| 2008 Kufra conflict | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Libya |  Toubou Front for the Salvation of Libya | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Muammar Gaddafi | Issa Abdel Majid Mansur | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 11–30 killed Hundreds wounded | |||||||
The 2008 Kufra conflict was an armed conflict in the Kufra region of Libya, between the pro-Toubou Toubou Front for the Salvation of Libya (TFSL) faction, and the Libyan Government.
After a successful coup d'état led by Muammar Gaddafi in 1969, and the republic was established; Gaddafi like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser an Arab nationalist started to arabise the country. [1] A couple of months later a new law was passed which made Libya an Arab state and replaced it with the 1951 constitution. In the 1951 constitution states "Libyans shall be equal before the law" and also it also mentioned "shall enjoy equal civil and political rights without distinction of religion, belief, race, language, weight kinship, or political or social opinion." [2] Since then Arabic became the sole official language of Libya; both languages and cultures from minority groups like Aujila, Ghat, Ghadames, Hun, Imazighen, Jalo, Toubou, Socra and Zuwara peoples had no room in the country. Especially the Imazighen and the Toubou tribes who were persecuted and harassed by the regime. Until August 2007 a controversial law which bans Imazighen women giving birth to their children an Imazighen name. School-age children were also forced to adopt an Arabic name before they can register themselves for school. [3]
The conflict started in early November 2008 when the Libyan Government stripped ethnic Toubous of their citizenship, claiming that their leaders had sided with their rival Chad. The clashes began when TFSL set a local government's office on fire. [4] Following the incident the government dispatched army units and helicopters to the region, putting Kufra under siege. The clashes stopped in mid-November when both parties agreed to a cease-fire. On 20 November 2008, a Toubou tribal meeting with Libyan officials was held in Kufra to end the conflict. The conflict had led to the deaths of 11 to 30 people, with over a hundred being wounded. [4] [5] [6] [7]
Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Libya borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. Libya comprises three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 1.8 million km2 (700,000 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world. Libya claims 32,000 square kilometers of southeastern Algeria, south of the Libyan town of Ghat. The country's official religion is Islam, with 96.6% of the Libyan population being Sunni Muslims. The official language of Libya is Arabic, with vernacular Libyan Arabic being spoken most widely. The majority of Libya's population is Arab. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in northwestern Libya and contains over a million of Libya's seven million people.
Demographics of Libya is the demography of Libya, specifically covering population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, and religious affiliations, as well as other aspects of the Libyan population. The Libyan population resides in the country of Libya, a territory located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, to the west of and adjacent to Egypt. Libyans live in Tripoli. It is the capital of the country and first in terms of urban population, along with Benghazi, Libya's second largest city.
The Janjaweed are an Arab nomad militia group from the Sahel region. that operates in Sudan, particularly in Darfur, and eastern Chad. They have also been speculated to be active in Yemen. According to the United Nations definition, Janjaweed membership consists of Arab nomad tribes from the Sahel, the core of whom are from the Abbala Arabs, traditionally employed in camel herding, with significant recruitment from the Baggara.
The Toubou or Tubu are an ethnic group native to the Tibesti Mountains that inhabit the central Sahara in northern Chad, southern Libya, northeastern Niger and northwestern Sudan. They live either as herders and nomads or as farmers near oases. Their society is clan-based, with each clan having certain oases, pastures and wells.
Kufra is a basin and oasis group in the Kufra District of southeastern Cyrenaica in Libya. At the end of nineteenth century Kufra became the centre and holy place of the Senussi order. It also played a minor role in the Western Desert Campaign of World War II.
Since 2011, Libya currently does not have an official national emblem. The Constitutional Declaration issued by the National Transitional Council on August 2011 defines the flag of Libya, but does not make any provisions for a coat of arms.
The Egyptian–Libyan War, also known as the Four Day War, was a short border war fought between Libya and Egypt that lasted from 21 to 24 July 1977. The conflict stemmed from a deterioration in relations that had occurred between the two states after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had rebuffed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's entreaties to unify their countries and had pursued a peace settlement with Israel in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Soon thereafter Libya began sponsoring dissidents and assassination plots to undermine Sadat, and Egypt responded in kind to weaken Gaddafi. In early 1976 Gaddafi dispatched troops to the Egyptian frontier where they began clashing with border guards. Sadat responded by moving many troops to the area, while the Egyptian General Staff drew up plans for an invasion to depose Gaddafi.
The Kingdom of Libya, known as the United Kingdom of Libya from 1951 to 1963, was a constitutional monarchy in North Africa that came into existence upon independence on 24 December 1951 and lasted until a bloodless coup d'état on 1 September 1969. The coup, led by Muammar Gaddafi, overthrew King Idris and established the Libyan Arab Republic.
The Libyan civil war or the 2011 Libyan revolution, also known as the First Libyan Civil War was an armed conflict in 2011 in the North African country of Libya that was fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and rebel groups that were seeking to oust his government. The war was preceded by protests in Zawiya on 8 August 2009 and finally ignited by protests in Benghazi beginning on Tuesday, 15 February 2011, which led to clashes with security forces who fired on the crowd. The protests escalated into a rebellion that spread across the country, with the forces opposing Gaddafi establishing an interim governing body, the National Transitional Council.
The 1951 Libyan Constitution was brought into force on 7 October 1951, prior to Libya's formal declaration of its independence on 21 December 1951 as a constitutional and hereditary monarchy under King Idris. The enactment of the Libyan Constitution was significant in that it was the first and only piece of legislation that formally entrenched the rights of Libyan citizens after the post-war creation of the Libyan nation state.
The Zuwayya are an independent Murabtin tribe, one of the major Arab Bedouin tribes of Cyrenaica and Fezzan, Libya.
Tazerbu is an oasis located in the Libyan Desert in the Kufra District of Libya, about 250 km to the northwest of Kufra. The name means "main seat" in the Toubou language, because this was the seat of the Toubou Sultanate before the Arab conquest. The oasis is 25–30 km long and 10 km wide. In the middle of the oasis and parallel to it runs a shallow valley with salt ponds and salines. In Tazerbu there are about ten villages: the most important is called El-Jezeera. In the oasis grow groups of palms, tamarisks, acacias, esparto and Juncus. Several kilometers to the north of this village lie the ruins of an old castle, named Gasr Giránghedi, which was the seat of the Sultan. The first European to visit the oasis was the German Gerhard Rohlfs in August 1879.
Battle of Kufra may refer to either of two battles fought for control of the Libyan desert town of Kufra:
Following the end of the First Libyan Civil War, which overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, there was violence involving various militias and the new state security forces. This violence has escalated into the Second Libyan Civil War (2014–2020).
The 2012 Kufra conflict started in the aftermath of the Libyan civil war, and involved armed clashes between the Tobu and Zuwayya tribes in the Kufra area of Cyrenaica, Libya.
The 2012 Sabha conflict started in the aftermath of the Libyan civil war, and involved armed clashes between the Tubu and Abu Seif tribes in Sabha, a city of almost 100,000 in the region of Fezzan, Libya. It happened after February 2012 clashes in Kufra, that involved the Tubu people, too. On 27 March, Jomode Elie Getty charged the clashes as "genocide". A Paris-based Tabu official, Jomode Elie Getty, who was an official with the NTC but resigned on Tuesday, accused the NTC of siding with Arabs in attacks on Tabu tribesmen. He called for U.N. intervention.
The Toubou Front for the Salvation of Libya is a group created in mid-2007 to defend the rights and interests of the Toubou people in Libya. It is led by Issa Abdel Majid Mansur, a Libyan Toubou tribal leader, and has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway. The group, which had participated in the Libyan Civil War on the NTC side, was disbanded in August 2011, with the fall of Tripoli. Despite that, the group was revitalized in March 2012, with the aim of "protecting the Toubou from ethnic cleansing", following early 2012 deadly clashes between Toubou and Arab militias in southern Libya, which caused the loss of hundreds of lives.
The Libyan Popular National Movement, also known as the National Movement Party, is a political movement and political party established by former Libyan officials on 15 February 2012. Its first Secretary General was Major General Khuwaildi al-Hamidi, a former member of the Revolutionary Command Council whose daughter is married to Al-Saadi Gaddafi, son of former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. The movement was forbidden from participating in the 2012 election.
Gaddafi loyalism, in a wider political and social sense also known as the Green resistance, consists of sympathetic sentiment towards the overthrown government of Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed in October 2011, and his Third International Theory. Despite Muammar Gaddafi's death, his legacy and Jamahiriya ideology still maintains a popular appeal both inside and outside Libya into the present day. Regardless, the Western sentiment has largely been that this continued support may contribute to some of the ongoing violence in Libya.
The Movement for the Return of Constitutional Legitimacy in Libya is a movement in Libya that advocates the reinstatement of the 1951 Constitution and the restoration of the historic Senussi monarchy.