Libyan leader vows to keep nation together by force

[maddezmom]

Source: The Guardian

Declaration of autonomy by politicians and tribes in oil-rich eastern region prompts warning from Mustafa Abdul Jalil

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 March 2012 09.29 EST

The Libyan leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, has vowed to use force to stop the country breaking up after leaders in an eastern region declared autonomy.

"We are not prepared to divide Libya," he said, blaming "infiltrators" and "pro-Gaddafi elements" for backing the autonomy plan. "We are ready to deter them, even with force."

The comments, unusually strident for the Libyan leader, came a day after 3,000 activists, politicians and tribal leaders met in the eastern city of Benghazi to inaugurate a self-declared Cyrenaica Provisional Council.

Their declaration of autonomy, and the appointment of Ahmed al-Senussi, a relative of Libya's former king, Idris, as head of the new council, has rapidly spiralled into a crisis. Jalil warned: "I call on my brothers the Libyan people to be aware and alert to the conspiracies that are being plotted against them and to be aware that some people are dragging the country back down into a deep pit."


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/07/libya-vows-nation-together-force?newsfeed=true

[dipsydoodle]

1. Mentioned on our tv news here last night.

They intend to second Sirte into their patch too.

Beginning to look as suspected that the NTC whatever suited the west : not necessarily Libya as a whole.

[leveymg]

2. That seems to be the Iraq War model: intervention, regime change, "ethnic cleansing", state breakup.

It appears to work well for the multinational oil companies. For the rest, not so great.

[riderinthestorm]

3. More confirmation that Libya's crisis was really a civil war all along

that the oil hungry west exploited.

[Xithras]

4. Many familiar with Libya stated that this would happen very early on.

Ultimately, the nations split may not be a bad thing, but this was predicted fairly early on. The huge east/west rivalry in Libya played as much of a role in the war any any Gaddaffi abuses did (real or perceived). The simple reality is that "Libya" has never really been one country. The Ottomans forced them together, the Italian fascists forced them to stay together, the Western backed "kingdom" forced them to stay together, and finally Gaddaffi forced them to stay together. Still, in spite of this, the two regions have different histories, different cultural behaviors, different perspectives on governance, and vastly different amounts of wealth. There is no unified Libyan nation, and there never was. Only a unity forced on them by outsiders and dictators.

Libya has no real national army today, and there is little the NTC could do to stop them from splitting off, ESPECIALLY as most of the NTC fighters were from eastern Libya and would side with Cyrenaica in any civil war. It would be ugly, but there's little that the leaders in Tripoli could do if the leaders in Benghazi really wanted to divide the nation in two.

I just hope it ends up looking like Czechoslovakia and not Yugoslavia.

[David__77]

5. Gaddafi's ex-minister is funny.

He talks just like Gaddafi, of "conspiracies" and "agents." The so-called NTC is really a disillusioned faction of Gaddafi associates.

Libya's days as a unitary state were numbered once foreign powers moved to bolster the anti-Gaddafi coup.