"ΕΝΗΜΕΡΩΤΗΣ"
ΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΜΑ Νο
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01837
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[
2011.03.12 00:00
]
“NATIVE LIBYANS ARE PRIMARILY BERBERS, ARABIZED BERBERS AND
TURKS, ETHNIC ‘PURE’ ARABS (MAINLY TRIBAL DESERT ARABS ‘BEDOUINS’),
AND TUAREG. SMALL HAUSA, AND TEBU TRIBAL GROUPS IN SOUTHERN
LIBYA ARE NOMADIC OR SEMINOMADIC”
libya – land o’ tribes
02/21/2011
so, libya’s got a
handful of ethnic groups…
“Native Libyans are primarily Berbers, Arabized Berbers and
Turks, ethnic ‘pure’ Arabs (mainly tribal desert Arabs ‘Bedouins’),
and Tuareg. Small Hausa, and Tebu tribal groups in southern
Libya are nomadic or seminomadic.”
(here’s
a nice map outlining from whence they hail.)
plus there’s
a whole bunch o’ immigrants (some legal, a LOT illegal)
from egypt and tunisia and sub-saharan african countries…
“Among foreign residents, the largest groups are citizens of
other African nations, including North Africans (primarily Egyptians),
and Sub-Saharan Africans. Libya is home to a large illegal population
which numbers more than one million, mostly Egyptians and Sub-Saharan
Africans.”
simply having all these various ethnic groups in one country
would make things really interesting on the political scene
(with all those conflicting ethnic genetic interests); but THEN,
libya is full o’ tribes, too! tribes, tribes, and more TRIBES!
all of the berbers and arabs and arabized berbers are divided
into who knows how many tribes and clans and familial-what-nots
(i dunno — i couldn’t find a comprehensive list online).
97% of the population is muslim, and 90-95% of them are
sunni muslims. so there’s not really any obvious ethnic/tribal
divides along religious lines like there is in
bahrain.
nope. what there is is TRIBES.
tribes seem to be
a complete mystery to (most) contemporary cultural anthropologists,
prolly ’cause
most of them don’t do science.
however,
mr. snappy dresser himself knows what tribes are (pg.
299).
in fact, he sounds like he’s been reading a lot of
steve sailer!:
“A tribe is a family which has grown as a result of procreation.
It follows that a tribe is a big family….”
unfortunately
“…tribalism damages nationalism
because tribal allegiance weakens national loyalty and flourishes
at its expense…. It is damaging to the political structure if
it is subjected to the family, tribal, or sectarian social structure
and adopts its characteristics.
so, he’s not quite as dumb as he looks, eh? not
quite.
muammar al gaddafi is a member of the — you guessed it —
al gaddafi tribe. i’ve seen the gaddafi tribe described as a
both a berber tribe and an arabized berber tribe, so i’m not
sure how berber and|or arab m. gaddafi himself is. in his early
years he was a big follower of nasser and
pan-arabism, so i’m guessing he’s quite arab, but you never
know. maybe he was just keen on allying himself with powerful
folks in the arab world. (apparently, there are
one million members of the al gaddafi tribe in egypt. don’t
know if that makes the gaddafis arab tribes or arabized berber
tribes or what. -??- i wonder how many of the illegal egyptian
immigrants in libya are gaddafis?)
anyway. at the beginning of his glorious revolution, gadaffi
apparently tried to
get rid of the tribes and
tribal sentiments in libya. at the very least, he tried
to minimize their power (while appointing members of his own
tribe to important positions, of course.) this didn’t work out.
the tribes didn’t just miraculously go away just ’cause he instituted
a new
-ism
in libya. (what he should’ve done, of course, if he truly wanted
to break the tribes, was to force everyone in libya to marry
out of their tribe. ah, well. looks like it’s
too late now!)
when that tactic didn’t pan out, gaddafi, in the ’80s, began
to (try to)
work with the tribes:
“Al-Qadhafi said political parties – whether they are Arab nationalists,
communists or religious parties – had failed in liberating,
developing or in uniting Arabs. He argued that only tribes can
realize such a dream because they are united by high ideals
and traditions: ‘We
have gone back to tribes because other forces have failed.
Where is the Ba’th Party, where are the Arab nationalists, where
are other nationalist parties, where are the communist and religious
parties? They are all dispersed and they did nothing. They have
failed to unite or liberate the nation. Now the modern party
is the tribe, and tomorrow’s army is the tribe.’”
apparently, gaddafi was a master at pitting the tribes against
one another. up until now.
so, the state of libya now is as it ever was — full of inbred
tribes that are all looking out for themselves (not
that there’s anything wrong with that! — but democracy ain’t
gonna work well in such a place):
“Tribalism remains a key determinant in political allegiances
in Libya. Neither oil wealth and modernizing influences nor
Qadhafi’s revolution have altered the web of kinship-based loyalties
that has characterized Libya’s domestic political scene for
centuries. Libya’s tribes are arranged in a pyramidal lineage
scheme of subtribal, clan, and family elements.”
[source]
from
2002:
“The rivalries among the tribes of Libya extend to an era well
before the formation of the modern Libyan state. Such rivalries
are most pronounced in the armed forces. Each of the main tribes
is represented in the military establishment and the various
popular and revolutionary committees. For instance, Qadhafi’s
Qadhadfa tribe has an ongoing rivalry with the Magariha tribe
of Abdel Sallam Jalloud, the man who was second-in-command in
the country for decades until he fell out of favour….
“The Warfalla tribe, which turned against Qadhafi during the
coup attempt in 1993, is numerous and is closest to Jalloud’s
Magariha tribe. The Al Zintan tribe backed the Warfalla as well.
The coup attempt was spearheaded by Warfalla officers in the
Bani Walid region, 120 km south-east of Tripoli. The main reason
for the coup attempt was that, despite its size, this tribe
was poorly represented in the regime and only occupied second-echelon
posts in the officers’ corps.
Moreover, Warfalla tribal officers have been excluded from the
air force. The air force is reserved almost exclusively to the
Qadhadfa tribe, to which Qadhafi belongs.
[and now
the air force is bombing the protestors. what a surprise!]
It was the air force which crushed
the coup attempt in October 1993. Jalloud’s Magariha tribe comes
next to the Warfalla in terms of numerical strength and is bigger
than the Qadhadfa….
If Jalloud’s Magariha, the Warfalla and Islamic militant groups
unite against Qadhafi in an all-out confrontation involving
the military, they could take over power. But that would soon
be followed by challenges from other tribes. Ultimately, if
Qadhafi is overthrown, these tribes could fight each other and
Libya could be split into several regions.”
confused? i am.
gaddafis. magarihas. warfallas. al zintans. that’s a lot of
players to keep track of! right now, the warfallas and another
tribe called the al zuwayyas are
siding with the protestors. (the al zuwayyas are the ones
who
threatened to stop the oil exports.)
from the
nyt:
“Libyans tend to identify themselves as members of tribes or
clans rather than citizens of a country, and Colonel Qaddafi
has governed in part through the mediation of a ‘social leadership
committee’ composed of about 15 representatives of various tribes,
said Diederik Vandewalle, a Dartmouth professor who has studied
the country.
“What’s more, Mr. Vandewalle noted, most of the tribal representatives
on the committee are also military officers, who each represent
a tribal group within the military.
So, unlike the Tunisian or Egyptian militaries, the Libyan military
lacks the cohesion or professionalism that might enable it to
step in to resolve the conflict with the protesters or to stabilize
the country.“
terrific.
gaddafi needs (needed?) to go ’cause he’s a psychopathic lunatic
that has driven his country into the ground with his bizarro
political strategies. but, just as in egypt and bahrain, democracy
clearly AIN’T gonna make things much better.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
note:
no idea what the consanguinity rate for libyans is because of
the completely f*cked up health-care system in libya (most of
the cousin-marriage research done in the arab world is connected
to medical research ’cause of all the genetic diseases|conditions).
there is
one report which states in the abstract that there is a
“high frequency of consanguineous
marriages in Libya.” the rate is not in the abstract
and, unfortunately, i don’t have access to the journal.
it wouldn’t, i think, be unreasonable to suppose that the consanguinity
rate in libya is not unlike its neighbors, egypt and tunisia,
which are
38.9% (2000) and
26.9%
(1980s) respectively. the moral of the story is: all of those
tribes are inbred. and you know
what that means.
see also:
Libya crisis: what role do tribal loyalties play?
and
What’s Happening in Libya Explained
previously:
baharnas and ajams and howalas, oh my!,
cousin marriage conundrum addendum
SOURSE:
http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/libya-land-o-tribes/
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