The answer could determine the course of both the Libyan uprising and the results of the Western intervention. In the West's preferred chain of events, air strikes enable the rebels to unite with the currently passive residents of the western region around the capital Tripoli, under the banner of an essentially democratic revolution that topples Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
He, however, has predicted the opposite: that the revolt is a tribal war of eastern Libya against the West that will end in either his triumph or a prolonged period of chaos.
'It is a very important question that is terribly near impossible to answer,' said Dr Paul Sullivan, a political scientist at Georgetown University who has studied Libya. 'It could be a very big surprise when Gaddafi leaves and we find out who we are really dealing with.'
The behaviour of the fledgling rebel government in Benghazi so far offers few clues to the rebels' true nature. Their governing council is composed of secular- minded professionals - lawyers, academics, businesspeople - who talk about democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law. But their commitment to those principles is just now being tested as they confront the spectre of potential Gaddafi spies in their midst, either with rough tribal justice or a more measured legal process.
Like the Gaddafi government, the operation around the rebel council is rife with family ties. And like the chiefs of the Libyan state media, the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming non-existent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Gaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behaviour.
Sceptics of the rebels' commitment to democracy point to Libya's short and brutal history. Until Col Gaddafi's revolution in 1969, Libya could scarcely be considered a country, divided as it was under its former king into three provinces, each with myriad tribes of rural, semi-nomadic herders. Retaliatory tribal killings and violence were the main source of justice.
Although he worked hard to forge the provinces into a single state, Col Gaddafi did little to calm the culture of violence, among other things ordering his revolutionary committees to shoot the 'stray dogs' of the revolution and staging public hangings of his political opponents.
And, historians say, he has often sought to capitalise on the bellicose culture of many tribes.
In the neighbourhoods of the capital that have staged major peaceful protests against Col Gaddafi, many people have volunteered - speaking on the condition of anonymity - the fact that their demonstrations had been non-violent mainly because they could not obtain weapons fast enough.
Even one religious leader associated with Sufism - a traditionally pacifist sect - lamented his own tribe's lack of guns.
That stands in sharp contrast to the situation in Libya's neighbours, Tunisia and Egypt. In Egypt, in particular, the young leaders of the revolution were so seized with an ethic of non-violence that in the middle of winning a battle of thrown stones against a loyalist mob, two young protesters said that they believed they had lost, simply because they had resorted to violence.
Nor did Col Gaddafi's Libya ever do much more than place a veneer over the long-simmering tribal animosities. The eastern region around Benghazi had always been a hotbed of opposition to the colonel, while he in turn favoured the tribes of the central and western coast.
And when the uprising came, many of the most significant defectors - including General Abdul Fattah Younes, the rebel army head and a former interior minister - were members of the eastern tribes.
Now, after weeks of reprisals and propaganda, the allied air strikes so far do not appear to have emboldened any of opponents to take to the streets once again.
But on Monday night, the sound of air strikes echoed over the capital, as the Western allies placed another bet that it truly was a democratic impulse that kindled the uprising.
NEW YORK TIMES
