Follow Us
From the Editors
Jadaliyya launches its new Syria page . . . Click here.
The Culture Page Returns . . . . click here
Want to find out about new books? Visit our expanding NEWTON page. Click here.
Call for Photos: Become a Contributing Photographer at Jadaliyya
Internship Opportunities at ASI (Jadaliyya, Arab Studies Journal, FAMA). Click here!
The Jadaliyya Egypt Elections Watch page archives! Click here for comprehensive coverage.
Egypt Election Results: Of 427 seats settled, MB got 193, Nour 108, Wafd 38, Bloc 30, RDP 11, Rev. Cont. 10, Wasat 8 (Click Here)
Interested in writing a Review for Jadaliyya? Visit our Call for Reviews here.
Libya
The Libyan Model?
![[Graffiti on a tank in Libya. Image from Demotix.]](/content_images/3/sm_LibyaTankGraffitiImage.jpg "[Graffiti on a tank in Libya. Image from Demotix.]")
In the halls of the United Nations (UN) in New York, “Libya” hangs like an ellipse. For some, the word connotes a successful agenda for humanitarian intervention. For others, it suggests a disaster. Impending wars in West Asia remain spurred on, or haunted, by “Libya.” Oil traders downplay the dangers of a strike on Iran. They point out that any shortfall in oil markets will be covered by “friendly” oilfields in Iraq and Libya, as well as by the Saudi regime’s eagerness to pump more oil to maintain supply at current levels. Last week’s Russian and Chinese veto of the Moroccan Resolution on Syria in the UN Security Council was derived, in part, from fear. Absent strong ...
Keep Reading »The Current Political Situation in Libya: An Interview with Ali Ahmida
![[Map of Libya. Image from unimaps.com]](/content_images/3/sm_LibyaMainMap.gif "[Map of Libya. Image from unimaps.com]")
Libya is back in the news with increasing tensions among various militia groups and political factions struggling for power, sometimes through street battles. Three months have passed since the regime of Muammar Qaddafi was dislodged in Libya. So what is happening in Libya today? What forces are in play, wand hat has become of the revolutionary militias? And what about the issue of outside influence in today's Libya, given the crucial role played by NATO forces as well as governments such as Qatar in bringing an end to Qaddafi's autocracy. Khalil Bendib spoke with University of New England political science professor Ali Ahmida, who just returned from Libya.
Keep Reading »On the Death of Libya's Tyrant
![[A torn banner showing Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte. Photo by Asmaa Waguih]](/content_images/3/sm_torn-banner_2026044i.jpg "[A torn banner showing Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte. Photo by Asmaa Waguih]")
An understanding of the context of Muammar Gaddafi’s demise helps explain why it happened as it did. It also has important repercussions for the future of Libya, since his killing raises important questions about Libyan judicial, military and social processes. Gaddafi’s rule lasted for over four decades—long enough for the majority of Libyans to have lived their entire lives under his reign. More to the point, Libyans lived under an all-encompassing aegis of fear, which the regime managed to maintain both at home and abroad. Gaddafi’s image and persona were uniquely associated with ultimate power and authority. His larger-than-life pictures were everywhere, his ...
Keep Reading »Africa without Qaddafi: The Case of Chad
![[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]](/content_images/3/sm_cg_podcast_logo_240_square.jpg "[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]"){kind=logo}
[The following is the latest from International Crisis Group (ICG) on the impact of Qaddafi's death on neighboring countries.] Africa without Qaddafi: The Case of Chad Executive Summary The end of the long reign of Muammar Qaddafi, killed on 20 October in his hometown of Syrte, opens the way to democracy in Libya. His fall has also left the country and its neighbors facing a multitude of potential new problems that could threaten stability in the region. Chad is a case in point. Qaddafi made his presence felt in all the country’s conflicts, for good and ill, and he maintained a close relationship with President Déby. Because the latter supported his doomed ...
Keep Reading »If the Libyan War Was About Saving Lives, It Was a Catastrophic Failure
![[Anti-Qaddafi fighters gesture to the crowds in front of a Kingdom of Libya flag during celebrations in Benghazi on 23 October. Image by Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters]](/content_images/3/sm_notsavinglives.jpg "[Anti-Qaddafi fighters gesture to the crowds in front of a Kingdom of Libya flag during celebrations in Benghazi on 23 October. Image by Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters]")
As the most hopeful offshoot of the "Arab spring" so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That's not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Qaddafi, courtesy of a NATO attack on his convoy. The grisly killing of the Libyan despot after his captors had sodomised him with a knife, was certainly a war crime. But many inside and outside Libya doubtless also felt it was an understandable act of revenge after years of regime violence. Perhaps that was Hillary Clinton's reaction, when she joked about it on camera, until global revulsion pushed the US to call for an ...
Keep Reading »Collage of Images from Social Media Today
![[Collage from social media. Images from various sources--see below]](/content_images/3/sm_jadalimages1020.jpg "[Collage from social media. Images from various sources--see below]")
. . . . . . . By: Eirs Bors "Wuroud Qasem" Hurwitt Eyad Shataiwe
Keep Reading »Democracy Now! Interview with Anjali Kamat on Militarization and Reconciliation in Libya
![[Anjali Kamat. Image from screen shot of below interview.]](/content_images/3/sm_anjalidn.jpg "[Anjali Kamat. Image from screen shot of below interview.]")
This is an interview conducted with Anjali Kamat on Wednesday, 14 September, in regards to the post-Qaddaif situation in Libya. The interview addresses the legacies of both Qaddafi's rule and the armed rebellion to overthrow him, highlighting questions of militarization, reconciliation, and the future role of NATO. As Libya’s former rebels begin to govern the country after the ouster of longtime leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi, we look at those who remain. Democracy Now! correspondent Anjali Kamat has just spent 10 days crossing Libya, speaking with fighters, former political prisoners, journalists, and advisers to the new government. "Even though Gaddafi’s whereabouts ...
Keep Reading »Doctors without Borders on the Situation in Tripoli
![[Médecins Sans Frontières logo.]](/content_images/3/sm_Medecins-Sans-Frontieres-Logo.jpg "[Médecins Sans Frontières logo.]"){kind=logo}
[The following report was issued by Médecins Sans Frontières on August 28, 2011. It was recently published on Médecins Sans Frontières Australia.] Libya: “Almost all of the hospitals around the city are receiving wounded” Libya / 25.08.11 A three-person Médecins Sans Frontières team is currently in Tripoli with supplies and is starting to support facilities that are already overwhelmed with patients wounded in the fighting currently taking place in the Libyan capital. Médecins Sans Frontières has also dispatched teams to Zlitan, east of Tripoli, and Al Zawiyah, to the west, to support hospitals faced with an influx of wounded. Speaking from Tripoli, Jonathan Whittall, ...
Keep Reading »Democracy Now! Interview with Gilbert Achcar on the Libyan Rebels
![[Gilbert Achcar. Image from screen shot of interview.]](/content_images/3/sm_achcardndn.jpg "[Gilbert Achcar. Image from screen shot of interview.]")
This is an interview conducted with Gilbert Achcar on Wednesday, August 24, in regards to news of the Libyan rebels entering Tripoli. The interview addresses the events surrounding this development, highlighting the dynamics of the NATO intervention and discussing the identities and interests that make up the rebel forces. Transcripts of the interview follow the below video. Libyan rebels have consolidated their grip on the capital of Tripoli by capturing Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s main compound, but the whereabouts of the Libyan leader remain unknown, and he has vowed his forces would resist "the aggression with all strength" until either victory or death. ...
Keep Reading »Report on Exiles from Libya Fleeing to Egypt
![[Image from iom.int]](/content_images/3/sm_2011-07-30_12-20-38.jpg "[Image from iom.int]")
[The following is the latest from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) on the situation facing migrant workers and Libyan nationals fleeing Libya as refugees.] Exiles from Libya Flee to Egypt: Double Tragedy for Sub-Saharan Africans INTRODUCTION 1. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers and refugees flee Libya The conflict that began in Libya on 17 February 2011 with a popular revolt against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi, following the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions in January, triggered a mass exodus of the civilian population into neighboring countries. The violence perpetrated by Gaddafi’s security forces against civilians, the conflict ...
Keep Reading »Report of the Independent Civil Society Fact-Finding Mission to Libya
[The following is the latest from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights on Libya.] Report of the Independent Civil Society Fact-Finding Mission to Libya Introduction The Independent Civil Society Mission to Libya was established by the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR), in cooperation with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), who provided additional expertise and professional experience. The International Legal Assistance Consortium (ILAC) subsequently joined the mission, ...
Keep Reading »Holding Libya Together: Security Challenges After Qadhafi
[The following is the latest from International Crisis Group on Libya]. Holding Libya Together: Security Challenges After Qadhafi EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS As the recent upsurge of violence dramatically illustrates, the militias that were decisive in ousting Qadhafi’s regime are becoming a significant problem now that it is gone. Their number is a mystery: 100 according to some; three times that others say. Over 125,000 Libyans are said to be armed. The groups do not see themselves as ...
Keep Reading »Primo Levi in the Year of Assassinations
Next year will mark twenty-five years since the great Jewish-Italian writer Primo Levi either fell or jumped to his death down the stairwell of his Turin apartment. This year has given us two important cultural products that engage with Levi the chemist, writer, and Auschwitz survivor—a collection of essays published by Fordham University Press, Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi's Science and Humanism After the Fall, and the staging of The Mark of the Chemist, a theatrical reading of his writings at ...
Keep Reading »An Interview with Hisham Matar
On 22 August, the day Libyan rebel forces took Tripoli, acclaimed author and son of Libya, Hisham Matar, opened an impassioned essay with, “We got rid of Muammar Qaddafi. I never thought I would be able to write these words. I thought it might have to be something like: ‘Qaddafi has died of old age’; a terrible sentence, not only because of what it means but also the sort of bleak and passive future it promises. Now rebel forces have reached Tripoli, we can say we have snatched freedom with our own ...
Keep Reading »"After 42 Years": Poet Khaled Mattawa Reading His Latest Piece (Audio Clip)
The following is an audio clip of Libyan poet Khaled Mattawa reading his latest piece, entitled "After 42 Years," performed in the aftermath of Qaddafi's death.
Keep Reading »Sovereign Wealth and Ruler Loot
The mobility of capital, depending on one’s position, is a virtue or a vice. Since the onset of the Arab Spring, a lot of money has been moving in, out, and around the Middle East. In the classic liberal world, the mobility of money is governed by the market. In the real world however, politics has a say. Some of these politics have been about fear as Saudi and Emirati rulers have reportedly opened their checkbooks to assuage pressures on favored rulers and foment trouble for others. These moves did not ...
Keep Reading »Democracy Now! Interview with Mahmood Mamdani on Regional Implications of NATO Intervention
This is an interview conducted with Mahmood Mamdani on Wednesday, 14 September, in regards to recent developments in Libya and Sudan. The interview addresses the implications of NATO's intervention in Libya and the independence of South Sudan, highlighting the regional implications for the African continent. As the African Union meets today, Columbia University professor and Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani joins us to give his take on the regional and global implications of NATO’s intervention in Libya, ...
Keep Reading »Interview with Ali Ahmida, Gilbert Achcar, and David Smith on Situation in Libya
AUDIO PLAYER BELOW The fall of Qaddafi's Tripoli to Libyan rebels has raised a host of new questions and intensified existing debates about the nature and fate of the Libyan uprising. As the peaceful uprising in Libya shifted towards an open rebellion in the face of a violent response by Qaddafi's regime, various calls for intervention by the Libyan people mobilized and polarized world powers, solidarity activists, and everyday observers as to the nature and legitimacy of the Transitional National ...
Keep Reading »NATO's "Conspiracy" against the Libyan Revolution
In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal (19 July 2011), Max Boot— the aptly named neoconservative author and military historian known for his support for “democracy promotion” at the point of a gun, and an ardent supporter of full-scale US military engagement in Libya—referred to a Financial Times article (15 June) that compared the current aerial bombing campaign over Libya and the Kosovo air war in 1999 in order to emphasize “the lack of firepower in the Libya operation.” Boot commented, ...
Keep Reading »WANTED!
The International Criminal Court has now officially made Qaddafi an internationally wanted felon, for Crimes Against Humanity. Libyans everywhere are excitedly anticipating his imminent downfall. However, the “King of Kings” seems to lack the ability to take a hint.
Keep Reading »Jadaliyya Launches Syria Page
.jpg){kind=small}
Jadaliyya Launches O.M.A.R.
Egypt Page
.jpg){kind=small}
Hot on Facebook
What is new in the Israeli situation today is not settler colonialism, which has been the policy of the state of Israel since its inception; it is the breaking apart of the legitimating formula in which Israel is imagined as a “Jewish and democratic” state.click me | أنقرني email quote to a friend
From Jadaliyya Reports
Top Jadaliyya Tags
Jadalicious / جدلشس
Noteworthy
Twitter Updates
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
Latest Entries
View All Entries »- It Is What It Is
- New Texts Out Now: Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education
- Plundering the Past: Scholarly Treasures
- A Year After: The February 20 Protest Movement in Morocco
- حين يكون الكوكب بأسره ضد الثورة
- The Real Me and the Hypothetical Syrian Revolution - Part 1
- Searching for the Arab Spring in Ramallah
- Remembering Anthony Shadid
- Saving Khader Adnan's Life Saves Our Own Soul
- نداء الأسير خضـر عدنـان إلى العالم
- الإخوان في البرلمان؛ محاولة للفهم
- "Violating Sacred Values" in Morocco: Free Speech with an Exception
- Our Friend Anthony Shadid's Stories
- Statement on Hunger Strike of Khader Adnan by Palestinian Human Rights Organizations
- Struggles That Fueled a Revolution
- Immunity, Accountability, and the Arab Uprisings: Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat Discusses the Role of the Human Rights Community
- Anthony Shadid Is No Longer with Us
- Patent for an Invented People
- The Insha'at Exodus
- New Texts Out Now: Lila Abu-Lughod and Anupama Rao, Women's Rights, Muslim Family Law, and the Politics of Consent
Archive
©2010-2012 by the Arab Studies Institute. All Rights Reserved. info@jadaliyya.com
site by concepcion design