BFF   

“Tribal leaders and militia commanders in oil-rich eastern Libya have declared their intention to seek semi-autonomy, raising fears that the country might disintegrate following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), the interim central government based in the capital Tripoli, has repeatedly voiced its opposition to the creation of a partly autonomous eastern region, warning it could eventually lead to the break-up of the North African nation. Thousands of representatives of major tribal leaders, militia commanders and politicians made the declaration on Tuesday in a ceremony held in the eastern city of Benghazi. They vowed to end decades of marginalisation under Gaddafi and named a council to run the affairs of the newly created region, extending from the central coastal city of Sirte to the Egyptian border in the east. Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston, reporting from the capital Tripoli, said the announcement was only the beginning of a process………...”

That is what happens when the façade of ‘nationhood’ that Qaddafi violently maintained collapses. Yet oil, petroleum, is the one item most likely to keep Libya from breaking apart now.
Most Arab states are basically a balance of tribal, ethnic, and sectarian interests. Egypt is famously the one exception. Egypt is not a tribal society and it has historically accepted a multi-ethnic culture (contrary to common belief, Egyptian people have roots from all around the Mediterranean and the rest of the Middle East). The Christian Copts were never an “issue” until the Mubarak regime started to dismantle the secular state that was initiated in the days of Mohammed Ali (Pasha not Clay). Egyptian Jews were not an “issue” until after the first Palestine War of 1948 (what Arabs call the Nakba, catastrophe, and Jews call Israel’s War of Independence). In Egypt, Shi’as are a tiny minority that the Mubarak regime magnified and built up into an illusory threat, no doubt under Saudi Wahhabi pressure. Now, with the political system of Egypt Islamized, with the Salafis effectively sharing parliamentary power with the Muslim Brotherhood, all bets are off.
 
In Syria also sectarian, tribal, and ethnic divisions are coming out into the open. Except Syria has more of these divisions, deeper divisions, longer suppressed than either Libya or Egypt. And Syria has been under the Ba’athist rule since 1963, under effective Ba’athist ideological political influence since the late 1940s. A very long period of the denial of divisions, of sweeping things under the rug. And Syria is surrounded by states that perceive their own national interests in Syria, and they are beginning to interfere and intervene.
Cheers
mhg


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