Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi  ordered the Libyan air force to fire on other military installations in order to ensure that the weaponry inside the installations does not fall into the hands of protesters, BBC reported today.

 

One thing to remember is that the Libya situation is very different from the military managed secession that we saw play out in Egypt. For one thing the military in Egypt was actually welcomed by the populace and the opposition demonstrations were used by the Egyptian military to ease Mubarak out. In Libya, by contrast, the military is strongly disliked by the populace and would not have that kind of support.

 

Now, the situation is still very opaque but we are seeing some very serious signs of the army splintering. Without a strong regime at the helm to hold the army together the loyalties of many army officers will fall to their respective tribes, and at that point the threat of civil war in Libya considerably increases leading to Lybia beeing split in two.


Around two million Cyrenaican protesters, half of Libya's population who control half of the country and part of its oil resources, embarked Sunday, Feb. 20, on a full-scale revolt against Muammar Qaddafi and his affluent ruling Tripolitanian-dominated regime. Unlike the rights protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, in Libya, one half of the country is rising up against the other half, as well as fighting to overthrow a dictatorial ruler of 42 years.

 

Then anti-government unrest spread Monday to the capital Tripoli with clashes in Tripoli's main square for the first time. European governments and oil and gas companies were evacuating their citizens.

In Tripoli helicopter gunships aimed heavy machine fire into the main market, the Souk al Jumma, while the first tribal militias loyal to Qaddafi to arrive in the capital from the Sahara fought alongside the army. Casualties soared to an estimated 600, with 250 in Tripoli alone as Qaddafi rallied for a bloody civil war that could linger for a long time and divide the country in half.

 

High officials of his regime and businessmen began fleeing Tripoli aboard Libyan Air Force fighter jets and helicopters which landed Monday at Malta's MIA international airport.  Government officials in Valetta said the pilots had defected rather than bomb demonstrators, while all the Libyan arrivals asked for political asylum and more flights were on the way.  

 

Rambling speech

 

Late last night, one of Gadhafi sons Seif al-Islam gave a long, rambling and impromptu speech in which he said that Libya is not another Egypt or Tunisia and that his father Moammar Gadhafi, who has ruled the country for more than four decades, is not another Ben Ali are Mubarak. In other words, Seif al-Islam was saying that the military is not about to drop the regime’s leader and Gadhafi was not about to flee the country.

 

Saif Gaddafi's rambling television speech, including a dark invocation of a colonial threat from Europe, indicated the last stand of a regime bereft of alternatives to brutality.

 

The apparent failure of the mailed fist, and the over-confidence by the regime on which it was premised, will impact on calculations being made in the corridors of power in Morocco, Yemen, Algeria, and the Gulf, pushing leaders towards the model of early and substantial concessions of the sort proffered by King Abdullah in Jordan, rather than the virtual civil war let loose in Libya.

More importantly, outright massacres have not stemmed the tide of protest in Libya.

 

A problem is also  that this is not a situation like Egypt or even Tunisia where the Army as an institution is in a position to step in and seize control of the situation. In fact there are signs of the Army splitting, with reports of army defections in the East, where the regime has had a lot of trouble holding onto support in the past and with reports of even the army chief being placed under house arrest. If the regime can not pull the loyalty the army, then power in the country falls to the tribes, many of which have already reportedly been turning on the regime in the past couple days  leading to civil war.

 

If the Cyrenaicans do manage to hold on, they will be in a position to carve Libya in two and break away from Tripolitania and the Qaddafi regime.

 

Other Places to Watch

 

In Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian peninsula, President Ali Abdullah Saleh held a press conference in the capital, Sanaa, to rule out meeting the demands of protesters seeking an end to his more than 30 years in office. Demonstrators took to the streets for an 11th day as Saleh said their calls for regime change are “not logical.”

Thousands gathered outside Sanaa University and in the southern provinces of Aden and Taiz, while followers of the Shiite Houthi rebel group joined in the protests by holding a demonstration in the northern Saada province, according to activists in Sanaa. The country’s main opposition group has rejected Saleh’s offer for dialogue as long as protesters are being attacked. At least five people have been killed.

Bahrain Home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet

In Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, opposition groups are drawing up demands and discussing the government’s call for dialogue, said Ebrahim Sharif, head of the National Democratic Action Society. Protests have been led by the Shiite Muslim majority, which says it is discriminated against by Sunni rulers.

Thousands of mainly Shiite demonstrators are camped in the central Pearl Roundabout in the capital, Manama, after tanks, armored personnel carriers and riot police withdrew on the orders of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. Protesters have set up tents, a media center and stalls serving food and drinks, and banners called for democracy, regime change and unity among the Persian Gulf island state’s Shiite and Sunni communities.

Saudi Risk

Analysts including the Eurasia Group, a New York-based company that assesses political risk, have warned of the risk of unrest spreading to Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter.

Saudi Arabia neighbors Bahrain and has a Shiite minority population in the east, where most of its oil is produced. It was the lowest-ranked Middle Eastern country in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2010 Democracy Index, which classified all Gulf nations as authoritarian regimes.

Since the establishment of their first polity in 1744, the Saudis have demonstrated remarkable resilience and skill in dealing with challenges to their authority. They have weathered a litany of problems in their nearly 270-year history. These include a collapse of their state in the face of external aggression on two separate occasions (1818 and 1891), feuds within the royal family leading to the abdication of a monarch (1964), the assassination of a second at the hands of a nephew (1975), challenges from the country’s highly influential and expansive ulema class (1960s and 1990s), and rebellions mounted by religious militants on three separate occasions (1929, 1979 and 2003-04).  

One of the reasons for the Saudi ability to effectively deal with these threats is the unique architecture of the state and its societal norms. Unlike many of the other authoritarian Arab countries, the Saudi state is not a vertical one detached from the average individual; instead it is very much rooted in the horizontal masses. The House of Saud is not the typical elite royal family; on the contrary it is connected to the entire tribal landscape of the country through marriages. 

In addition to the tribal social organization, there is a considerable degree of homogeneity of religious and cultural values. The historical relationship between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi religious establishment has proven effective in sustaining the legitimacy of the regime. Reinforcing all these bonds is the country’s oil wealth. 

This arrangement has served the Saudis well for a very long time. But it now appears that they have reached a significant impasse — for a number of reasons. 

First, is that the kingdom is due for a major leadership change considering that the king, along with the top three princes, are extremely old men who could die in fairly quick succession. Second is the rise of the kingdom’s archrival Iran and its Arab Shia allies (in Iraq, Lebanon and now Bahrain), which represents the biggest external threat to the kingdom. Third, the regional wave of popular unrest, demanding that the region’s autocratic regimes make room for democracy, is something the Saudis have not had to deal with thus far. 

The configuration of the Saudi state and society will likely serve as an arrester in the path of any serious unrest. What this means is that Saudi Arabia is unlikely to be immediately overwhelmed by protests, as has been the case with Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. But the kingdom is unlikely to contain such pressures for long, especially as a new generation of leaders assumes the mantle. 

The future rulers will likely build upon the cautious reforms that have been spearheaded by King Abdullah in recent years. But in the emerging regional climate it will be difficult to manage the pace and direction of reforms. The Saudis will have to balance between the need to sustain old relationships such as those with the ulema class and new ones with the Shia minority and liberal segments of society.

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