History matters. Berbers in West Africa are not Arabs. Islam spread to North Africa along the coast, spreading by the sword in the vacuum left by the fall of the Roman empire that had conquered North Africa. For the past 1000 years, Arabs have dominated the Berbers (Berber was a name given by the Romans for the native people who didn’t adopt Latin based languages). Islam brought with it the Arab language, but the Bergers retain their own language and cultural identity. Speaking Arabic doesn’t make them Arabs any more than Native Americans speaking English makes them English.
The desert and mountains of Libya were something of a buffer – Tripoli and the cities along the coast had been ruled by the Arabs, but mostly filled with Berbers (“from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli”). Benghazi was the focal point of Roman conquest (and the Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians Ottoman Turks and Italy have ruled it at different periods) – it is more European and a melting pot of all different kinds of people and doesn’t have a clear separate identity.
Like many places around the world, Libya didn’t exist as a country until Europeans decided to draw lines after fighting each other in places that were former colonies. Ethnic and cultural identities were either ignored, were viewed as racist, or were viewed as a threat to European rule (See: Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Persia, Vietnam, Korea, India, Cyprus, Ireland, Sudan….)
Tripoli and Benghazi have almost nothing in common – they didn’t view themselves as one country until Italy forced them together in 1934 under the occupation and rule of Italy’s Benito Mussolini. Those horrible prisons in Benghazi where reporters are taken on tours were built by Italy, not Ghaddafi.
Libya has two very distinct oil and gas fields – the ones in Western Libya feed to Tripoli and the older fields near Egypt feed through the area around Benghazi, and a huge desert area in between.
If Europeans would stop meddling, the Berbers would likely form a country of their own – combining Tunisia, Algeria, Western Libya including Tripoli and maybe Morocco. Eastern Libya would probably be become part of Egypt – providing oil wealth to Egypt in return for access to fresh water and defense from invaders…. and a big desert in between.
Hifler, the USA stooge pretending to run the Libyan “Army” is running into problems. One of his sons tried to take over the Libyan Central bank and was shot in the leg by the the “Berber militia” in Tripoli. His other son is now held by them. Hifler himself was shot at trying to take over the airport in Tripoli and almost killed (the former US Wheelus Air Base).
Former CIA director Leon Panetta and now head of the Department of Defense made an ominous choice of words today….
“The last thing you want to do is try to impose something on a country that has just gone through what the Libyans have gone through,” he {Panetta] said. “They have earned the right to try to determine their future. They have earned the right to try to work their way through the issues they are going to have to confront.”
That suggests to me he has people working for him who DO want to “impose something” on Libya. So we give them a chance to “try” and when they fail, the US will impose a solution. Those 40,000 troops from Iraq still need a new place to occupy.
Well, the Berbers have figured it out. Whether the Benghazi folks will, only time will tell.
http://www.ww4report.com/node/10654
I really have to wonder if this was the “Change” that people who voted for Obama in 2008 were “Hoping” for – and how much it will take to wake them up. Barack Obama was going to close the prison in Cuba, but just signed and supported the provision to keep the place open and even use it as a place to send American citizens they want to detain without trial.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama?newsfeed=true
I suppose as long as the Obama folks get their Obama Bucks and have TV to watch 12 hours a day, they really don’t care about hope and change.