美国经济学家变身利比亚石油财政部长

    坐在一辆轿车后排，阿里•塔胡尼吸了口烟，透过车窗凝视着利比亚东部城市班加西的景致。仅仅8个月前，他还在华盛顿大学（the University of Washington）商学院担任高级讲师。革命爆发后，他放弃了这份工作，飞往自己的祖国，投身革命洪流。如今穆阿迈尔•卡扎菲已经丧命，作为利比亚临时石油与财政部长，塔胡尼今后面临的任务极为繁重。车窗外，堆得高高的垃圾无人清理，建筑因战火而残破不堪，路灯也根本不亮，但潮水般的人群围着他的座驾欢呼，“阿里博士！阿里博士！”狂喜之情溢于言表，仿佛他是个摇滚巨星。“请看，”他对我说。“这是个富裕的国家，但走到哪里都能闻到污物的臭味。人们希望我有一支魔棒，能改变这一切。”

    改变利比亚的现状——贫困、失业及经济增长停滞——需要的不仅仅是魔法。可是，经济改善至关重要：它将决定这个广袤的石油富国成为民主国家——及跨国公司的稳定市场——还是陷入混乱。

    目前看来，两种情况都有可能出现。战乱中至少有2万名利比亚人丧生，其中许多都是平民。从石油化工重镇扎维亚到港口城市米苏拉塔再到卡扎菲10月20日殒命之地苏尔特，许多居民区都毁于战火。

    尽管战乱之灾相当严重，但卡扎菲42年的独裁统治留下的伤痕更深。经济社会政策扼杀了土生土长的企业，使难以计数的优秀利比亚人流亡国外——塔胡尼正是其中之一。多年来，卡扎菲禁止学校教授英语，声称它是西方邪恶势力的象征，就连路牌都只允许用阿拉伯语标示；失业率超过20%；财政收入的征集很不规律。“我收到了一张大概一年前的电费账单，”尤瑟夫•萨万尼笑称。直到今年2月份，他还是卡扎菲握有大权的儿子赛义夫•伊斯拉姆旗下基金会的负责人，伊斯拉姆本人直到十月下旬仍在逃亡，新政府武装未能找到他的下落。“我为什么要付钱呢？根本没人会付钱。”

    在这一切背后，利比亚其实沐浴在海量财富之中。据一些机构的估计，该国外汇储备约达到2,500亿美元，考虑到利比亚只有640万人口，这个数字令人震惊。利比亚已探明能源储备在非洲冠盖群雄，拥有464亿桶原油和约1.49万亿立方米的天然气。内战使石油生产受到很大影响，在战乱之前，该国每日原油产量达160万桶（相比之下，美国每日原油产量为970万桶）；到了10月份，这一数字已降到原来的大约三分之一。

    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.