A Blog on All Things Libyan

I've just encountered (though it seems to have been around since 2015), a blog on all things Libyan, with an eclectic mix of cultural, social, linguistic, and historical posts. Called The Silphium Gatherer (which may be why I didn't find it sooner), and including at least some material in Arabic, its "About" page explains its purpose:

The Silphium Gatherer is a blog focusing on scholarship of Libya in as many fields as possible, including but not limited to: arts, ethnography, histories, linguistics, literature, music, and urban studies. Most blogposts will be in the form of bibliographic references with a brief description of the study, and links where possible. Longer posts, announcements of events and exhibits, and the odd commentary will also occasionally appear. The curator of this blog is Adam Benkato.

Silphium was a plant produced in ancient Libya and prized for its medicinal benefits—as Libya is the least studied of North African countries, new, unique, and critical research is the ‘silphium’ of modern Libya…

This blog is motivated by the recognition of the need to put Libya on the map in a number of academic disciplines. It will therefore gather resources, link to publications, make older or inaccessible sources available, and above all draw attention to what studies do exist and should be more well known. It will be bilingual as often as possible.

 By all means dip in and sample it. It draws from multiple disciplines.

ECFR: A Guide to Libya's Main Players

The European Council on Foreign Relations has published A Guide to Libya's Main Players
 with sections by several experts, which you may find useful. Downloadable PDF here.

Irbid, Ben Guerdane, Hilla: Signs ISIS is Resurgent, or on the Ropes?

Within a matter of days, we have seen a cross-border raid from Syria into Jordan at Irbid, another cross-border raid from Libya into Tunisia at Ben Guerdane, and a deadly bombing at Hilla in Iraq (a largely Shi‘ite city). ISIS and its subsidiaries are certainly prime suspects.

But given ISIS' battlefield setbacks of late, I would raise one question: is ISIS showing a resurgence, or are these the desperate attempts of a movement in retreat lashing out in an attempt to appear still relevant? I suspect it may be the latter.

Sabratha's Long History

Today's US airstrike against ISIS at Sabratha in Libya offers an opportunity to note the deep history of this Libyan town. The attack, the US  says, was aimed at an ISIS training camp and particularly targeted Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian terrorist accused of plotting the attacks on the Bardo Museum and the beach at Sousse last year.

Roman theater, Sabratha

Sabratha, in northwestern Libya not far from Tunisia, is  a mid-sized city on the coast. But near the town are the ruins of ancient Sabratha, originally founded by the Phoenicians, later a major Roman city flourishing under the Severan Emperors, who were of Libyan origin.

Founded around 500 BC by the Phoenicians, later under Numidian rule, Sabratha with the arrival of Rome began a rise to become one of the "three cities" (Tripolis) from which Tripolitania would take its name: from west to east Sabratha, Oea (the modern Tripoli), and Leptis Magna.

Wikipedia

The Emperor Septimius Severus was from Leptis Magna, and the Tripolis reached its golden age under the ensuing Severan Emperors. In the Byzantine era, Justinian built a basilica there, but after the Arab conquest, trade shifted in favor of Oea, to which the broader name Tripolis (Tarabulus in Arabic), became applied exclusively, and Sabratha to its west and Leptis Magna to its east declined. One result is that the Roman ruins at Sabratha and (especially) at Leptis were better preserved.

A Punic Survival in Berber, Even in Siwa?

 I like to think there is some small, eccentric subset of my readers who have been asking themselves, "why is he spending so much time  on history and current events and neglecting posts on obscure linguistics of dead Middle Eastern languages?" I even like to think that a subset of that subset has been mumbling, "You haven't had a single post on Punic since the summer of 2013! " Then, you may recall, we discussed the question of whether spoken Punic (the language of Ancient Carthage) survived until the coming of Arabic.

Actually, maybe none of you are thinking that. But not being a linguistics expert, I have to refer you to someone who is, Lameen Souag over at Jabal al-Lughat, who also deserves congratulations for his 10th anniversary of blogging. I also recently linked to his posts about the officialization of Tamazight in Algeria.

In this particular link. "Raisins from Carthage to Siwa," Souag, citing a Facebook post, notes that the standard word in Tamazight dialects for "raisin" is usually either a Berber phrase meaning "dried grapes" or is a loan word from Arabic, but that in Djerba in Tunisia, Zuwara and other places in western Libya — and, curiously, at Siwa, the only Berber enclave in Egypt —the root in use is found in a late inscription in Neo-Punic. The root is also documented in Hebrew, as is often how Punic and Phoenician inscriptions are deciphered. (Hebrew, Phoenician, Punic and Canaanite are extremely similar languages.)

Souag, who has written a book on Siwi and its relations to other Berber languages, notes that Carthaginian influence, and Neo-Punic, never extended east of central Libya, so what explains the presence in Siwa of all places? He answers:

The answer is simple, as I discuss in the introduction to my book Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): modern Siwi seems to derive mainly from a Berber variety spoken much further west, which reached Siwa only during the Middle Ages. There very probably was a Berber language spoken in Siwa before that, but if so, it has left very few traces.

 I, at least, find that fascinating.

The Senussi Campaign: Action at Wadi Majid and Gebel Medwa, Christmas Day, 1915

The holidays and a strained back have impeded blogging for a few days, but I wanted to continue my series on the Senussi Campaign in World War  (see Parts I, II, and III) with a discussion of actions which took place on December 25, Christmas Day, 1915. a century ago last week.

After the mid-December clashes at Wadi Senab and Umm al-Rakham, weather conditions made operations impossible between December 15 and Christmas Eve, so the Western Frontier Force remained in Mersa Matruh, where it was reinforced by a battalion of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade while the Senusi and their Turkish advisers concentrated at Gebel Medwa to the west.

A British spotter aircraft identified the Senussi concentration as consisting of 900 troops in three battalions, four mountain guns and two machine-guns, under Gebel Medwa, on the Khedivial Motor Road to the west.

The overall commander of the Western Frontier Force, Maj. Gen. Alexander Wallace, decided to dispatch an expedition to disperse the Senussi buildup. Once again, the force was divided between infantry moving on the Khedivial Motor Road, and the cavalry making a wide flanking movement through the desert. The infantry column was commanded by Lt. Col. J.L.R. Gordon and included the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, a battalion of the 1st New Zealand Rifle Brigade, and the 2/8 Middlesex, a British Territorial unit.The cavalry column was commanded by the WFF's overall cavalry commander, Brig. Gen. J.D.T. Tyndale Briscoe, and consisted of elements of the 1/1 Buckinghamshire Yeomanry Regiment (Yeomanry were the cavalry equivalent of Territorials), Hertfordshire and Dorsetshire squadrons of the Composite Yeomanry Regiment, and Squadron A of the Australian Composite Light Horse Regiment. General Wallace and his headquarters were to follow the infantry as a reserve.

The map above shows the thinking: the infantry would push back the Senussi while the cavalry would come up in their rear and block their retreat.

Beginning the campaign under cover of darkness, Gordon moved the infantry out of Matruh at 5 am Christmas Day. As they proceeded towards their objective, the Senussi sighted them around dawn and the engagement began to develop. The 15th Sikhs were in the lead and Gordon noticed that the Senussi were not in position on Gebel Medwa, he sent one o the two Sikh companies to hold he hill and protect his right flank.  By 8 am the Senussi had brought up a mountain gun, which slowed the advance. A Nottinghamshire battery and the guns of HMS Clematis offshore and firing at a range of 10,000 yards. Once the hostile gun was silent,  Middlesex unit replaced the Sikhs on the Gebel, and ll the Sikhs plus the New Zealanders advanced against a ridge line, which thy had secured by 10 am. The infantry side of the action was largely a success, but the cavalry had still not appeared, having been delayed by difficulty moving its guns over rugged terrain, and had also been delayed by a skirmish with Senussi cavalry that occurred in the morning. The cavalry arrived around 3 pm and sought to drive the enemy towards the coast, but by 5 pm the late December light was failing and Gordon broke off pursuit. Both columns were ordered to return to Mersa Matruh.

But the bulk of the Senussi forces retreated to the west. On paper, it was a British victory. They dispersed the concentration of Senussi. he Empire forces lost 13 dead and 51 wounded; they estimated Senussi losses at between 300 and 400 dead and took 80 prisoners. But the bulk of the Senusi force escaped and lived to fight another day.

The Senussi Campaign: First Blood at Wadi Senab and Umm al-Rakham, December 11-13, 1915

This weekend marks the centenary of the first serious action between the British/Indian/ANZAC Western Frontier Force in the campaign against the Senussi (Sanusi) in Egypt's Western Desert. See my previous posts dealing with the background to the conflict and with the composition of the Western Frontier Force.,

As we saw, the hastily assembled mix of forces thrown together to oppose the Turkish-armed Senussi forces which had invaded Egypt from Libya had assembled at Mersa Matruh in November 1915, the British abandoning posts farther west at Sollum and Sidi Barrani. The WFF was commanded by Major-General Alexander Wallace and consisted of hastily thrown together infantry and cavalry units from a variety of British, Indian Army, Australian and New Zealand. By December 11 General Wallace felt that the force was sufficiently in place to move out from Matruh and find the Senussi.

A century ago today, Wallace sent out a column under Lt.Col. J.L.R. Gordon of the 15th Sikhs to find Senussi troops believed to be operating around Duwwar Hussein, 16 miles west of Matruh. Gordon took his infantry (the 15th Sikhs minus two companies),west along the telegraph line on the coast, while the cavalry, the 2nd Composite Yeomanry Regiment, along with a section of guns and armored cars, took the Khedivial Motor Road to the southwest.

The Yeomanry or Yeoman Cavalry were the mounted version of British Territorial units, intended for home defense but deployed o Egypt since the Regular Cavalry were needed elsewhere. The Composite Brigade consisted of elements of some 20 different units, and these were neither regulars nor used to working together. among Armstrong's other cavalry was a Composite Regiment of Australian Light Horse, which will also play a role in the coming battle. Though the Light Horse were to become one of the most famous cavalry units in the war, this was again a mix, including elements of the 9th Light Horse Regiment who had not been shipped to Gallipoli, mostly convalescents, horseholders, and the like.

The Yeomanry were sent to patrol in the direction of Samaket al-Medwa along the Khedivial Motor Road. They left at 7:00 AM on December 11. Their scouts were not sufficiently far ahead of the main force to spot danger and the cavalrymen rode into an ambush from several hundred Senussi around Wadi Senab.

The Senussi, armed and trained by the Turks, poured heavy fire on the yeomanry, and a British attempt to turn the enemy's right with help from the armored cars failed.

Gordon, from the track along the telegraph line, could hear the firing but decided he was too far away to help and assumed the cavalry would be relieved from Mersa Matruh.

This finally happened in the afternoon, when Squadron A of the Composite Light Horse, which had only just arrived in Matruh, arrived on the scene. This finally turned the tide and the Senussis withdrew.

The British suffered 16 dead and 17 wounded from the firefight. Of an estimated Senussi force of around 300, the British found 80 dead and took seven prisoners. Among the British dead was Lt Col. Cecil Snow, an intelligence officer.

The cavalry then turned north toward the coast to rejoin Gordon, who had gone into camp at Umm al-Rakham.

After a day of combat both the cavalrymen and their mounts needed rest, so Gordon remained at Umm al-Rakham on the 12th. During the day he was reinforced by elements of the 6th Royal Scots (also a Territorial Regiment) and a supply train. On the 13th occurred the battle of Umm al-Rakham, thwo actions are often subsumed under the name of Wadi Senab,

At 8:30 in the morning Gordon resumed his march toward Duwwar Hussein. He intended to proceed west to Wadi Hasheifiat, and then turn south to Duwwar Hussein. As he approached the Wadi, with the cavalry ahead, the 15th Sikhs in the lead and the Royal Scots on the left, they came under fire from the plateau o the south. It soon became clear that they were under attack from a formidable force of 1,000 to 1,500 enemy, in uniform and advancing in disciplined formations; these were muhafiziyya troops, Senussi "Regulars," armed with field artillery and machine-guns,  trained by Turkish and German officers.

The fighting intensified and the Royal Scots  broke and retreated. The only Regular (Indian) Army troops, the 15th Sikhs, held their ground. When ordered to fall back, the Commander, Captain C.F.W. Hughes, said that would require abandoning the wounded and declined to do so.

Meanwhile Gordon had sought reinforcements from Mersa Matruh and later in the day was reinforced by B and C Squadrons of the Australian Light Horse Composite Regiment and by additional field artillery. In addition, the guns of HMS Clematis off  the coast came into play.

The reinforcements and artillery allowed the British to hold the field. British losses were nine dead and 56 wounded in the December 13 action. But though the British held the field, they could not reach their objective at Duwwar ussein and did not defeat the Senussi. On December 14, the force returned to Mersa Matruh.

They would fight their next battle on Christmas Day.

The Senussi (Sanusi) Campaign Begins, Part II: The British Reaction

In Part I of this post on the Senussi (Sanusi) campaign in the Western Desert in World War I, we saw how Ottoman officers infiltrated into Libya to encourage the Senussi Order, which already was resisting Italian occupation in Libya, to attack the British position in Libya as well. Part I ended with the Senussi raids on Sollum and Sidi Barrani and the movement of regular Senussi forces into Egypt.

Senussi (Cyrenaican) Flag

As a historical note, the Senussi used a black flag with a white crescent and star, a flag later identified with Cyrenaica, and eventually incorporated as the middle panel of the Libyan flag from independence to Qadhafi, and again since 2011.

Total Senussi forces were around 5,000 men, regulars and tribal militias, with some Ottoman and German officers.

As I noted last time, Britain had paid little attention to the Western Desert since the Italians in Libya were now allied; in theory the Egyptian Army was to protect the frontier (though the British worried the Egyptian Army might not be reliable since Egypt was nominally neutral in the war). The British were mainly determined to defend the Suez Canal, and the Nile Valley to protect the Canal.

Senussi troops

So when the Senussi attack began, the British had few defenses in place. General John Maxwell, the Commander of British Forces in Egypt, determined that Sollum could not readily be defended; it was 450 km from Alexandria and the rail line to the west was completed only as far as Dabaa 121 km east of Mersa Matruh. Sidi Barrani was also considered too exposed. So the British decided to draw up their defenses at Mersa Matruh.

On November 20, the British created the Western Frontier Force, a quickly improvised mix of British and colonial troops. It was commanded by Major-General Alexander Wallace of the 11th Indian Division. He commanded a mix of British, Indian, Australian and New Zealand forces.His infantry was a Composite Infantry Brigade commanded by Brigadier-General the Earl of Lucan and consisting of the 1/6th Royal Scots, 2/7 and 2/8th Middlesex, 15th Sikhs and auxiliaries, a detachment of the Egyptian Army Military Works Department, and the Divisional Train of the 1st Australian Division. Of these only the 15th Sikhs were a regular unit of the Indian Army.

The cavalry, commanded by Brigadier-General J.D.T. Tyndale-Briscoe, was even more diverse: a Composite Mounted Brigade consisting of three Composite Regiments representing some 20 different Yeomanry Regiments; a Composite Regiment of Australian Light Horse; and the Nottinghamshire Battery of Royal Horse Artillery.

These initial scratch forces were reinforced by December 3 by a Battery of the Honourable Artillery Company, two Royal Marines Guns two aircraft from the Royal Flying Corps and six armored cars.

Other forces were deployed to guard other points. As early as November 29, the 1/1st North Midland Mounted Brigade and the Berkshire Battery Royal Horse Artillery moved into the Fayyum to protect it. Meanwhile the protection of the coastal railroad between Alexandria and the then-railhead at Dabaa, as wall as the Moghara oasis, was assigned to the 2nd New Zealand Rifle Brigade, a company of thr15th Sikhs, some of the Bikanir Camel Corps, an Egyptian Army Machine Gun Section and an armored train garrisoned by 1/10th Gurkha Rifles., 1915..

This hastily assembled force knew there were Senussi forces massing southwest of Mersa Matruh. Once the garrisons between Sollum and Matruh had been withdrawn to Matruh, the stage was set for the first action, beginning December 11, 1915. I'll tell that tale December 11.

November/December 1915: The Senussi (Sanusi) Campaign Begins, Part I

As we proceed through our periodic marking of the centennial of WWI, it's time to introduce another generally neglected theater of the Great War in the Middle East: the Senussi (Sanusi) or Western Desert campaign, which lasted from November 1915 until 1917.

The primary mission of the British Empire Forces in Egypt (many of them ANZACs) was the defense of the Suez Canal  against any renewed  Turkish offensive. Protecting Egypt's other borders was, at least nominally, the role of the Egyptian Army. But when the war began Egypt faced few threats except from the east, since it ruled Sudan with the British and the rest of North Africa was controlled by British Ally France or initially neutral Italy.

It was not until May of 1915 that Italy entered the war on the Allied side. Bear in mind that until 1911  Libya had been Ottoman territory until seized by Italy. When Italy entered the War, the Ottomans saw an opportunity to renew their interests in Libya, and perhaps threaten Egypt from the west.

The instrument was to be the Sanusi order, which most European powers at the time Spelled Senussi. The Sanusiyya was a tribally based Sufi order with followers in much of the Saharan interior, which had been active in resisting French expansion in Algeria and the Italian in Libya. The Senussi had generally not bothered the British in Egypt, but they had followers in Egypt's western oases.

Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi

The head of the Order in 1915 was Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi, commonly called 'The Grand Senussi" by Westerners.

As early as February 1915, prior to Italy's entering the war, the Ottomans approached Sayyid Ahmad to sound him out. Two officers, Captain Nuri (later known as Nuri Killigil), a half brother of War Minister Enver Pasha, and Major Ja‘far al-‘Askari, an Arab officer from Baghdad who would later join the Arab Revolt and play a prominent role in postwar Iraq.

Nuri

They were secretly landed in Libya from a Greek ship carrying gold and met surreptitiously with Sayyid Ahmad. They eventually persuaded him to declare jihad against both he Italians and the British, and hoped he would attack Egypt while the Sultan of Darfur would rise against the British in Sudan.

In August of 1915, British submarines seeking shelter on the Libyan coast came under fire, and in November the crews of two torpedoed ships, HMS Tara and HM Transport Moorina landed on the Libyan coast and were taken prisoner by the Senussi. The British protested but did not immediately confront them.

The Egyptian-Libyan border had not been formally delineated at the time of the Italo-Turkish War in 1911, though it was generally considered that Sollum was in Egypt. The borders in the interior were undemarcated, and the Senussi had may adherents in the Siwa Oasis, which would become a base of operations.

Some 5000 Senussi fighters with Turkish and German arms were concentrated at Siwa.

On November 6, 1915 two Egyptian coast guard ships were attacked in Sollum harbor by the German submarine U-35, and one was sunk. On November 17 and 18, Senoussi raids struck at Sollum and at Sidi Barrani to the east, and by November 21 the Senussi regular forces had crossed into Egypt.

In Part II, we'll look at the British response.

Red Storm Rising: Blood Red Sandstorm in Benghazi

The photos above, from the Libya's Channel website, shows a Ghibli sandstorm painting Benghazi red. Much of the Middle East has been suffering from high heat and late spring sandstorms, but the deep red of the Libyan storm is particularly striking. The good news is it's temporarily stopped the fighting.

Cairo, too, has been suffering from high temperatures and a  khamsin  blowing, though not as colorful:

More Mediterranean Migrants Have Probably Drowned This Year to Date than Died on the Titanic, but None of Them were Named Astor or Guggenheim

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus for the Statue of Liberty

The latest disaster of a sinking ship carrying migrants from Libya and other parts of Africa to southern Europe has drowned somewhere between 700 and 950 human beings; and it's only one of several such sinkings in the last few weeks. The navies and coast guards of Italy, Malta, and Greece try to rescue survivors, but overpacked migrant ships often capsize with most of the passengers below decks. Libyan migrants are not the only ones aboard; sub-Saharan Africans are also fleeing through Libya.

No one knows the exact toll because some ships may disappear wholly undetected. Many think the death toll this year alone may be over 2,000, perhaps 1,500 or so in the last month alone.

A hundred and three years and a week ago, on April 14, 1912, RMS Titanic sank.  Somewhere between 1,500 and 1,600 people died. Some had names like Astor and Guggenheim, and it became one of the great symbols of the end of an era. Now thousands whose names will never be known are dying at sea, and thousands more are crowding into Lampedusa and Malta and other places looking for refuge. James Cameron probably will not make a high-budget film about their last hours.

It's not just Libya. Refugees from sub-Saharan Africa have been pouring into North Africa looking for a route to Europe. There are no easy answers to massive refugee flows. But there may be humanitarian answers to massive drownings. How many Titanics need to sink before the UNHCR and others recognize we are dealing with a first-order crisis? Despite my reproducing the Photoshop above I can't blame the European countries alone. The North African countries are doing their best to funnel refugees through as quickly as possible and out to sea.

I think the world is finally noticing the toll. The North African countries need to recognize their own responsibilities in this escalating disaster.

copyright Wall Street Journal

Egypt Pushing for International Action on Libya

In addition to its on Monday airstrike against Islamic State elements in Libya in retaliation for the murder of 21 Egyptian Christians, Egypt appears to be urging wider international intervention in Libya, possibly including Italy, the former colonial power, This is the latest instance, among many, of the emerging alliance of Gulf States and Egypt in taking proactive military measures against radical jihadist movements.

 It is probably no coincidence that Egypt also just  ordered Rafale multirole fighters from France, a deal which may be underwritten by Gulf funds.

Yennayer: Happy Amazigh New Year, 2015/2965! Aseggas Amagaaz!

I've said before that despite the disappointments of "Arab Spring," the enthusiasm of "Amazigh Spring" has not dissipated. The Amazigh or "Berber" peoples of North Africa have been enjoying a cultural recrudescence. Though the large Amazigh populations in Morocco and Algeria were always politically active, the Amazigh peoples of Libya were long repressed, with Qadhafi denying their very existence and their language banned. They, and he small Amazigh population of Tunisia, have gone through a conscienceless-raising of sorts. One indication of this has been more widespread celebration of the traditional Amazigh New Year, known as Yennayer (January), on January 14. (Or, among many Algerian Imazighen, on January 12.)

January 14 is simply the date January 1 in the Julian calendar, now running 13 days behind the Gregorian, and it is the traditional New Year for North African agriculturalists, Arab as well as Amazigh. Since the Islamic calendar is purely lunar, it is of little relevance for planting or harvest as it moves around the solar calendar from year to year. Just as in Egypt the fellahin, Muslim or Copic, use the Coptic months as their agricultural calendar,o do North Africans use the old Roman months (Yennayer=Januarius) for planting. (The Coptic calendar is also Julian, but their New Year is in September.) Amazigh in particular have embraced Yennayer as a particularly Amazigh holiday.

Since the Amazigh Spring began I've posted several background pieces on the New Year. My 2012 posting went into the background in some detail. That post also addressed the modern creation of an Amazigh "era," the source of that 2965 date above. While the Julian agricultural calendar is real and ancient, that 2965 date is what the late historian Eric Hobsbawm called "the invention of tradition," a modern creation pretending to antiquity. The Academie Berbere in Paris in the 1960s introduced a "Berber" era based on the accession to the throne of Egypt of the Pharaoh Shoshenq I (also Sheshonq) in 950 BC (roughly). Shoshenq came from Libya, so they identified him as Berber (still the most common usage at the time. (The modern Kurdish calendar era, which dates from the rise of the Medes in about 612 BC, is a parallel case.)

My 2013 (or 2963 if you prefer) New year's post dealt mainly with the big blowout concert held at a stadium in Tripoli (which will clearly not be repeated this year, but was equally unthinkable under Qadhafi.

And last year I dealt with the discrepancy between those Algerian Imazighen who observe the New Year on January 12 while everyone else marks it on January 14.

I would urge the curious to read these previous posts.

The Tamazight New Year's Greeting is spelled many different ways in English (Assegas Amagaaz, Asegas Amegaz), or as below, which also shows it in the Tifinagh script. (The link is to my 2011 post on Tifinagh. And remember "Berber" is not a single dialect/language, and Tifinagh is usually back-spelled from French, Arabic, or English transcriptions.)

Does Libya Still Have Two Parliaments, Just One (and if so, Which?), or None After High Court Decision?

Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse in Libya, yesterday's Supreme Court decision declaring the August inflection of a new House of Representatives to be unconstitutional,  may have muddled things even further. Since August, there have been two rival parliaments, or claimants yo be parliament: a  House of Representatives generally recognized internationally as the legitimate legislature, now meeting in Tobruk, and a rump of the former legislative body, the General National Congress, sitting in Tripoli under the aegis of the "Libyan Dawn" Islamist militias controlling that town. Since the Supreme Court is also in Tripoli, the Tobruk Parliament has rejected the Court's decision.

The problem is that the Supreme Court did not officially explain its reasoning for the ruling, adding to confusion and to some uncertainty internationally; only the Tobruk body enjoys international recognition, but the Supreme Court ruling calls that legitimacy into question, though the Court may have acted under the guns of the militias. Although it has said ti will release the full text of the decision, it reportedly involves the adoption of the Electoral Law by fewer than the two-thirds majority of the former General National Congress provided for under the country's Constitutional Declaration.

Meanwhile, the rump of the GNC in Tripoli has said the decision leaves it free to "resume its legislative functions," although, since it consists of members not elected to the new House of Representatives, it lacks a quorum of its original strength.

Most international and UN efforts to resolve the standoff have focused on opening talks between the two rival factions aimed at finding a way to form  a coalition government. The United Nations issued a statement reiterating the need to create a national consensus, but that seems more difficult than ever now.

This has revived old concerns that the eastern region around Benghazi might secede.

And in the deep south, tribal fighting around the Sharara oilfields led to declining production and, in recent days, a takeover of the oilfields and a shutdown of production, though it is claimed this will resume "soon."  Some are portraying the tribal conflict as simply that, an ethnic conflict between the Berber-speaking Tuareg and the Nilo-Saharan-speaking Tebou, while others claim the two sides are now fighting as proxies for the rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk.

Libyan Parliament at Sea. No, I Mean Literally

The Libyan Parliament elected in June fled Tripoli in early August after losing control of the capital, and, with the second city of Benghazi partly under hostile control, is now ensconced at the eastern port of Tobruk. A nearby hotel is used for parliamentary sessions, and the deputies are themselves are quartered aboard a Greek car ferry, the Elyros.

Thus the Libyan ship of state is now literally a ship.

At least if they have to move again, they have their own transportation. But if the situation continues to deteriorate, one could envision the Parliament becoming a sort of legislative Flying Dutchman, forever doomed to sail the seven seas without making port.

More on Libya

A piece by Mary Fitzgerald at Foreign Policy offers some insights into the domestic political implications of the alleged Egypt/UAE strikes: "Libya's New Power Brokers."

Two Reflections on the Tripoli Airstrikes

Here are a couple of useful reflections by others on those reports that Egypt and the UAE bombed Libya. A post at Foreign Policy argues that "Of Course the US Knew About Airstrikes on Libya."

And Juan Cole, who actually can remember the events of 2011, discusses "5 Ironies of US Reaction to Egypt/UAE Bombing of Libya."

Both pieces make good points.

Who Bombed Tripoli Last Monday and Yesterday? Egypt and UAE, or Algeria?

The New York Times has quoted "four senior American officials" as saying that Egypt and the UAE, despite strong public and official denials, were responsible for the bombing of targets in Tripoli last Monday and again yesterday. If verified, this may resolve one of the stranger mysteries of the past week, rather overshadowed by events in Iraq and Gaza.

Last Monday morning before dawn, at least two combat aircraft attacked targets in Tripoli in Libya, striking at areas controlled by Islamist militias. Libya's Air Force denied responsibility, and experts said the Libyan Air Force lacks night fighting capability and could not have launched the strikes. Libyan government officials blamed a "foreign" air force, and the US, Britain, France, Italy, and Egypt all disclaimed responsibility. One problem was that the aircraft, striking before dawn, were not identifiable.

This was further muddled when spokesmen for rebel General Khalifa Haftar claimed responsibility, saying "The Libyan eagles of the air, on board Sukhoi-24 long-range weapon launchers that were brought back into service again, carried out precise and intensified airstrikes early yesterday morning on targets of the so-called 'Libya Dawn' militias," This raised questions since Libya has only six Su-24s and all were believed shot down or destroyed on the ground in 2011.

Later, however, Jane's reported that Brig. Gen. Saqr Jarushi, a dismissed head of the Libyan Air Force who backs Haftar and commands the base at Binina, clarified "that Su-24s that were under his control, but provided by a foreign air force, had carried out airstrikes that he implied were in addition to the earlier ones." 

Su-24 in Algerian livery

These reports of Su-24s seemed to point the finger at Algeria. Other than Libya, her only other air forces nearby with Su-24s are Sudan's and Algeria's Sudan's are recent and it is not concerned with Libya, while Algeria's are recently upgraded. (Syria has the but is preoccupied elsewhere.) Algeria denied it.

If Egypt and the UAE were responsible, they do not have Su-24s. But yesterday, the Libyan Dawn militia claimed that Egyptian and UAE aircraft were responsible for an attack on Friday, though other reports speak of a second attack only on Sunday, including the NYT report. There may have been three attacks in all.

If he Times story is to be believed, the UAE provided the aircraft, pilots, and refueling tankers, and flew from Egyptian air bases, so the Egyptian denial that its aircraft were involved could be literally true. But then, was the Su-24 story simply a red herring planted by Haftar's people to point the finger at Algeria? Haftar's people probably are cooperating with the Egyptians in the border region and may have provided a cover story.

Meanwhile, militia fighting over control of Tripoli International Airport, which has been closed due to the fighting, has reportedly resulted in a fire which destroyed the main terminal building.

The Damage to Tripoli Airport

As Greece joins other Western countries in pulling its nationals out of Tripoli in Libya, in Greece's case by sea (The US and UK evacuated overland to Tunisia), the damage to Tripoli International Airport from weeks of militias battling to control the airport is apparent. Yesterday a ceasefire was announced to allow firefighters to fight the huge oil tank fire that has been raging since earlier this week.  But that ceasefire collapsed today, and heavy fighting is reported again. This afternoon, there are reports of large protests in Tripoli's main squares, suggesting popular outrage t how the militia fighting has cut Tripoli off from the rest of the world may be reaching a boil.

Some photos from the Internet give a sense of the extensive damage to the airport. But the loss of passenger revenues, the losses in destroyed airframes and the burning fuel in the tank fire must be enormous. Some accounts say 90% or more of the aircraft on the ground when the fighting erupted have been damaged or destroyed.

About July 14:

From July 20, struck by a rocket:

 Recently, from Twitter:

From NPR:

With Tripoli Fire Still Burning, Benghazi Erupts

The deteriorating situation in Libya continues in the wake of Western evacuations of nationals from Tripoli. now Benghazi has erupted again, with Ansar al-Shari‘a seizing a Special Forces base and an important hospital,

The situation seems fluid however; Twitter posts are claiming the hospital an other sites have been taken back by popular demonstrations, bringing down the Ansar al-Shari‘a flags.