcy can help ease post-regime tensions. Second, it keeps the cash economy going. Debit cards are not big in Libya, and without cash, street commerce ends and people can&amp;#039;t buy necessities. Nothing breeds discontent like hunger.  But the rebels&amp;#039; NTC has bigger game to handle. Gaddafi stashed tens of billions of dollars across the world, and no one knows exactly how to handle it. The Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund formed in 2006 and worth $65 billion (mostly from oil deals,) is working to unfreeze those assets. The fund is plagued by accusations of corruption, though, and a dysfunctional LIA could mean instability for the new government. There have been disputes inside the rebel camp over who will control the money, but this week the NTC appointed a single point man, Rafik al-Nayed, as chief executive of the LIA. There is also another LIA effort to quickly turn $9 billion in frozen assets into loans from sympathetic nations.  And then there is the $37 billion of Libyan investment in the United States, which includes property and stakes in publicly traded companies. For now, the Obama administration says it&amp;#039;s still holding on to those assets to ensure that fleeing Gaddafi forces can&amp;#039;t get ahold of them. Call me cynical again, but I&amp;#039;d actually prefer to think the White House is holding on to them as a form of leverage until the NTC&amp;#039;s makeup and intentions are better known. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a7138/the-war-in-libya-as-explained-by-warren-zevon-analysis/>