According to the washington post, the new government of national unity (GNU) faces monumental hurdles, starting with renewing basic services, unifying the central bank and other state institutions, and organizing democratic elections promised for December. 

 Most troublingly, the foreign powers that have marshaled some 20,000 fighters in the country in violation of a U.N. ban.

Yet diplomats and analysts who have followed Libya’s dispiriting history since a NATO military intervention led to the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gaddafi sound almost giddy about what they describe as an unlikely reversal of the country’s downward spiral.