I wouldn’t have expected this quite so soon, but it appears that the legal­iza­tion of polygamy is one of the first con­tro­ver­sial pri­or­i­ties of the tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment, although that appears to be a con­se­quence of the deci­sion to nul­lify any laws that con­tra­dict Shariah law. It looks like Libya is going to be danc­ing the “mod­er­ate Islamist” limbo too: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1025/Sharia-law-to-be-main-source-of-legislation-in-Libya

“
...
Just as in neigh­bor­ing Tunisia and Egypt, Islamists have emerged from yet another Arab Spring upris­ing as the most pow­er­ful group in the coun­try. How far they will go will be decided at the bal­lot box — in Tunisia this week, in Egypt in Novem­ber and in Libya within eight months.

National Tran­si­tional Coun­cil leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said Sun­day that Islamic Sharia law would be the main source of leg­is­la­tion, that lawscon­tra­dict­ing its tenets would be nul­li­fied, and that polygamy would be legalized.

“I would like to assure the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity that we as Libyans are mod­er­ate Mus­lims,” said Abdul-Jalil, who added that he was dis­mayed by the focus abroad on his com­ments Sun­day on polygamy. A State Depart­ment spokes­woman said the U.S. was encour­aged that he had clar­i­fied his ear­lier state­ment.
...
”

@Pterrafractyl: Sad thing is, the rad­i­cals very well could take advan­tage of these poor peo­ple. Hope­fully the Libyan peo­ple will have awoken enough to see thru the B.S., however.

Yes, let’s not for­get, for all of his Oxford degrees, nation­al­ized oil indus­tries, and human ser­vices (uni­ver­sal health­care), The Colonel put and kept his coun­try in the 8th cen­tury. While Michelle Bachmann’s pay­mas­ters can only admire the use­ful­ness of such wedge issues as shariah-sanctioned polygamy, let’s remem­ber it is, after all, just about the oil. Look back in anger.

...and then there’s Tunisia’s new “mod­er­ate Islamist” government:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/25/us-tunisia-ennahda-ghannouchi-idUSTRE79O76020111025

Tunisia’s Ghan­nouchi too lib­eral for some Islamists

By Andrew Hammond

TUNIS | Tue Oct 25, 2011 3:42pm EDT

(Reuters) — Tunisian Islamist leader Rachid Ghan­nouchi is seen by many sec­u­lar­ists as a dan­ger­ous rad­i­cal, but for some con­ser­v­a­tive cler­ics who see them­selves as the bench­mark of ortho­dox Islam — he is so lib­eral that they call him an unbeliever.

Ghannouchi’s Ennahda party won Tunisia’s first free elec­tions, 10 months after an upris­ing brought down ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who had banned the group and impris­oned Ghan­nouchi before he took up home as an exile in London.

The party said on Tues­day it had won more than 40 per­cent of seats in Sunday’s elec­tion, pledg­ing to con­tinue democ­racy after the first vote that resulted from the “Arab Spring” revolts sweep­ing the Mid­dle East and North Africa.

...

He stands out in the Islamist spec­trum — which ranges from the polit­i­cal ide­o­logues of Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to puri­tan­i­cal Salafists in Saudi Ara­bia — for his view that there should be no bar on women or non-Muslims as head of state since cit­i­zen­ship must take pri­or­ity over Islam.

“Salafis, Wah­habis and even some Broth­er­hood don’t like the guy, some might even say he’s a ‘kafir’ (apos­tate),” said an Egypt­ian friend of Ghannouchi’s from his years in Lon­don, who did not want to be named.

...

Awajy said Ghan­nouchi had the respect of influ­en­tial cler­ics such as Qaradawi — who appears reg­u­larly on lead­ing Ara­bic broad­caster Al-Jazeera — and Sheikh Salman al-Odah in Saudi Ara­bia, who led a move­ment for demo­c­ra­tic reforms in the 1990s that the rul­ing Al Saud fam­ily man­aged to quash.

Ghannouchi’s Egypt­ian friend recalled how his news­pa­per arti­cles angered Broth­er­hood lead­ers in the 1990s.

He said Ghan­nouchi had writ­ten some of the best cri­tiques of the strict Saudi form of Islam known as Wah­habism, and is no longer invited to the annual Saudi intel­lec­tual sem­i­nar known as the al-Janadiriyya, which Riyadh uses to bestow largesse and spread influence.

Although Ghannouchi’s Ennahda was inspired by Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the Broth­er­hood has by con­trast strug­gled in recent years with the idea of equal rights for women and allow­ing Cop­tic Chris­tians access to the high­est offices of state.

....

DISSEMBLER IN A SHAKY COALITION?

Nonethe­less, many Tunisian intel­lec­tu­als and sec­u­lar­ists think Ghannouchi’s is dis­sem­bling about his true opin­ions. They also sus­pect that his move­ment is receiv­ing fund­ing from the inter­na­tional net­work of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Gulf Arab supporters.

Ennahda has bent over back­wards in recent weeks to assuage the con­cerns of sec­u­lar­ists who have had the upper hand in soci­ety since Tunisia’s inde­pen­dence leader Habib Bour­guiba set the North African state aggres­sively on a pro-Western path.

...

Yet Tunisian com­men­ta­tor Rachid Khechana said many in Ennahda give dif­fer­ent mes­sages in their own communities.

“In the mosque, they tell their believ­ers they should not fear what they hear them say­ing on TV.”
...
”

@Pterrafractyl: Thanks for that arti­cle. In all hon­esty, I DO hope that peo­ple will and real­ize that they are going to be ter­ri­bly screwed if they don’t wake up soon.

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/libya/articles/20120324.aspx

Dark And Very Ugly Secrets Surfacing

March 24, 2012: A year after the rebel­lion against Kaddafi began, the dic­ta­tor­ship is gone but so is any effec­tive gov­ern­ment. The regional, tribal, and city mili­tias that were orga­nized dur­ing the months of fight­ing have not dis­banded and many refuse to rec­og­nize the author­ity of the NTC (National Tran­si­tional Coun­cil). This is sup­posed to be fixed by the June 23rd national elec­tions but with­out coop­er­a­tion from all the mili­tias, the June elec­tions won’t work and seem likely to be delayed.

Civil war is brew­ing and the goal will be to con­trol the oil income. There are over 200,000 armed men in Libya, most of them belong­ing to a tribal or local mili­tia. Some of these mili­tias have set them­selves up as local gov­ern­ments and are demand­ing “taxes” from busi­nesses. So far, the NTC retains con­trol of the oil trade. But that may not last. Suc­cess in avoid­ing civil war rests on the abil­ity of the NTC lead­ers to nego­ti­ate unity deals with the many independent-minded fac­tions. The NTC has man­aged to nego­ti­ate deals to gain con­trol of air­ports, bor­der cross­ings, and oil pro­duc­tion and ship­ping facil­i­ties. But pay­ments must be made and dis­putes can still arise over the power, and cost, of over a hun­dred mili­tias spread all over the coun­try. NTC efforts to dis­arm Libyans have been unsuc­cess­ful. Hav­ing a rifle or pis­tol in the house is seen as a form of insur­ance, along with a small stash of gold coins or gems. Just in case.

There won’t be any oil income if the fight­ing dam­ages the oil fields deep in the desert or the pipelines that bring the oil to the ports where tankers move the stuff to for­eign buy­ers. The cash from that is what keeps Libya going. The NTC has a $22 bil­lion a year pay­roll (the gov­ern­ment is the largest employer) and spends $14 bil­lion on pro­vid­ing elec­tric­ity, fuel, and other goods to cit­i­zens. Kaddafi used oil rev­enue to run a wel­fare state, which made most Libyans fear­ful of oppos­ing him. The NTC has to con­tinue this wel­fare state spend­ing for a while and expects to come up $10 bil­lion short in the next year. The NTC is look­ing for loans. Libya is a good credit risk, as it has over $5 tril­lion worth of oil reserves. But not much money is avail­able right now. Oil pro­duc­tion declined 98 per­cent dur­ing the fight­ing and is not quite back to half its pre-war level. The oil depen­dent econ­omy shrank 60 per­cent in the last year and most Libyans are feel­ing the pain and are not happy about it. Because of the oil income (which accounted for half the GDP) Libya was, on paper, well off.

But the real­ity was oth­er­wise. An inter­na­tional rank­ing of “quality-of-life” (QOL) listed Libya as 70 out of 111 nations. For com­par­i­son pur­poses, note the rank­ing from 62nd to 83rd place: Bahrain (62nd place), Lithua­nia, Jamaica, Morocco, Latvia, Oman, Esto­nia, United Arab Emi­rates, Libya, Indone­sia, Saudi Ara­bia, India, Paraguay, Jor­dan, Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Alba­nia, Domini­can Repub­lic, Egypt, Alge­ria, Bolivia, and Tunisia. What’s impor­tant to note here is that GDP helps but does not guar­an­tee a higher QOL. Indone­sia (just below Libya) had about a third the GDP per capita of Libya and much less oil. Jamaica had higher QOL and a GPD per capita sim­i­lar to Indone­sia (as did many other nations, such as Costa Rica, with ten per­cent less GDP per capita hav­ing a QOL rank of 36). Libya was in trou­ble because it was a dic­ta­tor­ship, with Kaddafi and his cronies run­ning a com­mand (they make all the deci­sions) econ­omy. This does not work and causes polit­i­cal and eco­nomic com­plaints that grow worse decade after decade. This brought about the col­lapse of the com­mu­nist states in East­ern Europe in the late 1980s (includ­ing the Soviet Union). This eco­nomic and polit­i­cal decline caught up with Libya this year.

There are other prob­lems brew­ing, this time in the south­west, among the Tuareg tribes. The Tuareg of Libya have been quiet so far, but Moa­mar Kaddafi’s long sup­port of all Tuareg tribes to the south has led to a Tuareg upris­ing in Mali and a mil­i­tary coup there in response. Most of the 1.5 mil­lion Tuareg in the region are liv­ing in nations bor­der­ing Alge­ria (Burk­ina Faso, Libya, Mali, and Niger). Mali has faced rebel­lious Tuareg for a long time and made peace with most of them in 2007. The cur­rent bunch of Tuareg rebels insist that they have no con­nec­tion with al Qaeda or other Islamic rad­i­cal groups, but many other Tuaregs do and there’s no deny­ing that. A year ago Libyan diplo­mats and agents were seen recruit­ing Tuareg tribes­men in Niger, Mali, Alge­ria, and Burk­ina Faso to fight in Libya to keep Kaddafi in power. Kaddafi had been hir­ing Tuareg to fight for him for decades, so there was a will­ing­ness among young Tuaregs to take the money ($10,000 to sign up and over a thou­sand a week there­after) to risk their lives for a des­per­ate dic­ta­tor. Kaddafi had the cash and trucks to recruit and trans­port sev­eral thou­sand of these Tuareg mer­ce­nar­ies north. While many of these Tuaregs were killed by NATO bombs or Libyan rebels, most made it back to their homes late last year, and that’s when the Mali Tuareg upris­ing began anew.

The bat­tle­field down there, on the south­ern bor­der of Alge­ria and Libya, is where the Sahara desert turns into the semi-desert Sahel, a band of barely liv­able land stretch­ing from the Atlantic coast to Soma­lia. Libya has rest­less Tuareg down south as well but not as many as Mali. Most of the Tuareg are in Alge­ria, Mali, and Niger.

Mem­bers of the 7,000 man Mali army staged a coup in the cap­i­tal on the 21st and the pres­i­dent went into hid­ing among loyal troops. News of the coup caused demor­al­iza­tion among the sev­eral thou­sand troops in the north, where sev­eral thou­sand Tuareg tribes­men are try­ing to estab­lish a sep­a­rate state. As troops with­drew to the south, the Tuaregs began advanc­ing and occu­py­ing towns and mil­i­tary bases.

The coup is led by mid rank­ing offi­cers who insist that new pres­i­den­tial elec­tions will be held as soon as “national unity” (all oppo­si­tion is silenced) and “ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity” (the Tuareg rebels are defeated) is taken care of. No word on how long that might take, but it appears that the sched­uled pres­i­den­tial elec­tions next month are not going to hap­pen. The muti­nous sol­diers were upset at a per­ceived lack of sup­port by the gov­ern­ment. The troops wanted more weapons and equip­ment to deal with the Tuareg rebels up north. The gov­ern­ment pre­ferred more empha­sis on nego­ti­a­tion. The Tuaregs have been a prob­lem for cen­turies, as they are eth­ni­cally dis­tinct from the Arab and Berber peo­ple liv­ing to the north (the Maghreb) and those (mostly Bantu or other black African groups) to the south.

Libya has other prob­lems out­side Libya. A pro­gram last year, to pro­vide med­ical treat­ment abroad for wounded rebels was cor­rupted (not unusual in Libya). Local mili­tia and tribal author­i­ties were allowed to decide who was eli­gi­ble to go abroad for treat­ment and the NTC pro­vided cash for that pur­pose. But soon any­one with the right con­nec­tions, or a large enough bribe, got a trip to a Euro­pean or Moslem coun­try for “med­ical treat­ment.” Many of those going abroad on this pro­gram were not ill but they got to take fam­ily mem­bers as well and expected the NTC to pay them a stipend (sev­eral hun­dred dol­lars a month) while they were abroad. But many of these trav­el­ers were actu­ally migrat­ing, and the NTC cut off the stipends and cracked down on who was going. The NTC had to do this because the “med­ical treat­ment abroad” pro­gram was drain­ing huge amounts of cash from what lit­tle the NTC had and mak­ing most Libyans (who were not in on the boon­dog­gle) angry.

March 22, 2012: Mau­ri­ta­nia denied that it had agreed to turn over Kaddafi’s secret police chief, Abdul­lah Al Senussi. While Mau­ri­ta­nia had arrested Senussi for enter­ing the coun­try (from Morocco) on a false pass­port on the 16th, they are under no oblig­a­tion to honor a Libyan extra­di­tion request. If Senussi can muster enough cash and friends he can escape to whichever sanc­tu­ary he was headed for. Libya and many West­ern and Arab intel­li­gence agen­cies want to talk to Senussi, who was the keeper of Kaddafi’s most embar­rass­ing and explo­sive secrets (involv­ing tor­ture, ter­ror, and dirty deeds in gen­eral). Mau­ri­ta­nia is under pres­sure from many nations to turn over Senussi. One of the things for­eign­ers would like to dis­cuss with Senussi was a recently dis­cov­ered (by the NTC) Kaddafi pro­gram to store weapons and bomb mak­ing mate­ri­als at many Libyan embassies around the world. These weapons were to be used to kill Libyan expa­tri­ates who were caus­ing Kaddafi prob­lems and sup­port local ter­ror­ists who were work­ing for Kaddafi. Senussi is believed to have been involved with this embassy ter­ror­ism sup­port pro­gram, which has been in place for decades.

March 16, 2012: In Beng­hazi a rally in sup­port of auton­omy for east­ern Libya was attacked by some armed men and one pro­tester was killed.

March 15, 2012: Police broke up a peo­ple smug­gling gang, run by a Bangladeshi man, which smug­gled peo­ple from South Asia and Soma­lia to Europe, via North Africa.

March 13, 2012: Libya and eight other North African nations have agreed to improve bor­der secu­rity and do more to ham­per smug­gling (of peo­ple and goods).

March 9, 2012: Thou­sands of peo­ple demon­strated, in east­ern and west­ern Libya, against regional autonomy.

March 8, 2012: A mili­tia, which has been con­trol­ling the Tripoli air­port since Kaddafi was over­thrown last year, has agreed to turn con­trol of the air­port (the nation’s largest) over to the NTC.
Next Arti­cle ? COLOMBIA: Bor­der Blues