The idea that there is a nation called “Libya” is the central problem with our understanding of what is going on in that fake “country,” the flaw in our projections of what will or ought to happen.
The country known today as Libya has only existed since the end of World War II, and was the product of a shotgun marriage of the three “provinces”: Tripolitania, in the West, Cyrenaica, in the East, and Fezzan in the South. “Libya” was created, first, by the Italians in 1933, who sought to incorporate the three distinct areas into a unified colony, under a single Fascist proconsul. After the defeat of the Axis powers, the British took control and installed an “emir” in Cyrenaica. Writing in the New York Daily News recently, Diedreick Vandewalle, a professor of government at Dartmouth, gives us some historical perspective:
The great Arab Awakening now sweeping North Africa and the Middle East is not only bringing down the old order of Western-supported dynasties, and tinpot dictators of Gadhafi’s ilk – it is also erasing arbitrary borders drawn by Western colonizers and Ottoman caliphs, and redrawing them to reflect underlying realities more accurately. Any attempt by the West to intervene, and favor one outcome over another, is bound to draw the ire of indigenous peoples – and redirect their anger away from local despots, and towards us.
That is why it’s in our interests to stand aside and let the upsurge play out, without aiding the rebellion in Cyrenaica or standing in its way. Let the recent arrest and expulsion of a British “diplomatic” delegation, which landed in the Eastern region in the dead of night, serve as a lesson and a warning to the West. The sign clearly says: “No Trespassing.” We defy it at our peril.
