The Libyans events of the past week must be judged with the greatest depth possible, even taking into account the difficulties that we have to give a political identity and social legible to the insurgents in Benghazi and Misurata. The Libyan uprising seems to be both something very different from the social dynamics started in Tunisia and Egypt, and an event that can only be read wing light of the latter.
Libya is a sparsely populated country with little more than six million inhabitants, at the same time is highly educated and urbanized. Tripoli alone amounts to about 22% of the total population of the country. Strong oil revenues have allowed the forty year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi to make a fair distribution of income within the country and to educate a largely illiterate population. The dependence of its power from the system of Kabylia, mechanism, and extended tribal house, and failure to integrate the elite Cyrenaica led to a constant division of the country and a unhappy towards the regional power bloc in the years that has never failed. On the other hand it should be remembered as the time of the Italian colonization of the armed opposition troops were only three colors Cyrene confraternities who voiced the first post-war head of state of Independent Libya: King Idriss. The coup in which Gaddafi seized power in 1969 is interpretable in terms of domestic as a blow against those Tripoli Cyrenaica elites.
The uprising of February has seen players such as the inhabitants of Cyrenaica, moreover, the riots of 1996 and 1978. The involvement of other cities took place in the days following the release of Benghazi, Derna and Tobruk, and has seen the emergence of a combined set of opponents in the cities of Tripoli historically loyal to the regime. My impression is that the enlargement of a wildfire revolt respond more to the impression of an "endgame" for the Colonel. The nuclei join the revolt of the foreign Cyrenaic milieu would respond in this interpretation to the need for them to enter the game before the change of regime.
The unexpected ability to respond of Gaddafi, based on the influx of mercenaries, the army's special nuclei and substantial lack of modern weapons by insurgents, he messed up the cards in the game. Clearly, at this point that the forces that had joined the insurrection in the second round were parades and, perhaps, have also been repurchased by Gaddafi and his regime.
Penetration to star in stripes
The direction of the uprising is clearly back in the hands of Cyrenaica and has become a bit more clear what are the figures that the head: representatives of the professions and the army, a sort of petty bourgeois state marginalized by the central power.
The insurgency has become so evident in a civil war. At this outlet has helped the peculiar social situation that sees the Libyan basically formed by local working class immigrants from countries like Egypt, Bangladesh, and Indian and Chinese foreign workers in the wake of many orders obtained from firms in the Asian countries in Libya.
The interest of local social groups is essentially the position of the system of internal customers as close as possible to political power, since the latter is the only center able to direct the flow of wealth coming in Libya from abroad .
Social conflict in the country tends to coincide with that for the power and the risk of defeat is to be completely excluded from the income distribution. Betrayal and overthrowns face in a situation like this are so commonplace.
The gas oil wealth of Libya is also the reason, the particular and special care that the U.S. and its European allies have decided to prescribe to the unfortunate African country. Libya in recent years has been a preserve of Italian, starting from the action of governments that Andreotti and Craxi, at the risk of conflict with the U.S. government, opened to the Italian public energy companies then the way to settle in the country . The relationship bordering on the ridiculous ostentatious by Berlusconi in Tripoli with Colonel are clownish version of a policy of ancient Italian governments. The attitude of the government, loyal to the last great man of Tripoli, is the mirror of defending the interests of the national capital area.
The interest shown by Americans to Libya instead of functional change in the penetration of the last Stars and Stripes in the backyard of the European Mediterranean. Enforcement operation aimed at penetrating the Chinese annexation of African resources. The war in Africa between the U.S. and China needs the disappearance of the courtyards of the house and rents position established by the European countries over time. In these years, France is in retreat throughout the old and the poor figure Francafrique remedied in Tunisia with the support until the end of the tyrant Ben Ali does not help the prestige of Paris. Britain for years an exclusive wheel of Washington facilitated by this waiver to maintain its industry. Britain is now essentially a platform for financial transactions in which capital plays by British and American support.
The desperate attempt of Sarkozy aims to recover at the expense of Italian cousins areas of influence and prestige was immediately frustrated by American action to recover also decided to formally guide the operation. It remains to be seen whether this change in leadership will benefit the Italians hoped in the future reorganization of Libya, where it is. The ridiculous arguments of the courtyard between the French and Italians probably a prelude to the expulsion of both from the Mediterranean scenery and their replacement with direct American intervention.
How to "pilot" a revolution.
As the link between Libya and Western intervention insurgency node seems to me to be put on the timing of the second versus the first and only twenty days ago the creation of a no-fly zone would most probably obtain the result of actually supporting the insurgency and force Gaddafi to flee. Today the direct intervention has the effect of avoiding defeat of the insurgents. Promote the victory, or at least the reduction of the power Tripoli has as its aim of creating a future government that does not have autonomy but dependent on the West and specifically the U.S.. Would have been different with an insurgency capable of winning twenty days ago to arrive in Tripoli on his legs and not on NATO aircraft.
In this way everyone will rule in Tripoli will be only a governent with limited sovereignty.
The delay in the intervention and its enlargement from a no-fly zone to a direct military intervention are functional to this project and have the same meaning they had in Tunisia and Egypt support the role of the army and the removal of old disgraced vassals.
Revolutions, when they can not be smothered in blood with few risks, and control are addressed. This seems to me to be anything but crude doctrine that the new U.S. administration-certainly in this discontinuous with the previous one and much more refined than it is applying to North-Africa, in the face of those who already gave up for dead...
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41 n. 362
Stefano Capello