THE
ROVING EYE Fly me a Tuareg on
time By Pepe Escobar
(To follow Pepe's articles on the Great
Arab Revolt, please clickhere.)
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.
The battle of Algiers The
military in Algeria is in dire need of pacemakers
to keep up with events in Libya. No wonder; if
Gaddafi falls, Algeria may be next (it's placed
ninth in The Economist's shoe-thrower index -
which aims to predict where the scent of Jasmine
may spread next - ahead of already fallen
Tunisia). Both are oil/gas powers - a wealth that
does not trickle down to their increasingly
desperate populations.
Rumors abound of
Algeria being one of the only governments in the
world practically supporting Gaddafi (Serbia is a
different case; it's silent because of an array of
juicy of military and construction contracts). So
far the closest instance of Algiers directly
helping Tripoli has been provided by the exiled
human right group Algeria Watch, which insists
Algiers has facilitated the air link for
mercenaries from Niger and Chad to reach Libya
(see here).
Algeria had done the same thing before -
transporting troops to Somalia to help a US-backed
puppet government fight rebel ''terrorist'' Somali
tribes.
What's creepier, but still
unconfirmed, is that one Colonel Djamel Bouzghaia
- the "war on terror"-minded key security adviser
to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika - may
be the designated smuggler of deposed Tunisian
president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's private
security forces and Republican Guard to, where
else, Libya. Among these nasty types are the
snipers who killed Tunisian demonstrators in three
different cities, and may now be killing Libyan
civilians.
Tuaregs to the rescue If Gaddafi can count on Tunisian snipers for
his dirty work, what to say about the nomadic
Tuaregs from the Sahel?
Historically,
Gaddafi always wreaked havoc among his neighbors -
and Tuaregs were always instrumentalized by his
megalomaniac strategy of carving out a Grand
Sahara nation around Libya. He could not but
profit from Tuareg secession dreams.
Ten
years ago, on the road in Timbuktu in Mali, Tuareg
friends provided me a crash course on Tuareg
rebellions and the secession movement. In the
early 1970s, many Tuaregs enlisted in Gaddafi's
Islamic Legion - an outfit that would in thesis
fight for a unified Islamic state in northern
Africa. At the time there was absolutely nowhere
else to go in a drought-stricken Sahel-Sahara. The
legion lasted till the late 1980s, and then
dissolved.
Gaddafi also propped up Tuareg
rebellions, especially in Mali and Niger. He paid
for installations in Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal in
Mali, opened a consulate in Kidal, and turned on
the petrodollar charm. Tuaregs from north Mali
simply abhor the central government in Bamako. The
nomadic Tuaregs obviously don't trust any form of
central government; essentially what they want is
autonomy, or at least more investment in
sanitation, health and education in the towns and
desert villages they live.
Bamako and the
Tuareg rebellion finally signed an agreement in
July 2006, under Algerian mediation, leading in
theory to peace and development in the Kidal
region. The rebellion officially laid down their
weapons in February 2009. Only one of the rebel
leaders, Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, did not agree with
the whole set up. He is exiled in Libya.
There are Tuaregs living in the southwest
Libyan desert. But Bamako is now spinning that at
least 800 Tuaregs from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger
and Algeria have already joined Gaddafi's forces;
how to resist an offer of $10,000 in cash to join,
plus a $1,000 day-rate to fight, when you are a
young, unemployed Tuareg?
The difference
now is that Gaddafi seems to be creating not only
a secession between the Tuaregs and the countries
they live, but a secession inside the Tuareg
communities themselves - especially in Mali, Niger
and Chad. Some Tuaregs already worked for him in
Libya for years; some have been members of the
Libyan armed forces, with Libyan nationality; as
for the new ones, they are being recruited by the
force of the petrodollar - to the despair of many
Tuareg communities.
That's' exactly what
Abdou Sallam Ag Assalat, the president of the
regional assembly in Kidal, told Agence
France-Presse, "These young people are going en
masse to Libya ... the regional authorities are
trying to dissuade them, particularly former
rebels, but it's not easy because for them there
are the dollars, and weapons to be recovered ...
One day they will be back with the same weapons to
destabilize the Sahel."
The Tuaregs leave
from north Mali, cross to southern Algeria and
then cross to southern Libya; it's a grueling
48-hour trip, usually in convoys. Of course these
desert "borders" are mirages. The operation,
according to Algerian media, is organized by a
former rebel Tuareg leader from Mali, now in
Libya; he could well be Ibrahim Ag Bahanga. And if
there's an air link involved - either from Algeria
or from Chad - that's where the Tuaregs meet the
Algerian security facilitators.
One of his
Ukrainian nurses, Oksana, now says that Gaddafi is
a "great psychologist". He's a fine sociologist as
well, because he has noted - and immensely
profited from - the fact that there are no real
nation-states in the Sahel-Sahara, from a
sociological, political and juridical point of
view. Blaming the Tuaregs is not the point. Both
Algeria and Libya have done nothing to at least
repair the ravages of colonialism - which has
scattered nomadic Tuaregs among four countries.
Algeria always benefited from - and repressed -
Tuareg fragmentation. As for the African king of
kings, he can always count on his nomadic reserve
army.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
