So what ever happened to Libya? It was in the corporate media every night for ages as its people rose up in the "Arab Spring". Khadaffi’s legions fought the rebels, then NATO intervened, then Khadaffi was killed, everyone celebrated and then,,,,,,,what?
Anyone heard anything lately about Libya? What happened? Who is running the country?
Well what has happened is that the eastern portion of the country, known in the old days as Cyrenaica, has declared it’s autonomy from the central government in Tripoli, a region formerly known as Tripolitania. And if civil war breaks out, no one will intervene this time to stop the fighting.
Cyrenaica region, with its center in Benghazi, the cradle of last year’s uprising against Muammar Khaddafi, declared its intention a week ago. The new state, to be known as Barqa, will have its own parliament and police force, and wants to run its affairs independently from Tripoli. Tribes in eastern Libya have been antagonizing Tripoli for decades and want a loose federalism with as much distance as possible from the central government.
Mustapha Abdel Jalill is currently head of the interim government in Tripoli and he is viewed by many in Cyranaica as a NATO puppet.
Wherever a conflict among Libyan tribes may take the country, Western powers are not likely to get involved in Libya’s political affairs – as long as Tripoli honors its oil contracts. There is a feeling that no one cares about the future of Libya as a democracy so long as oil continues to flow.
Many had predicted a break-up of the country if the West intervened militarily and we may be witnessing the first steps in that direction.
Khaddafi had been in power so long no one under age 50 remembers a Libya without him. He ruled for 42 years and there is certainly a danger that those now running the show do not know how to build new institutions to replace him.
A bit of history is in order.
Libya is another of those "nations" put together by colonialists - this time the Italians. Previous to being "Libya" it was the three regions now comprising Libya - Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fazzan. Each region was dominiated by its local berber or Arab tribes and all were ruled on and off, more or less by the Ottomans from 1551 to 1911.
In 1911 Italian forces invaded Cyrenaica and after a two year war with the Turks annexed the region. While the Ottomans ceded the region to Italy via the Treaty of Lausanne, fierce resistance to Italian occupation continued from the Senussi political-religious order, a strongly nationalistic group of Sunni Muslims.
Omar al-Mukhtar
Under the leadership of Omar al-Mukhtar and centered in the mountains of Cyrenaica the group lead the resistance to Italian settlement of Libya. Generals Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani waged campaigns of pacification which turned into punitive bloody reprisals and atrocities. Resistance leaders were executed or fled into exile and more than 100,000 Cyrenaicans wound up in Italian concentration camps. Mukhtar was captured and hanged in 1931.
Fascist Italy then merged the three regions and annexed them as Aftica Senttentrionale Italiana, or ASI.
In the aftermath of the violence, Mussolini attempted to improve the image of his government to Libyan Arabs and pursued policies designed to win the trust of Arab leaders there. He and Governor Italo Balbo were successful to the extent that in 1940 nearly 30,000 Libyan Arabs and Berbers joined the Italian Army and fought bravely in North Africa
Italo Balbo - Governor of Italian Libya
In December 1934, individual freedom, inviolability of home and property, the right to join the military or civil administrations, and the right to freely pursue a career or employment were guaranteed to the Libyans. In 1939 laws were passed allowing Muslims to joing the Fascist Party and in particular the Muslim Association of the Lictor; the 1939 reforms also allowed the formation of Libyan units in the Italian Army.
The Tripoli Grand Prix - 1933
During the era of fascism many Italians moved to Libya and colonized the coastal areas. In 1940 the Libyan Italians were nearly 110,000, or 12% of the total population of Libya. They were concentrated on the Mediterranean coast around the cities of Tripoli (constituting 37% of the city's population) and Bengazhi (31% of the city's population) ; each city enjoyed a huge building boom. In 1938, the governor Italo Balbo brought 20,000 Italian farmers to colonize Libya, and 26 new villages were founded for them, mainly in Cyrenaica.
After Italy’s surrender, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania were under British control with Fazzan controlled by the French. In December 1951 Libya declared its independence as a The United Kingdom of Libya, a sovereign state in accordance with a U. N. Resolution.
It was set up as a Constitutional Monarchy, with its first and only King, Idris, the leader of the Muslim Senussi order of Sunni Muslims and Emir of Cyrenaica.
King Idris
Following independence Libya faced a number of monumental problems. There were no colleges in the country and just sixteen college graduates. Also the country had just three lawyers with not a single Libyan physician, engineer or pharmacist in the kingdom. It was also estimated that only 250,000 Libyans were literate and that 5% of the population was blind, with eye diseases such as trachoma widespread. In light of the situation, Britain provided most of the civil servants to staff the government.
In April 1955, oil exploration started in the kingdom with its first oil fields being discovered in 1959. The first exports began in 1963 with the discovery of oil helping to transform the Libyan economy. Although oil drastically improved Libya's finances, popular resentment grew as wealth was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the elite.
Idris ruled until 1969 when he was overthrown by Moammar Khadafi while he was in Turkey receiving medical treatment. Idris went into exile in Cairo and died at 70 years of age. Idris had been a close ally of Britain and the United States and the rise of Nasserism in Egypt, Pan-Arabism and the British attack on Egypt after the Suez Canal crisis greatly weakened his position.
Most Italians had left Libya after it declared its independence and the remaining 20,000 were ordered to leave Libya as one of Khadafi's first acts on taking power.
Libya was the first country to obtain its independence through the U.N. and one of the first colonial nations in Africa to become independent.
On 30 August 2008, Khadafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy would pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation In exchange, Libya would take measures to combat illegal immigration coming from its shores and boost investments in Italian companies.The treaty was ratified by both countries early in 2009. Cooperation has since ceased as a result of the recent Libyan Civil War.
A young Benghazian carrying a photo of the King
Whether or not Libya breaks up into what it once was, either peacefully or through civil war, remains to be seen. What seems fairly obvious however is that no one seems to care this time around.
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IceRune
Very Thingish Things
Daniel Rigney
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I like the name "Idris".
There has been an oscillation between centralization and de-centralization, and given how Qadhafi favored Tripoli, this is not a surprise as to Benghazi region somewhat detaching.
What an incredible journey Libya has had.
I have been heartbroken for the cavalier treatment of Libya by the USNATOkilling machine under the guise of humanitarian intervention. Apparently the tribal discord is reaching according to one Russian diplomat "genocidal proportions."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30890.htm
"The Russian expert pointed to poor living standards in Libya, where unemployment is on the rise and GDP is on the decline. More than 10,000 people are still in prison in Libya, and the crackdown on Gaddafi supporters continues. Podtserob also mentioned unsuccessful attempts by the International Criminal Court to obtained unbiased information about what is going on in Libyan jailhouses."
This from
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30890.htm
Daniel Larison:
"...No one planned to stabilize Libya once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, and the National Transitional Council (NTC) rejected the idea of an outside stabilization force, which has left Libya at serious risk of fragmentation and renewed conflict. Intervention "on the cheap" may be more politically palatable in the West because of the low cost to Western nations, but it can still be quite destructive for the countries affected by it."
snip
"Paradoxically, the Libyan war and its aftermath have had the unintended consequence of undermining the doctrine of "responsibility to protect" (R2P) that was originally used to justify the intervention. Many advocates of intervention believed Western involvement would strengthen the norm that sovereignty may be limited to protect a civilian population from large-scale loss of life. Instead, the Libyan intervention helped discredit that idea."
"A key requirement of the "responsibility to protect" is that intervening governments assume the "responsibility to rebuild" in the wake of military action, but this was a responsibility that the intervening governments never wanted and haven't accepted. All of this has proven to skeptical governments, including emerging democratic powers such as Brazil and India, that the doctrine can and will be abused to legitimize military intervention while ignoring its other requirements. The Libyan experience has soured many major governments around the world on R2P, and without their support in the future, it will become little more than a façade for the preferred policies of Western governments."
Of course the mass media doesn't cover things like that much, since its isn't perceived to be worth the time to explain, as you do, the history.
Funny, as some people wrote lots about Libya, and the editors here never noticed LOL, so congratulations.
The only thing that I would add is that to address the concerns of unity, Idris centralized things in 1964 to about the right level, where Qadhafi went too far the other direction. Its a new country as you say, prior to the Italians, and yet in Arabic, Libii is a word for a reason as to identity. Patience in such things is often for the best.
R+++ all around.
I thought the word was, LABIA.
My bad.
Interesting, but not what I was expecting.
I thought the word was, LABIA.
Frank Apisa
MARCH 23, 2012 03:37 PM"
Interesting example of how your perverted 'head" works, or in actuality doesn't work.
Why not use this as a lead-in to your most recent revelation of how your dick used to be as hard as an tire iron, but now you can bend it in half, you freakin' moron (no disrespect intended toward morons)?
-R-
Libya seems to be on the verge of disintegration one year after the military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In the first week of March, leaders from its oil-rich eastern region, which includes Benghazi, the focal point of the Western-backed rebellion that ousted Muammar Qaddafi, announced their intention to seek “semi-autonomy” from the central government. The meeting in Benghazi, where the decision was taken, was attended by major political leaders, military commanders and tribal leaders from the region. The new “semi-autonomous” region, Cyrenaica, will extend from the central coastal city of Sirte, Khaddafi's hometown, to the country's border with Egypt. According to energy experts, the area holds around two-thirds of the country's oil reserves.
Did you hear about this development in the corporate media? Naah.
Therehave been numerous recent reports that the United States has sent some 12,000 soldiers to Libya, in the first phase of deployments to the oil-rich North African nation.
Have you heard about that in the corporate media? Nah. You have to scour the web to find this stuff. There has been no confirmation from the Pentagon.
When Gaddafi was killed observers predicted that his demise would not mark the end of the war but would in fact mark its escalation. Libya has been in the eye of a storm but now the winds are blowing again. The re-taking of Ben Walid by Khaddafi loyalists and the recent declaration of autonomy by tribal and militia leaders in oil-rich eastern Libya, are just harbingers of the strife to come.
While the NATO-installed head of the Tripoli-based National Transitional Council has threatened the use of "force" to prevent the country’s partition along regional lines, his words are bound to fall on deaf ears for the simple reason that he does not have the authority to back his words. He is considered by many to be a Western mannequin.
Britain and France both obtain a great deal of oil from Libya. Their major concern is keeping the spigot open. Many believe they could care less if Libya splits along its historical lines. If Libya is going to stay together it needs a lot more help than it is getting.
Thanks again to the readers. I truly hate long comments. Truly
@amelia - please post more about your experiennce there. You were ignored by almost all commenters here.
@markinjapan - what can I say about you that you don't say about yourself with the obscene bullying?