And Misrata, the country's third-largest city and just two hours' drive east of the capital, effectively rules itself, with its militias ignoring government pleas and exacting brutal revenge on anyone they believe to have supported Gadhafi.

Kufra, deep in the southern desert, is a battleground for two rival tribes, one Arab and one African, with dozens killed in two weeks of fighting last month.

Tripoli remains under the control of various revolutionaries-turned-militiamen, who have resisted calls to integrate into a national army.

"What Gadhafi left in Libya for 40 years is a very, very heavy heritage," said Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the National Transitional Council, which in theory rules Libya but doesn't even hold sway in the capital Tripoli. "It's ... hard to get over it in one or two years or even five years."

Libya may not face literal fragmentation, but it could be doomed to years of instability as it recovers from four decades of rule under Gadhafi, who pitted neighbor against neighbor, town against town and tribe against tribe. The resentment and bitterness he incubated is now bursting forth in general lawlessness.

After liberation from the rule of Gadhafi, Libyans dreamed their country of 6 million could become another Dubai -- a state with a small population, flush with petro-dollars, that is a magnet for investment. Now they worry that it is turning more into another Somalia, a nation that has had no effective government for more than 20 years.

The move shows how six months after Gadhafi's fall, the central government in Libya has proved incapable of governing at all. Other countries that shed their leaders in the Arab Spring revolts -- Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen -- are going through rocky transitions, but none has seen a collapse of central authority like Libya. The collapse has only worsened as cities, towns, regions, militias and tribes all act on their own, setting up their independent power centers.

Al-Rahel points to the capital Tripoli on the map, in the west. "All troubles came from here," he said, "but we will not permit this to happen again."

Opponents fear such a declaration could be the first step toward outright dividing the country. But some easterners say they are determined to end the domination and discrimination by the west that prevailed under dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Al-Rahel, a former army officer, leads a movement to declare semiautonomy in eastern Libya, where most of the country's oil fields are located. The region's top tribal leaders meet Tuesday in the east's main city Benghazi to consider unilaterally announcing an eastern state, linked to the west only by a tenuous "federal union."

BENGHAZI, Libya—A large map of Libya hangs on the wall in the home of Idris al-Rahel, with a line down the middle dividing the country in half.

At a Misrata garage that militiamen have turned into a makeshift prison, one detainee, Abdel-Qader Abdel- Nabi , shows what remains of his left hand: The fingers have been cut off in a ragged line about halfway down. Abdel-Nabi said militiamen lashed his hand with a horse whip until the fingers were severed.

"Then they threw me bleeding down the stairs," he said. His interrogators were trying to get him to confess to working with Gadhafi's forces during last year's civil war and collaborating in the killing of rebel fighters. He refused, saying he was innocent.

Around 800 other detainees are held in the same facility, which militiamen allowed The Associated Press to visit. The detainees are accused of involvement in killings, torture, rape and other crimes under Gadhafi. There are no courts at the moment capable of addressing the suspicions, so the detainees are entirely at the mercy of militiamen.

Medics in a clinic set up in the garage said they have treated dozens tortured in interrogations. One medic said he had seen nine prisoners whose genitalia had been cut off, and others given electric shocks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation by the militiamen.

Misrata was one of the few major cities in the west to rise up against Gadhafi last year, and paid for it with a monthslong, devastating siege by regime forces. After repelling the assault, its militias joined the final march on Tripoli that captured the capital and brought down Gadhafi in August. It was Misrata militiamen who found Gadhafi in his final stronghold, his hometown of Sirte, and killed him in October.

Now the city seems determined to decide its own fate, creating a de facto self-rule. Last month, it held its own elections for a new city council, after forcing out a self-appointed council formed in the uprising that came to be seen as corrupt and ineffective.

In the isolated southeastern town of Kufra, 600 miles (990 kilometers) from Benghazi, fighters from the powerful Zwia Arab tribe have besieged the African Tabu tribe in a battle for the past two weeks.

The Tabu, an ethnic minority indigenous to the area, were heavily suppressed under Gadhafi. After Gadhafi's fall, the National Transitional Council assigned the Tabu to police the nearby borders with Chad and Sudan to stop smuggling -- a trade dominated by the Zwia.

The Tabu say fighting erupted Feb. 11, after a Zwia smuggler killed six Tabu border guards. The Zwia in turn say the Tabu attacked them in an attempt to declare their own state in the area, which the Tabu deny.