Not just trappings: tribal affiliations still matter in Libya. Demotix / Ibrahem Azaga. All rights reserved.More than three years since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya has plunged into political and security turmoil.
Divisions have deepened among the ever-proliferating groups, interests and ideologies. The country has two governments and a plethora of militias control various pockets of territory. Most of the major cities are subjected to devastating violence. Civilian casualties are rising, with reports of incidents regularly counting the fatalities in scores. And the uncontrolled situation is increasingly threatening the stability of neighbouring countries, as last week’s attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis indicates.
It was not supposed to be like this. When NATO forces arrived in 2011, they thought Libya would be “the most beautiful of the Arab Spring”, as one of the EU diplomats following in their train put it. They believed that with 6m inhabitants, all Sunni Muslims, it would not be difficult to knit things together. They soon realised, however, that underneath the seemingly homogeneous Libyan identity lay a rather heterogeneous population, made up of countless tribes—which the intervention unwittingly ensured acquired well-armed militias.
