Fly me a Tuareg on time by Pepe Escobar

[Jefferson23]

March 8, 2011

In the standoff - not civil war - between state power in Tripoli and a tribal-based parallel government plus "irregular militias", identifying key players in Libya gets increasingly murky. It's a long (1,000 kilometer), windy, desert road from Benghazi to Tripoli, or from uprising to victory, with a crucial midway stop in Sirte - Muammar Gaddafi's Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's home town) - until something emerges out of the final battle in a Tripoli encircled by a ring of steel. There's no evidence Gaddafi is about to embrace the daring, brand new Barack Obama administration Middle East strategy of "regime alteration".

Let's try to survey the battlefield. As much as tribes in Cyrenaica - eastern Libya - were always his number one strategic nightmare, Gaddafi's notorious co-option of tribal leaders is now history.

He still can count on some western and southern tribes, including his own and Magariha, the tribe of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. But most - but not all - tribes remain against the bunker (see The tribes against the bunker Asia Times Online, February 25), including the top one, Warfallah (influential in the army), plus Zawiya (based in the oil-rich east), Bani Walid (they stopped collaborating with the security services), and Zintan (formerly allied with Gaddafi's own tribe).

If - or when - Gaddafi falls, Libya's provisional government will almost certainly be a mix of tribal leaders, with once again the more developed Tripolitania clashing with neglected Cyrenaica (one can't forget that Gaddafi's "modernizer" son Saif al-Islam blamed the uprising on tribal factions). Libyan tribes indeed have fought each other for centuries - much like in Afghanistan; but now the difference is that most are united against the common king of kings enemy.

remainder in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC08Ak01.html