Machinations of tribes are part of the uprising and will play a key role in the country’s future
AMONG THE thousands of revolutionary slogans daubed on walls across eastern Libya, there are some that refer to the tribal dynamics that have underpinned the region’s social fabric for centuries. “No to tribalism,” says one in the town of al-Bayda. “Tribes are history. We are all Libyans,” reads another in Benghazi, the city where the uprising that has shaken Muammar Gadafy’s 42-year rule began almost a month ago.
Libya has as many as 140 tribes but only 30 are held to have any particular significance. The answer to the question of how much tribal identity matters in Libya depends very much on who you ask. “I have the blood of three different tribes running through my veins. We are united above all tribes,” says Mustafa Gheriani, spokesman for the opposition headquartered in Benghazi. “The youth in Libya, which make up 60 per cent of the population, are not tribal. They don’t have the old mentalities.”
Over the four decades of Gadafy’s rule, Libya has become highly urbanised, with most of its 6.4 million people now living in the capital Tripoli and other cities, including Benghazi. Urbanisation has helped dilute tribal affiliations. “I never think about what tribe I come from,” says Salah, a resident of Benghazi whose family came from an area further east. “And I never wonder what tribe a person might be from when I meet them. That way of thinking belongs to the past.”
Mohammed al-Mukhtar, the 90-year-old leader of the Imnifa tribe whose father is considered a national hero for uniting eastern tribes against Italian colonial rule in the 1920s, dismisses Gadafy’s warnings that Libya will descend into civil war fought on tribal lines if he falls. “Tribes will not be an issue and we have never had a civil war,” he says.
Khalil Ali al-Musmari, a retired professor of anthropology and sociology in Benghazi, says from the outset of his dictatorship Gadafy sought to play the tribes against each other in the classic tactic of divide and rule. “Gadafy supported different tribes at different times,” he says.
In his early years as leader, Gadafy sought to break up the traditional mosaic of tribal power and remake it to suit his own purposes. Tribes in the eastern Cyrenaica region, stronghold of the Senussi tribe that produced the monarchy Gadafy ousted in a 1969 military coup, suffered most as he redistributed their land and withheld resources in an effort to weaken the region’s influence. Many senior figures in today’s fledgling opposition come from tribes marginalised by Gadafy.
His regime relied instead on three tribes: his own small and historically not powerful Gadhafa tribe, based in the coastal town of Sirte; the Mugharha, concentrated around Sebha to the south; and the Warfalla, the country’s largest tribe.
Oil revenues allowed Gadafy to buy tribal loyalty and he ensured rival groups were all represented in the army so he could maintain control. But his strategy was not fail-safe: the Warfalla’s relationship with Gadafy deteriorated in the 1990s when members of the tribe were implicated in a coup plot.
The revolt that began in the east last month has split some large tribes as regime loyalists fight their own among the rebels. “Many people who are siding with Gadafy are actually going against their tribe. Men are fighting their fellow tribesmen,” says al-Musmari.
Like al-Mukhtar, he also rejects Gadafy’s warnings of intra-tribal fighting. “He is only saying this to frighten the outside world . . . Libya is not such a tribal society.”
Tribes do matter now, however, and will continue to do so in the future. If Gadafy goes, many believe the tribes, which retain an ability to mobilise and galvanise people, can help guarantee cohesiveness in a society where organising, whether politically or socially, was discouraged for more than 40 years. Perhaps mindful of this, the rebel Libyan National Council has been careful to include figures from several important tribes, including those concentrated in the west, among its members.
Overtures have been made to tribal sheikhs in a number of strategic towns in a bid to win them over to the opposition. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who heads the council, said he wanted to reassure those who had supported Gadafy. “What is happening here is a political power struggle and they will not be affected,” he said. “The tribe and the clan of Gadafy are not responsible for his behaviour, they are innocent . . . We will not assign to them any blame.”
Slogans that appeared in the euphoric early days of the uprising aside, tribal machinations are part of what is happening in Libya now and will continue to play a key role in the country’s future.