Fighting in Libya, Syria, Sudan and the Yemen May 28 2011
Wars in Libya and Syria have been going on for months, but only this week do we see war engulf the Sudan and the Yemen. Affairs in Tunisia and Egypt are not so fraught, but unrest in these two revolutionary nations is rising. Fortunately, powers like the USA are feeding large sums of money into the accounts of Libyan freedom fighters. In Yemen, the US orders all dependents and tourists and students out of the country (May 25th).
Libya -
The week of May-21-28 saw Russia move over to NATO's side, asking Col. Qaddafi to resign. Qaddafi has handed over management to his son and a few confidants while hiding himself. He says he's not in Tripoli. We think he's in Sabha, in the west central part of Libya. That's where Qaddafi went to high school, where he learned and practiced, high-handed brash revolutionary political ops.
Thanks to NATO's air strikes, Qaddafi can't concentrate his heavy weapons. Rebels in Mishratah (Misurata) have regained control over the port, and pushed Qaddafi's forces far beyond the range of his missiles, so humanitarian aid can get in, and ammo, and radios and sniper rifles, while the refugees and
the wounded can be evacuated.
To the east – some 500 miles - the Benghazi democrats have been parrying Qaddafi forces in what looks like a stalemate. But it is not. Time is not on Qaddafi's side. The rebels are pursuing a steep learning curve, and even in Tripoli, the streets are not safe for Qaddafi cranks, cronies and sycophants.
Syria -
Quiet returns after two months of daily manifestations, except there is much fear as young men are carried off by the Syrian mukhtabarat. To Damascus, it looks like Sunni Muslim Brothers are coming across in killer teams, over the Shouf, from Lebanon. The Syrian officials no doubt can find all the evidence they need for concluding that radical Islamist militants – extremists – are infiltrating Syria from all directions.
Damascus and Aleppo (Haleb) have been free of mass demonstrations, tying up city centers. Why? These cities house the political, cultural and economic elite – those backed by the regime. Secondly, the police were on the scene in minutes, breaking up unrest before it turned violent. But outside these two cities, unrest seethes amongst the people.
Yemen -
Once again everyone expected president Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign last week, but then he got cold feet, refusing to sign, saying he had to have in his presence, opposition leaders. For this was to be a transfer of power to a broad coalition of democratic actors. Naturally, tribal politics are involved: the war that broke out on the streets of Sana'a around the university, was largely between tribesmen of the Houthi federation and the army/police. We do expect Mr. Saleh to leave Yemen this summer.
Sudan -
Readers know our concerns re both countries: over the past month we've been issuing alerts re probable military confrontation over Abye (Abiyeh), an oil-flush town right on the border between north and south Sudans. Abiyeh's crude petroleum production was some 5,000 – 15,000/brls./day – peanuts.
There is also some fighting in the Kordofan plateau, between Darfur and the White Nile. The fighting involved several thousand troops. President Omar Akl Bashir must have reasons to rattle the Arab sword all through the south. He is a wanted war criminal.
The South is not united. Most of the local problems are between nomads, and farmers. Examining nomad-farmer relations is discipline in itself, a legal science going back some 10,000 years. The history books talk of all the (short) wars and raids between the two, as if they never got along. Well, the truth is entirely different.
The north African situation is a shared one. Except for Egypt, the countries featured a populated coast and a less populated interior – the Sahara. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan and Libya have tribal histories in which the power of the nomads trump the coastal emirs and pashas. The great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun saw the movement of desert nomads as one of getting soft and settling down, only to be usurped a generation (or less) later by a more more robust pastoral presence.
Egypt -
The government eases controls at the Rafah crossing so Gazan Palestinians can escape for a while. Israel's doctrine of collective punishment has won it a determined enemy. In the West, the Palestinians are seen as the bad guys. The Israelis, by contrast, look like we do and drive on brand new roads designed in perfect American format.
Libya -
It seems that NATO allowed Libyan democratic rebels a respite, used to train. Qaddafi can't concentrate much: US spy satellites are parked in geo-synchronic orbit giving real-time pictures. So satellites are being used to hunt down the two Qaddafis. Even in south Tripoli, there are clandestine teams trying to track him down. Qaddafi has likely flown the coop.
The defection of Libya's oil minister was a carefully scripted designed as a sop for the oil companies and world financial markets. It may mean that Libya's oil industry will be prserved. We are still concerned when two weeks ago, the oasis of al Kufrah in Libya's extreme south east, fell to Qaddafi loyalists. Al Kufra is a small place, with a tiny bit of Americana for the oil workers. The oil fields, however, represent some two fifths if Libya's known oil stocks. They are practically inside the town. The well heads can be easily blown. Qaddafi has not reached “I'll destroy it if I cannot have it.” In fact, Qaddafi may have scripted his own disappearance. If he's not at Sabha, he must be in the steppe plateau regions between the coast and the Saharan desert. These roads run roughly parallel to the main coastal road, up to 50 km in. Qaddafi has built quite a few emergency basis in this steppe zone.
Let us conclude this section by referencing the tribes – those involved in Libya, Yemen, Sudan and even Syria. The larger tribes are split between the impatient young, and the elders. Unless you are a nomad in the desert, you can take and make of it, what you want from the tribe.
The heroic sieges of Mishratah, Zawiye and Zintan saw ordinary people defend their lives and properties with a battlefield coherence that suggests strong tribal involvement. Those three cities are each named after a Arab-Berber tribe. Libyan tribes had their own places in which to settle.
Maybe you saw the footage of Qaddafi (taken around the 22 of May) kissing the tribal sheikhs, one by one. All those sheikhs were overweight, and no amount of thoub could hide their obesity. I don't expect these tribal leaders to have any kind of shelf life after the Qaddafis go. As we speak, young men are fighting off a professional military acting in their name “as if I asked you to kill me.” By fleeing to the desert, Qaddafi frees himself from many obligations. That means the government can and will fall without him.
Notes on Pastoral Nomadism - Abel and Cain
Libya is a country with a strong pastoral dynamic, even after modernization. Others nations, too, show the remote hin terland as the well-spring of authentic culture, in all these lands. The cities are much too corrupted to serve as cultural centers.
First, we know that even Paleolithic humans (ca 100,000 yrs.) on all six inhabitable continents practiced trade: archaeology is filled with 'material anomalies.' Obvious such trade could not go on without the cooperation of various nomadic tribes. Very few empires could secure all the roads and paths that our forefathers trekked over. On occasion, superior forces from towns and cities might vanquish and chastise nomadic tribes, but most of the time, the nomad confederations ruled everything outside of the towns and villages and hamlets.
Knowledge of how pastoral nomadism shaped the world in which we live can only arise amongst those few social scientists who have actually lived and traveled with nomads. The blogger received a 1973-74 Thomas Watson foundation fellowship “for the study of the oral epic poetry of Central Asian nomads.” I did my research in Russia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey.
In Russia and Uzbekistan I studied how the Soviets used traditional oral epic genres to drum up support for socialist ideals and initiatives. I spent a year in Afghanistan, where I traveled with the nomadic Pushtuns in Wardak, the Tekke Turcomen from Afghan Turkestan, and the Kyrgyz in Badakhshan. In Pakistan, I conducted interviews with Balouch and Brahmi nomads. In Iran, I worked with the Qashqai in the south and the Turcomen in the east. In central Anatolia, I traveled with the Yoruk. Later, I carried on these researches in Arabia: Syria, Jordan and Palestine, with the Bedouin, with whom I spent some special days and nights. I paid for most trips by buying and selling textiles.
These minimal qualifications in the much-needed science of pastoral nomadism and its interactions with settled folk and with long-distance traders. The best empires seem to be those imposed by a nomadic elite. Why? First, they're only 1/10 or less the population as the regional towns and villages and faring estates. Lacking skills in governing of farmers, the nomads usually left that governance in the hands of the people themselves. The 'big man' was not so big with nomads around.
In short, trade routes were only practical when the nomadic tribes cooperated. Rash military actions against nomadic federations usually just bred feelings of vengeance. Rulers of farming regions did better when they admitted nomads into their armies and navies. Yes, navies: there are sea nomads just like there are land nomads. Mankind knew how to sail before he/she learned to domesticate, train, ride and maneuver horses. The Arabs, who trace themselves back to the present bedouin, were also an advanced maritime culture along some 40,000 miles of coasts in Arab lands. Three thousand years ago, the Phoenicians colonized the Med and the Atlantic coasts of Portugal and Morocco. They even reached the New World, buying furs. That world featured the power of Tarshish, again, an Arab maritime power, according to the Bible, and Ugaritic texts.
Mecca had its own seaport – Jeddah. Trade routes ran along coasts and up rivers. The Red Sea offered intimate contacts between Yemen and Saudi Arabia and the Sudan and through Egypt and Palestine to the European world. Such sea routes generally paralleled the land routes. There were horizontal trails across the Saharan, as well as the five south-north trails which, over the past 1,500 years, brought much gold, many slaves and ostrich feathers up through Arab Spain and into Europe.
Another 'world' was the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf. Here, Baghdad was tied to Surat, in Gujarat, and points south. Arab fishing communities dot the western littoral of the Gulf, while pearl divers had a world monopoly till the Japanese introduced cultured pearls in the mid 20th C.
The Mediterranean has its own worlds: the Aegean, the Black Sea, island emirates and kingdoms. But these worlds were brought under the sway of nomadic groups coming from Central Asia. Great 'positive' empires were largely nomad-led. The Seljukid, Golden Horde and Chagatai empires are examples. The most efficient and effective (rich) empire before modern times was the great Mongol empire. The nomads policed trade routes and encouraged gift giving and trade.
One cannot see the tribes acting in the news – it's all behind closed doors. Remember, tribes usually insist on strict conformity of its members. The tribal chiefs usually do hold huge amounts of land. But in this day and age of the Virtual Tribe, such wealth becomes a liability. Social media will eventually inform and organize many if not most human protests.
This week it was announced that the Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladich was apprehended. Another brutal killer in Rwanda and the Congo, head of the dreaded Interhamwe, was tracked down and detained. Ossama bin Ladin was killed by US SOF on May 2, while Qaddafi's time is coming up soon.
Men who get their way only by causing suffering to others are called hasnomuses, and must be watched. They can be in business as well as in the military and the government. We seen enough of the lawlessness engineered, it seems, by wealthy people wanting even more.
-John Paul Maynard
May 28 2011
My main studies are found at http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com. Some of my translations from the Arabic, Persian and Turkic are found at http://hafizshirazi.blogspot.com.
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