Reply #5: U.S. encouraged by Libya rebel push, embassy open..., The Berbers join the Arab revolt [View All]

[joshcryer]

WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) - The United States believes Libyan rebel advances are choking off Muammar Gaddafi's forces in the capital Tripoli and significantly increasing pressure on the Libyan leader, the U.S. State Department said on Monday.

...

"What we are seeing is an effort by the rebels to choke off the access routes into Tripoli and to up the pressure on Gaddafi," Nuland told a news briefing.

...


"It appears that the military advances and fractures within Gadaffi's regime have reached a possible turning point," said Brian Katulis, a security expert at the Center for American Progress think tank.

...

Nuland said Aujali would resume control over the embassy's immediate assets, but that the United States was not yet in a position to follow through on vows to unlock more than $34 billion in Libyan assets.

http://www.economist.com/node/21525925">The Berbers join the Arab revolt
IN MOROCCO their language has been made official. In Algeria they lead protests against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s regime. In Tunisia they are rediscovering a long-suppressed identity. In Libya they man the rebels’ western front in the mountains south of the capital still held by Muammar Qaddafi. Even in Egypt’s oasis of Siwa, near Libya’s border, Berbers are finding that the revolution has given them a chance to revive their cultural rights.

“There is a Berber renaissance taking place across north Africa,” enthuses Mounir Kejji, a Moroccan Berber campaigner. ....

...

Libya’s rebellion is fiercest in the Nafusa Mountains, a Berber heartland long neglected by the government. Colonel Qaddafi has refused to acknowledge Berber culture for most of his reign, describing it as “colonialism’s poison” intended to divide the country. Only in 2006, apparently after his son Seif al-Islam intervened, did he lift a ban on the use of Berber names.

Berbers make up about 5% of Libya’s 6m-7m people, though some activists put the figure higher. In recent weeks they have set up a radio station. The rebel-controlled Libya TV, based in Qatar, now broadcasts in Tamazight, the Berber tongue, for two hours a day. In June, says Mr Kejji, a delegation of Libyan Berbers affiliated to the rebels’ Transitional National Council put a linguistic query to their Moroccan counterparts: how should they write “army”and “national security” in Tamazight, so that Libyan uniforms could have a badge in their own language alongside Arabic?