On Mar 14, 2011, at 1:15 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>> 'Libya' Does Not Exist
>> By Justin Raimondo. March 13, 2011
>>
...cont.)
> A fine network of social and religious associations and loyalties –
> inextricably linked to the two pillars of society in the region,
> which are family and faith – has always existed beneath the thin
> veneer of Gadhafi’s state apparatus. As the façade falls away, the
> underlying structures stand revealed.
>
> The Benghazi rebellion is essentially a secessionist movement, which
> seeks to break Cyrenaica away from what used to be the entirely
> separate and distinct state of Tripolitania – now the seat of the
> central government and Gadhafi’s chief stronghold. Cyrenaica has a
> long history as an independent and quasi-independent entity, which
> goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks, and continued into
> modern times. That history is now reasserting itself. Cyrenaica was
> the center of resistanceto the Italians. It is also the center of
> the Sanussi sect’s influence – a version of Islam, founded in 1837.
> The Sanussi, based in the Bedouin tribes of the East, have always
> been the most troublesome for would-be colonizers and empire-
> builders: they resisted the rule of the Italians just as they fought
> the Ottomans – and are now fighting Gadhafi.
>
> King Idris I, who took the throne after World War II, descended from
> the original Sanussi emir – and, it turns out, he was right in his
> reluctance to extend his rule to Tripoli. If the Western powers,
> hiding behind the UN, had taken the King’s advice and allowed
> Cyrenaica to go its own way, the present tragedy might have been
> averted. As it is, the rebellion against Gadhafi has turned into a
> stalemate, with the Eastern part effectively liberated from the
> eccentric despot’s control.
>
> This is no doubt unacceptable to the Western powers, which want a
> single state to deal with and exploit, and it is doubly unacceptable
> to the Arab League, because it opens up a whole new can of worms,
> throwing into question the borders of states created in the wake of
> the Ottoman collapse. If Cyrenaica can secede from Tripoli, then why
> can’t the Kurds secede from Iraq – and the Shi’ites of the Saudi
> Kingdom’s Eastern province rid themselves of their Sunni overlords?
>
> In any case, the fiction of “Libya” is falling by the wayside. What
> will succeed it remains an open question. However, Western
> intervention, if and when it occurs, cannot bring stability to a
> “nation” that never really existed in the first place.
>
>
> The great Arab Awakening now sweeping North Africa and the Middle
> East is not only bringing down the old order of Western-supported
> dynasties, and tinpot dictators of Gadhafi’s ilk – it is also
> erasing arbitrary borders drawn by Western colonizers and Ottoman
> caliphs, and redrawing them to reflect underlying realities more
> accurately. Any attempt by the West to intervene, and favor one
> outcome over another, is bound to draw the ire of indigenous peoples
> – and redirect their anger away from local despots, and towards us.
>
> That is why it’s in our interests to stand aside and let the upsurge
> play out, without aiding the rebellion in Cyrenaica or standing in
> its way. Let the recent arrest and expulsion of a British
> “diplomatic” delegation, which landed in the Eastern region in the
> dead of night, serve as a lesson and a warning to the West. The sign
> clearly says: “No Trespassing.” We defy it at our peril.
>
>
>> Article taken from Antiwar.com Original - http://original.antiwar.com
>> URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/03/13/libya-does-not-exist/