Libya: Assessing Berber Prospects
The situation is analogous to Christians in the Middle East, where one finds a range of conflicting conceptions of identity from Arabism (common among Melkites and Antiochian Greek Orthodox) to Aramaean nationalism (e.g., the Syriac Orthodox) to Assyrian nationalism (mainly the Assyrian Church of the East). This has partly been responsible for preventing the formation of a viable Christian polity in the region.
Interestingly, some Berber activists are keen to launch an effort to convince the rest of the Libyan population that they are in fact all Berbers.
Ultimately, this enterprise is unlikely to gain much ground. While it is true that Berbers inhabited North Africa prior to the Arab conquests, and that strictly speaking the Libyan Arabs are mostly just an Arabized population, the fact is that Arabization (especially in tandem with Islamization) has become a key foundation of Arab identity. In Egypt, an Arabist conception of identity has prevailed among the Muslim population over the Pharaonism promoted by the liberal intellectual Taha Husayn.
In any case, how far back in history would these Berber activists like to go, if the argument focuses on genetics? After all, North Africa has seen a degree of mixing of ethnic groups, including the East Germanic tribe known as the Vandals, who established a kingdom around Carthage in the Fifth Century as the Western Roman Empire declined.
To round off, it is worth noting the recent announcement by the NTC banning parties based on religion, tribe, and ethnicity. This prohibition is unlikely to apply to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties at least on the ground level given the NTC’s dalliances with Islamism, but it will almost certainly apply to any parties claiming to stand for Berber interests, since the Amazigh have already been excluded from interim ministerial posts.
In short, this confirms that the emerging picture appears to be one of political rather than cultural marginalization for Libya’s Berbers.
“Earlier this month, heavy fighting emerged between Berber militiamen from the coastal town of Zuwarah and Arab militiamen from the nearby town of Ragdalein.”
Tribes. That’s why these countries will never amount to much. So long as these people see themselves as tribesmen, and not as part of a nation, then they will never go anywhere. There will be constant petty trible warfare and Libya will degenerate into another Somalia. In most of these nations there probably isn’t such a thing as a Libyan or an Egyptian, just what tribe an individual belongs to. The most extreme example is Afghanistan, although those are not arab tribesmen. Even in Egypt, there are hatreds between the northern Egyptians and the southern Egyptians that goes back literally thousands of years. No, unless these people can put away their petty differences for the greater good of a nation, they will never amount to anything, just a lot of constantly warring and bickering tribes.
I think you’re wrong, and don’t understand the Middle-Eastern reality. Most of the so-called nations of the Middle East are a result of the British and French imperialist powers drawing lines on a map, lines that didn’t take into account the different populations, ethnicities, cultures, religions and aspirations of the people inhabiting the region. The Muslim-Arabs, on the other hand, wanted to revive their own empire at the expence of everyone else. That included various policies of Arabization that were supposed to rid the country from the French or British colonialist legacy (such as in language), but were equally directed against non-Arab cultures – for instance, outlawing Tamazight, the Amazigh language. Non-Arab nationalities, such as the Kurdish, Amazigh and Assyrian, were usually not recognized because they challange the Arab nationalist claims to the vast territories they rule. Arabization policies were forced on these populations to erase the competing identites. Uprisings were often met with brutal force (the most notorious, Saddam Hussein using chemical weapon to crush the Kurds).
What is a nation? It’s not just a certain arbitrary geographic territory, marked by outside powers on a map, where various peoples live, whether they like each other or not, and the majority group or most dominant group gets to set the rules and the others have to obey even if it means their own cultural extinction under oppressive policies designed exactly for that purpose. The Imazighen (plural of Amazigh) are not a tribe – they are a nation. There may be tribes within the Amazigh nation, but the nation itself is not a tribe. Similarly the Kurds are not a tribe – they are a nation. There is a Kurdish language (or rather two almost separate languages that evolved from the same root language) going back thousands of years. The Kurds see themselves as a people, not as an Arab tribe or as “Mountain Turks” like the Turks call the Turkish Kurds, a term designed to deny the distinct Kurdish identity.
If some Libyans are confused about their identity it’s because a Libyan nation did not exist in the past. A common Muslim identity did exist in the past (as well as in the present) for a long time. The Arab people existed in the past, as did the Amazigh people. Libya is a relatively new construct, and not one that grew organically from the will of a “Libyan nation” to govern itself in its own state (since there was no Libyan nation), but something imposed from outside. What is the meaning of being a Libyan then? What is the core of the Libyan identity?
The US, for instance, is also a relatively new country and a relatively new nation, one that wasn’t founded on a millennia-old identity, culture and traditions of one people, but you have a unifying ideology and ethos on which the US was founded and which is the major ingredient in your national identity. Libya doesn’t. It wasn’t founded on either ethnic/cultural/religious identity or a unifying ideology and ethos that make it distinct from other regional nations. Libyans have a common history and identity going back decades, while Imazighen have common history and identity going back millennia. Even the common history of Libyans, or Algerians or Moroccans, is not that common – the Amazigh experience in those countries was different from the Arab experience. In the 7th-8th centuries the Imazighen fought the Arab conquerors and lost. In the 20th century in Algeria, after the Imazighen and Arabs fought together to gain independence from France and won, the Amazigh language was banned by the Arab rulers. Imagine what it’s like to live in your own ancestral homeland and have your own language banned by the descendants of the former conquerors, and realizing that if you do nothing your culture will become extinct, replaced entirely by the culture of the former conquerors.
How do you solve that? One way is to recognize the different identities and cultures in the already existing states and give them the freedom to exist and access to power. Another, more radical way, is to allow autonomies within the existing states. The most radical alternative is to dissolve the current states and redraw the map, so that non-Arab nations will have their own states where they can govern themselves. This alternative will certainly lead to a lot of bloodshed, chaos and suffering. In some cases it seems to be the only solution. In Sudan, for instance, where both religion and ethnicity is involved and the option of tolerance simply did not exist. In other cases it may be resolved within the boundaries of the existing state. But to simply dismiss the problem as tribalism is unjust.
There seems to be an effort to “correct” those lines by taking trite academic theories into account. There is practically no discussion about whether colonists were ever right to draw lines in the first place, whatever course is taken now. While installing numerous synthetic dictators has been an interesting tactic, no decent mind should consider this true decolonization or withdrawal from ill-gotten lands.
Tribes are usually associated with positive cultural values, ignoring unpleasant elements that Americans would call crimes in their neighborhood. Nations (especially their governing bodies) are perpetually subverted and warred against so long as they refuse the terms of western business and trade. This takes place under the guise of human rights, disaster relief, and whatever sad history can be generated or forgotten out of convenience. I mostly refer to Far Eastern diplomacy, but it also applies to Africa, Latin America, the Mideast, and very soon to the moon.
On that note, I am not looking forward to the events posited for this summer. If Sitchin was right, then a celestial Death Star is about to descend on the earth and draw its own set of lines, which probably won’t please anyone…
What about the Ottomans that were no Arabs, and were occupying these Regions before the French and the Brits?
Nation refers to a a communauty that speaks the same language, while a state refers to a communauty that has the same political and societal goal
The Today Libyans aren’t confused about their identity, they almost all would advocate their Libyan passport, the dilemn is populations vs islamists
a Libyan girl blog:
http://lonehighlander.blogspot.fr/
Greetings:
A very informative article, and I am appreciative. I seem to detect ghosts of “A Savage War of Peace” about France’s war in Algeria in the ’50s and ’60s.
My current thinking about the Middle East is influenced by Fouad Ajami’s pronouncement about those being the lands of “I against my brother; my brother and I against our cousin; and my cousin, my brother, and I against the stranger ” so I agree with the point LibertyShip46 makes about tribal cultures. And as my father used to say, “It’s when the pie comes to the table that the knives come out.”
Fortunately, or unfortunately, human beings are discriminating folks. All our senses detect differences and turn them into actionable information for good or evil purposes. One way that I look at Islam is that it’s the globalization of the tribal mentality, the old “us vs. them”. So as long as there is an obvious non-muslim “stranger” to focus on, there is some degree of unity in the “ummah”, but once that goes away, it’s “Katy bar the door” and the internal differences start to bubble up and out in those endearing Islamic ways.
Islam is the millstone. If your plan does not include ways to undermine or eradicate it, you don’t have a plan, you have a hope.
I just want to thank this author for posting his perspective on PJ Media, and to thank PJ Media for hosting it. I really find it valuable to understand diverse points of view, and in particular of minorities. Thanks for sharing!
And they were surprised by this?
Silly them!