On,August 9. 2011, The NY Times had an online article on how the Berbers of Libya are using the civil war in that country to seize local power in their homelands of western Libya. They are now in conflict with local Arabs. This is a good thing. Where the Times sees trouble, I see opportunity.
The first three paragraphs of the article are:
“YAFRAN, Libya — In the evening, as the searing desert temperatures subside, the residents who have returned to this rebel-held city near the front lines appear on the streets. Some of them carry cans of paint, and begin to decorate murals with the characters of an ancient language that had been forbidden by the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
“The language is Tamazight, the tongue of the Amazigh, or Berbers, who, after decades of oppression in Libya are re-emerging as a political force.
“As rebels have chased the Qaddafi military from much of the arid highlands in Libya’s west this spring and summer, Yafran has become the easternmost outpost of a cultural and linguistic reawakening that has expanded across the map, and it is expected to expand more.”
Further down in the article the Times notes that the Berbers of Yafran have taken revenge on local Arabs who they feel have oppressed them:
“After the Qaddafi military withdrew in early June, the houses in Yafran of the Mashaashia, a tribe whose members supported the Qaddafi government, were set upon and burned. Their occupants vanished from these mountains, apparently having fled. Many Amazigh residents say the Mashaashia are not welcome back.”
While not up to date on the standings of Berbers/Amazigh in Libya, it strikes me that the west has another chance there to roll back the dominance of Arabs in Middle East and North Africa. Recently the independence of Southern Sudan was obtained. How much of a shock that was to Arabs I do not know, but since Arab-Islam seems to be an enemy of the west, and a vicious suppressor of minority ethnic freedom amongst the people it rules, I think pushing for freedom for these non-Arabs ruled by Arabs is a generally good thing.
I am in favor of leaving Libya to its own hell, but as long as we are involved, targeted handouts - even guns - to the Libyan Berbers seem appropriate. Heck, just a wish, but I would like to see a Middle East where the Christians in Lebanon, the Kurds in Iraq, the Christian and animist peoples of South Sudan, and the Berbers of North Africa all have their own states.
Of course the Berbers are Muslims, but they seem not to have been a source of anti-western animosity, possibly because they are more hostile to their Arab neighbors than to distant non-Muslims.
Some Kurds in Germany do not adapt well to the German cultural norms, but I have hopes for a Kurdish state carved out of Iraq. One thing in favor of a Kurdish state is that the Kurds there seem to follow a brand of Sunni Islam not so hostile to non-Muslims. Like the Berbers, Kurdish Islam may be – or just seems – less dangerous to the west because they are focused on keeping their Arab neighbors away, and not on waging a general Jihad against non-Muslims. And of course, we recently built up a dept of good will from the Iraqi Kurds, by keeping first Saddam Hussein and more recently our installed Iraqi government off their backs.
A few months ago, a web search turns up only a few academic types who claim expertise on the Kurds, and a few e-mail exchanges left me no closer to understanding their culture than I was before the exchange. But I do know that there are Islamic sects that follow beliefs we in the west can more easily live with than Sunni or Shiite orthodoxy.
For example, 75% of the Arabs from Oman follow a sect of Islam, Ibadi, that is more tolerant of other beliefs than mainstream Sunni orthodoxy. My wife lived in Mombasa 4 decades ago and apparently benefited from this, since Islam in Mombasa was influenced by trade connection with Oman. And at one time, into the late 19th century, the East Africa coast was ruled by the Ibadi-dominated Oman.
(More information on the Ibadis is available at this link: http://www.uga.edu/islam/ibadis.html )
All the above is more speculation then reasoned policy. And I am not the first person to come up with the idea of exploiting factions in Islam, religious or ethnic, to our advantage.
Anything is better than boots on the ground.
Wow!
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