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.

“They use dif­fer­ent rhetoric in the rur­al areas where it’s more con­ser­v­a­tive: rhetoric about stop­ping cul­ture from out­side, cor­rup­tion of youth and defend­ing Islam,” he said.

“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