BENGHAZI, Libya – In front of Benghazi’s stock market, pedestrians pick their way around lakes of sewage in the street, carefully stepping on bricks set in the fetid water.

The grandest hotel in Libya’s second-largest city is a gloomy, state-owned bulk, with broken windows and dim corridors.

Benghazans, who see their city as a co-capital and historic home of Libya’s king, are bitter over decades of neglect and humiliation under Moammar Gadhafi. And they rumble with discontent that the transitional leadership in Tripoli still doesn’t treat them as equals.