Belgium is famous as the home of the modern Comic Strip with Tintin, the Smurfs and Lucky Luke all hailing from there. The industry has been in the dumps for decades, but the country is trying to change that.

During the recent annual Belgian Comic Book Festival, enormous balloons featuring comic strip characters paraded down the main streets of Brussels.

Roadrunner sauntered along, followed by a bouncy Sponge Bob Squarepants.

But despite the cheer, there was something missing. Not one of these gigantic parading balloons was of a Belgian character.

In the industry, Belgium is referred to as the “home of the comic book”. That’s because, since the 1920s, Belgian artists blazed a trail of innovation inventing the “speech bubble,” for example, as well as the drawing technique called “clear line,” which moved comic books from cartoonish blobs of color to a sharper kind of realism.

Perusing comics at the Cultures Maison Fair and Expo in Brussels. (Photo: Don Duncan)

Tintin, which still sells over one million comic books a year worldwide, was the industry leader between the ’20s and the ’70s. But by the 1980s, Bellefroid says Belgium had become a victim of its own initial successes.

“Tintin and other big Belgian comics couldn’t reinvent themselves because they had developed a very clear, loyal fan base and they were also trapped in a very Catholic Belgium at the time. This is how Belgium got its market share eaten up, initially by new, edgier French comics,” Bellefroid says.

Today, most of the Belgian publishing houses have been bought up by multinationals. The business is mainly controlled from Paris, London, or Tokyo. But Belgium is fighting back, by positioning itself as a center of innovation and excellence for the rest of the industry.

It set up the Comic Book Commission in 2007, a government body with an annual budget of $170,000. The commission funds 30 to 40 new projects a year to advance technical and aesthetic aspects of comic book publishing.

Commission Director Bruno Merckx says the initiative goes beyond just paper and ink, “The symbolic element of all this is that it helps the comic strip emerge from the category of subculture or subgenre. A comic book author is a literary author in his own right.”

After five years of state support, signs of success are beginning to show on the once-stagnant Belgian comic book landscape. A small Brussels office is home to GrandPapier.org, a small Belgian comic book publishing house that is trying to move the comic book into the next frontier in comics publishing – the internet.

Grandpapier’s founder Sacha says that while novels have the e-book, comic books have no digital equivalent yet, and so developing a digital format that will be adopted as a standard by the industry is Grandpapier.org’s next big thing.

“We must see how we can manage to automatically generate digital formats from comic stories posted to our site, so people can either go on Grandpapier.org or download a comic book as an e-comic,” Merckx says.

If Belgium succeeds in developing an e-comic standard, and implementing its other innovations, it will once again play a crucial role in the global comic book industry.

It may be a big “if,” but considering the country’s comic book history this may be the beginning of a comeback.

We may well be seeing a few giant balloon figures of new Belgian characters parade the streets during the annual comic book festival in years to come.

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The opposition is splintering with militias that once fought side by side now sparring with each other.

Individuals with scores to settle are doing so. And the problem is that it’s all being done by the gun.

After a civil war that saw arms being places in many citizens’ hands, the challenge for the new Libyan government is to disarm the population. It’s not proving so easy.

Months after the toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, ecstatic Libyans still descend nightly on Tripoli’s Martyr’s Square.

Fireworks explode overhead, children take rides on anti-aircraft guns, and vendors sell revolution trinkets and comic photo-shopped images of the fallen dictator.

“Thank God, Moammar is dead and there is no more trace of his awful family in this country,” a man said in Martyr’s square.

While Libyans celebrate the fight that led to the end of Gadaffi, the guns used to oust him are a worrying sign for the future.

Thousands of Guns

Hundreds of thousands of guns were handed out to anti-Gaddafi fighters. With tribal conflicts and personal score-settling on the rise, these same guns are quickly becoming public enemy number one in post-revolution Libya.

Brigade Captain Abed al-Majid heads up one of the numerous task forces created to get guns out of civilian hands. Tonight, he’s set up a checkpoint on a busy Tripoli street to inspect motorists for illegal guns.

“We have to confiscate those guns and interrogate their owners a little to see where they got them, what they will do with them and why they haven’t given them up,” al-Majid said.

Some people do have government-issued gun permits, but most do not. There are two main reasons people won’t give up their weapons. Some say that Libya is just not secure enough yet to remain unarmed.

Others, mostly former fighters, refuse to give up their guns as a matter of principal rather than pragmatism.

Ahmed Suleiman and some friends show me an arsenal they’ve stashed in Suleiman’s home. As they clean the guns, Suleiman explains that after what they sacrificed to defeat Gaddafi, being asked to disarm is a slap in the face.

“Disarming us shouldn’t be done,” Suleiman said. “We were prepared to die to save others and now the Government is treating us as if there is no difference between us and regular citizens. We should get to keep our guns.

Suleiman says Libya is not stable enough for total disarmament – many armed Gadaffi loyalists remain, and must be fought if they rise up. What’s more, the problem goes beyond rifles and handguns.

Heavy Artillery

In this Tripoli warehouse, run by the National Transitional Council, or NTC, the larger scale of the problem is apparent.

It houses confiscated heavy artillery- rocket propelled grenades, landmines, and even two Scud missiles.

The weaponry here is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

Because of the heavy weapons – and the possibility they might be sold to the more unsavory elements in the region – lots of countries are helping the NTC with the big guns.

But for smaller weapons, the NTC and its various member groups are on their own.

“Our staff is going around neighborhoods, talking about this, educating people regarding guns and the dangers of having guns at home and all this stuff so it’s working. It’s working,” said Jamal Faraj, who heads up the Tripoli Revolutionary Council’s gun control team.

Faraj and his team have collected over a thousand arms – AK-47s and handguns mostly – in just a recent two week period. But even still, all this is a drop in the ocean at this point.

Meanwhile, back at al-Majid’s barracks, there is a party, celebrating a bust of an arms cache belonging to Gaddafi loyalists.

“Gaddafi is dead and the old era of Gaddafi is over and it’s a new future we have now in Libya,” said a man at an al-Majid celebration. “It’s a new era and what’s more, we’ve created it with our own hands.”

While al-Majid says he understands the fears driving people to keep their weapons, he is determined to overcome the gun problem, one bust at a time.

Young girls in Benghazi accompany their father to a one of the many demonstrations in support of the rebels near the city's main courthouse. (Photo: Al Jazeera English)

A new prime minister has been named, a new transitional government is imminent, and new portraits of fallen martyrs replace pictures of Gaddafi in public spaces.

But perhaps one of the most crucial changes is happening in more discreet locations – in schools, all across the country.

Over his more than four decades of dictatorship, Gaddafi used the country’s schools to get his ideology into the minds of his citizens.

From primary to university level, Libya’s national curriculum is now being cleansed of Gaddafi’s far-reaching influence.

“We don’t want anything that signifies him – neither his name, his family, nor his symbols and signature green color,” said Mohammed Sawi, director of the National Curriculum Reform Office, which is based in Tripoli

It’s a newly formed team of 160 experts charged with rewriting curriculum throughout Libya’s entire public school system.

For now, the Libyan experts are doing an initial, rapid purge of the most flagrant pro-Gaddafi elements in schools. It’s a stop-gap solution until Libya’s transitional period ends and a new government is elected in eight months. Then, according to Sawi, the larger task of long-term revision will start.

“There are no foreign experts because what we are doing is provisional, for one year,” Sawi said. “After that, experts will be brought in from abroad and we will do an international conference to see what we can do in term of broader changes to the curriculum.”

Getting Rid of Subjects

For now, the easiest change is getting rid of subjects like Al-Mujtama Al-Jamahariya, the study of the “Green Book” – Gaddafi’s core treatise on politics and civic life.

But beyond that, many remaining subjects require severe changes. Gaddafi, a strident anti-colonialist, refused to allow what he considered “Western” symbols – for instance, “cm” for centimeters and “kg” for kilogram. Hatem Mhenni, a member of the reform committee, said all symbols in Libyan education will be changed to meet international norms.

“We changed all the symbols that were in Arabic before into Latin script,” Mhenni said. “We corrected many spelling errors and technical errors as well.”

History, which had amounted to glorifying Gaddafi and his regime, is being rewritten from scratch. Until that’s done, the subject has been suspended from the national curriculum.

Subjects like geography would seem less problematic. But education reformer Mahmoud al Chawadi said maps in Libyan schoolbooks were used to confuse rather than inform the students.

“Gaddafi was afraid that the students or their parents could revolt at any time, so it was important that they feel far from each other,” Chawadi said. “So in the maps, he created a big separation between east and west Libya – a vast, impenetrable desert – to disorient people and make sure they felt divided, not united.”

Officials have said that schools won’t have a more Islamic bent, though they will add a subject called Islamic Consciousness. But like everything else in Libya now, it’s hard to predict how schooling will shake out until the constitution is written and a new government is chosen.

But these days, the Ministry of Education’s eyes are set on more immediate goals: the new, temporary curriculum and textbooks set to roll out to an estimated one million Libyan students by January 14th.

Until then, classes continue at places like the Rixos Technical High School in Tripoli.

Larger Education Goals

The school’s principal, Brahim Al Hajaji, said the larger goal of removing the false ideas and mentalities cultivated through more than four decades of Gaddafi indoctrination may take quite a long time.

“I think a lot about the future of the students and the children of this country,” said Al Hajaji. “The big challenge is the little kids who love Gaddafi and don’t know why they love him.”

17-year-old Epthal Abu Bakker said whenever she used to criticize Gaddafi, other kids would tease her and beat her. Now the power has changed, and Epthal can express her opinions without danger.

“We have to know, the children have to know, what they missed before,” Epthal said. “About the grandparents, the old people, how they were. We have to know why Gaddafi came, why he did all that.”

With the dictator gone, Libya’s future is uncertain – the country is awash in weapons, and the revolutionaries are finding it hard to be good politicians.

But in the country’s schools, the horizon is relatively bright — assuming the country’s political journey continues smoothly.

During his 23-year dictatorship over Tunisia, former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was keen on the promotion of women’s rights and the strict repression of Islamists. Both practices were also part of his propaganda, which made him a tolerable tyrant with Western governments.

But since his regime was toppled in a popular revolution back in January, things for women and Islamists in Tunisia appear to be changing because Islamist parties appear poised to take control.

That’s playing a key role in political campaigns leading up to the country’s first democratic elections this coming Sunday. These elections are especially crucial because Tunisians will choose the assembly that writes the country’s new constitution and will set the tone for what kind of country Tunisia becomes.

It was unimaginable under Ben Ali to see thousands of Islamists calling for the establishment of an Islamic state in Tunisia.

But that’s just what happened at demonstrations last week.

Islamists were brutally repressed under the Ben Ali regime. So this resurgence of religious fervor has raised tensions, especially ahead of this Sunday’s election.

Islamists like 30 year-old Slim, know exactly what they want Tunisia to be.

“Everyone wants to see the Islamic religion in all the regions, in the state, in clothing and in the judiciary,” he said.

Slim, who wouldn’t give his family name, is sitting in one of the many cafes of Cité Ettadhamen, a poor suburb of Tunis, which has become known as an Islamist stronghold.

“We are Muslims. We like being Muslim with our own clothing, our own prayers and all the forms of Islam. Women have a special clothing for themselves,” he said.

It’s this kind of talk that spooks the secular parties in Tunisia. They are wary of the new political currents.

Souad Rejeb, a committee member of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, says while Tunisia’s civil society has flourished since the revolution, she’s worried about the effects the shifting political landscape could have on women’s rights.

“We just hope there will be enough progressive people in the Constituent Assembly that there won’t be an erosion of the Personal Status Code,” Rejeb said.

The Personal Status Code is the backbone of women’s rights legislation in Tunisia. It’s a law that was passed in 1956, and gave women the right to vote, to be elected to parliament, to earn equal wages, and to initiate divorce.

Polygamy was outlawed by the code and then, in 1961, abortion rights were granted. Women’s rights here are more advanced than anywhere in the Arab world and the secular parties say they will fight to maintain that unique status.

“There are retrograde forces in the country,” said Abdelaziz Messaoudi, a member of the political committee of the center-left Ettajdid party.

Ettajdid is one of the main opponents of Al Nahdha, Tunisia’s most prominent Islamist party. Al Nahdha was established in 1989 but banned under Ben Ali. Since the revolution, it’s bounced back with gusto.

Polls predict it could take around 20 percent of seats in the Constituent Assembly. Messaoudi is not happy about that possibility.

“If Al Nahdha wins a big part of the election and if it is well represented in the next Constituent Assembly, it could call back into question a certain number of gains in women’s rights. That’s a real threat,” Messaoudi said.

Al Nahdha says the secular parties are using women’s rights and Ben Ali-style anti-Islamist propaganda to stir up fears and win votes. Yusra Ghannouchi, the daughter of Al Nahdha leader Rachid Ghannouchi, and a spokesperson for the party, says the party’s platform on women’s rights is unambiguous.

“It’s clear on women’s issues, that it respects women’s rights to equality, to education, to work. It does not believe in a theocracy,” Ghannouchi said. “It does not believe in a system that will impose a particular believe or lifestyle on people. It believes in equality, regardless of race, faith, sex or color.

But the country’s secularist parties and women’s activists, like the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women’s Souad Rejeb, accuse Al Nahdha of sending out a double message.

“They have what we call a duplicity of discourse,” said Souhad Rejeb of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women. “They have two lines: on TV they say ‘We are for equality, we won’t touch woman’s rights,’ but in the mosques or abroad, they say ‘the Personal Status Code is not in the Koran.’”

And it is this perceived inconsistency that brought many women out on the streets last Sunday in defense of freedom of speech and equality.

Faced with such demonstrations, Yusra Ghannouchi of Al Nahdha says that actions and not words are the only things that can be really judged in politics.

“What will guarantee respect of these freedoms and rights is not be anyone’s word for it, but to have a system that ensures that there will be checks and that there will be institutions that ensure that politicians keep their promises and that should apply to secularists and Islamists,” Ghannouchi said.

In the 10 months since the fall of Ben Ali, Tunisia has been furiously building the hardware of democratic politics – institutions and procedures to cradle and protect its democracy regardless of who’s in charge of the government.