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 politicalparties. 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.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
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