LIBYA GOVERNANCE:
Scores killed in Libyan violence

5/3/2012 2:23:45 AM
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KUFRA - More than 100 people have been reported dead after the recent outbreak of violence between the largely segregated Zwai and Tabu tribes in Libya’s remote Saharan town of Kufra. - The recent outbreak of violence between the largely segregated Zwai and Tabu tribes in Libya’s remote, Saharan town of Kufra shattered the uneasy calm that held since last February’s clashes. The current clashes illustrate the challenges in building a new state in the current power vacuum following Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow. Kufra’s Tabu population is an estimated 4,000 out of a total of 44,000 of mostly Arab Zwai inhabitants. The Tabu suffered chronic discrimination under the Gaddafi regime, exacerbated by a violent territorial war with Chad over minerals,that Libya eventually forfeited in the 1980s. The Tabu played a crucial role in last year’s overthrow of Gaddafi. Tabu networks were activated across southern borders to block the flow of sub-Saharan mercenaries to the old regime. Libya’s new transitional government subsequently assigned Tabu leader Issa Abdelmajid Mansur to watch over Kufra’s vast Saharan corner, with its lucrative legal and illicit cross-border trade of food, fuel, migrants, weapons and drugs. (END/RADIO BULLETIN EDITOR/2012)

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