THE
ROVING EYE The tribes against the
bunker By Pepe Escobar
Libya's is a tribal revolution. It was
not, and it is not, being led by young urban
intellectuals, like in Egypt, or by the working
class (most of it in fact composed of foreign
workers). Even though the actors of the
anti-Muammar Gaddafi uprising may be a mix of
ordinary Libyans, educated and/or unemployed
youth, a section of the urban middle classes and
defectors from the army and the security services,
what trespasses all them is the tribe. Even the
Internet, in the Libyan chapter of the great 2011
Arab revolt, has not been an absolutely decisive
actor.
Libya is tribal from A to Z. There
are 140 tribes (qabila), 30 of them key,
one of them - Warfalla - boasting 1 million people
(out of a population of 6.2 million). Often, they
bear the names of the
cities they come from. Colonel
Gaddafi now says that the Libyan uprising is an
al-Qaeda plot driven by hordes on milk and Nescafe
spiked with hallucinogenic drugs. Reality is less
lysergic; it's a concert of tribes that ultimately
will bring down the African king of kings.
A huge graffiti in liberated Benghazi
reads "No to the tribal system". That's wishful
thinking. Libyan army officers are a collection of
tribal notables seduced or bribed by Gaddafi,
according to a strict divide and rule strategy,
since the birth of the regime in 1969. In both
Tunisia and Egypt the army was key in the fall of
the dictator. In Libya, it's much more
complicated. The army is not so important compared
to paramilitary militias - private and mercenary -
led by Gaddafi's sons and relatives.
Gaddafi and his "modernizer" son Saif have
already played the only cards they have left,
short of genocide; sedition (fitna) and
Islamism, much in Hosni Mubarak-style, as in
"either me or chaos". In the case of the Gaddafi
clan, it goes like this: without me, it's either
civil war - in fact fabricated by the regime
itself - or Osama bin Laden (invoked as the
deus ex machina by Gaddafi himself). Most
tribes are not buying this "god out of the
machine" ploy.
Gaddafi's prospects are
grim. The Awlad Ali tribe, on the Egyptian border,
is against him. Az Zawiyya has been against him
since early this week. Az-Zintan, 150 kilometers
southwest of Tripoli, revolves around the
Warfalla; they are all against him. The Tarhun
tribe - which, crucially, includes more than 30%
of Tripoli's population - is against him. Sheikh
Saif al-Nasr, former head of the Awlad Sulaiman
tribe, went on al-Jazeera to call southern tribal
youngsters to join the protesters. Even some
people from his own, small tribe, Qadhadfa, are
now against him.
Killing civil society
The tribe - with their clans and
subdivisions - is the only institution that for
centuries has regulated the society of those Arabs
who have lived in the regions of the Italian
colonizers, in the early 20th century, called
Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan.
After
Libya became independent in 1951, there were no
political parties. During the monarchy, politics
was all about tribes. But then Gaddafi's 1969
revolution reframed the political role of the
tribes; they became just the guarantor of cultural
and religious values. The ideology of Gaddafi's
revolution revolved around socialism - with the
people, theoretically, as the subject of history.
Political parties were also discarded. Enter the
popular committees and the popular congress. The
old elite - tribal elders - was isolated.
But tribalism struck back. First because
Gaddafi decided posts in the administration had to
be distributed by tribal affiliation. And then,
during the 1990s, Gaddafi renewed alliances with
tribal leaders; he needed them "to get rid of
mounting opposition and assorted traitors". Enter
the "popular social commandos" - who fought
corruption, solved local disputes and ended up
enshrining the tribe as a political actor.
Gaddafi made sure he had an iron-clad
alliance with the Warfalla. And by using a
strategy centered in a slogan - "armed people" -
he managed to tame the army. The key posts in the
secret service were handed to his tribe - Qadhadfa
- and one of his revolutionary companion's, the
Maqariha. This essentially meant these two tribes
monopolized all the key sectors of the economy,
and eliminated - literally - any opposition.
The inevitable result of this tribal
political system was the smashing of a civil
society based on democratic institutions. The
educated middle class was left with nothing. Then
came the United Nations embargo - which lasted for
a decade. The economy - already in bad shape -
spiraled down; there was never any decent
redistribution of the oil and gas wealth.
Inflation and unemployment shot up. The rhetoric
was always of "direct democracy"; the reality was
the few "winners" were part of a reactionary state
bourgeoisie, be they reformists, led by Saif;
conservatives (faithful to Gaddafi's Green
Book); or technocrats (those eyeing juicy
deals with foreign corporations).
Year
zero in Cyrenaica No wonder the uprising
started in Benghazi - which was kept out of any
development strategy, in a region, Cyrenaica, with
absolutely lousy infrastructure compared to
Tripolitania.
Now the officially called
Jamahiriya - the "state of the masses" - is about
to collapse. It's year zero in Cyrenaica. It's
impossible not to be reminded of the first days of
"liberated" Iraq, in April 2003. The state has
disappeared. Popular committees, Islamic groups
and armed bands now control territory. No one
knows how this will evolve. What may happen after
the battle of Tripoli (assuming the opposition is
able to get hold of some serious heavy weaponry)?
A strong possibility is the emergence of
self-governed, tribal-controlled territories, like
in Afghanistan and Somalia; in fact whole regions
seceding, although the exiled opposition is trying
very hard to dispel these fears.
Before
that, as Gaddafi has warned, there will be blood.
The air force is directly controlled by the
Gaddafi clan. Plus two of his sons are in key
positions; Moutassim is the head of the National
Security Council and Khamis is the commander of an
armed forces brigade. The army has 150,000
soldiers. Top military commanders have everything
to lose if they don't stick with Gaddafi.
According to the best estimates, Gaddafi may still
count on 10,000 soldiers. No to mention the
paid-in-gold "back African" mercenary army, most
of it inserted in Libya via Chad.
Whatever
emerges from this volcano, it's hard to see Libya
not fractured across tribal lines. It's fair to
say that the - tribal - Libyan youth who went out
in the streets to fight the weaponized Gaddafi
regime regard the tribal mentality as the plague.
It won't vanish overnight. But the best possible
expectation under the dire circumstances - with a
humanitarian crisis looming and the specter of
civil war - is that the Internet will propel the
country to a post-tribal era. Before that, a
bunker must fall.
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