Milton Viorst

A Western journalist travels to Libya for an exclusive interview with Colonel Mu'ammar Qaddafi and finds a country struggling to modernize. Tired of suffering under the U.N. embargo, Libya may be ready to hand the suspected Lockerbie bombers over for trial. After being pariahs for over a decade, most Libyans seem eager to reenter the international community. But power in their country is divided between bureaucrats who favor the West and the old, fiercely anticolonial revolutionaries who still cherish Qaddafi's defiance. The bureaucrats are ready to put Libya's rotten image behind them, but the colonel is leery.

One of the world's most underreported conflicts rages in Algeria, where 60,000 have died in six years of civil war. The military-backed regime, which has recently been accused of involvement in recurring massacres, has erected a facade of democracy and won the approval of France and the United States. Locked out is the Islamist movement, which scored an overwhelming victory in 1991 elections but was never allowed to take power. Other Arabs watch Algeria fearfully for omens of their countries' fates, caught between bad governments and political Islam.

The Persian Gulf War, in which the Iraqi army stood at the border and Scuds fell on Riyadh, was a turning point for Saudi Arabia. The alliance between the royal family and the clergy that has been the key to the kingdom is being challenged by dissidents who ask where the oil money and Islamic purity have gone. The princes warn that they will silence the malcontents by force. But in this conformist land, calls for change--perhaps any change--are intoxicating.

Sudan is a nation divided: its population in the north, where the majority resides, is culturally Arab, while the south shares the civilization of black Africa. Faced with this diversity, the government has embarked on a course of Islamization to unify Sudan. Although popular dissatisfaction with the Islamic state runs deep, Hassan al-Turabi, the charismatic Islamic leader, and his followers are so well entrenched that it may be impossible to get them out, even with elections.