A checkpoint in the town of Ras Lanuf, outside the town's oil refinery.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Iman al-Mughrabi, a prominent Islamic scholar, addresses a crowd of mostly men after Friday prayers in front of Benghazi's central courthouse.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Ahmed Bushnaf sits on the curb outside his home in Sirte, the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi's hometown.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Misrata's largest prison houses some 860 prisoners of war, most of them captured in towns loyal to the late Libyan dictator Gaddafi.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Tawergha was a pro-Gaddafi town that participated in the violent assault on the rebel stronghold of Misrata. Reconciliation between winners and losers of Libya's war is a major challenge for the new state.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Schoolchildren gather in their middle school courtyard in the eastern Libyan town of Darnah before starting their morning classes.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Tripoli Street in Misrata.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Graffiti on the inner wall of a home in Sirte reads: "Ali took revenge. See you later."
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
A Libyan man inside his ruined apartment as the result of heavy shelling.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
The families of Libyans who were killed accidentally during a Nato airstrike in Tripoli last June protest outside of the interim prime minister's office in the Libyan capital.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Hanan al-Magwb hits her guests with hardball questions about Libya's upcoming elections on a weeknight airing of "Listen To Us", her evening news show on Libya Youth FM, broadcast out of Benghazi.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Mohamed, a schoolteacher, prays at dusk on the rooftop of his friend's war-ravaged house in the coastal city of Sirte.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Haroun Milad and his brother Moussa survey the wreckage of Gaddafi's once impenetrable residential compound, Bab al-Aziziya, in Tripoli.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Visitors outside the newly-opened museum in Misrata. The Ali Hassan Jaber Martyr Exhbit is named for an Al-Jazeera cameraman who was killed covering Libya's revolution.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Reem is a Syrian refugee from Homs standing on Libya's coast, looking out at the calm Mediterranean Sea.
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time
Libya holds its first democratic election in July. No one knows how many bumps lie in the road ahead. But despite all those challenges, and the years of heartbreak behind them, Libyans seem hopeful.
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Museums have been erected to commemorate the battles fought and the martyrs lost. Schools are back in session. Hundreds of former rebels are training to join the new national army. People are even talking about tourism and business. Women are discussing women’s rights and lecturing men on politics. Where the weak transitional government is failing, ordinary citizens are helping one another rebuild. Young people are getting creative. All this induces optimism; optimism of the wild, determined sort. (All Images by Yuri Kozyrev/ Noor for Time)
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Divisions threaten to mar Libyan elections
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The country’s current fledgling state institutions are fragile and largely powerless. The Libyan roadmap aims to elect a general national congress, a 200-member transitional parliament, where 80 seats are allocated to representatives of political entities, and 120 seats to individuals. Once this transitional parliament has been elected, the remit of the interim governing National Transitional…
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While some firms may be coy about revealing their interests, it appears that others have been put off by the arrest and imprisonment of ABB workers in 2008 and the continued unpredictability in the country ahead of this week’s elections. Not even the lure of lucrative contracts to rebuild Libya’s war-torn infrastructure and the presence…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.