Italian-speaking Arabs that just finished nearly half a century of rule under a guy that refused to fly
for more than eight hours, hated elevators, tried to crown himself king of Africa,
and had a weird obsession with Condoleezza Rice.
Yeah, and that's just the tagline!
Hey, everybody. I'm your host Barbs. We are back in the Maghreb, North Africa.
Okay, okay, I know, I know. There's more to Libya than all that Gaddafi stuff.
It's actually a country loaded with millennia of history and culture that extends beyond
what modern news portrays. First off, let's pinpoint where Libya is, shall we?
Ah, Libya! If only your visas were easily obtainable, you could become the next travel hotspot. Come on!
You guys have, like, all those ancient ruins, and nobody's visiting them! First of all, Libya is located
in the North African region known as the Maghreb, with the longest coast on the Mediterranean Sea
out of any nation in North Africa, bordered by six other countries. The country is divided into 22 districts,
with the capital and most heavily populated district, Tripoli, in the north, whereas the least populated,
with only about 23,000 people, being Ghat, located on the southwest, along the border with Algeria.
Keep in mind, many Libyans also refer to the area as being located in one of three historical districts:
Tripolitania, Fezzan, Cyrenaica.
Also, fun fact: the name Tripoli means "three cities", as it used to be three separate cities that were unified:
Oea, Leptis Magna, and Sabratha.
After Tripoli, the next-largest cities are Benghazi – yeah, that one – and Misurata,
whereas the largest and busiest airports are Tripoli's International and Benghazi's Benina International.
Now, Libya is interesting because it's, like, the one spot on the Mediterranean that has relatively untouched
ancient sites that not too many tourists flock to, mostly because of, you know, four decades of... yeah.
Getting around in Libya, you really only have, like, two options: fly or take a really really long road trip.
There are no railways or river transport systems, and drivers heading south typically take extra jerry cans
of fuel, due to the unforgiving conditions that the vast, empty terrain offers.
Anyway, for Libya, cross-desert roadways kind of go like this: –Hey, Algeria!
–Yeah? –You know, you got some great roads in the sandy desert, especially that N1 Trans-Sahara Highway.
–Thanks! It took decades of allocating government funds for infrastructure investment.
–Yeah, whatever, that's great. Uh, can I, like, copy your homework? And can I just, like, make a road that
connects to your highway so I don't have to build through (ugh) Chad?
–Hey, I won the Aouzou Strip dispute, okay? Deal with it.
Some places of interest might include spots like:
the ancient sites of Cyrene,
Letpis Magna,
and Sabratha;
the Arch of Marcus Aurelius,
Sabratha Theater,
the Gurgi Mosque,
the clock tower of Tripoli,
the Museum of Libya,
Severan Basilica,
the Temple of Demeter,
the Hadrianic baths,
the Red Castle museum,
Benghazi Zoo,
the Amazigh Berber cultural towns;
this ancient rock site that depicts savanna animals that once inhabited the area before became a desert;
and also a cool thing is the town of Ghadames, which is located on one of the largest oases in the country.
Here you can run around and have the world's largest game of hide-and-seek. The guys from that show,
Departures, did such a great documentary on it. I recommend it. I think it's on Netflix, check it out.
All right, moving on.
Now, the Sahara is a tricky, tricky desert because you keep finding these strange clues hidden all over
that tell you an interesting story of life, death, prosperity, erosion, and eruption.
First of all, Libya is the 16th largest country in the world, and, at 90%, is mostly made up of the Libyan desert,
a subsection of the Great, or Sahara, Desert, which is one of the driest, hottest places on Earth.
In fact, the hottest air temperature ever recorded was at El-Aziza at 57.8ºC.
If you look closer, though, there's lots going on hidden amongst the seemingly grim, desolate terrain.
For example, this large greyish dark area in the middle of the beige sand.
This is the Haruj, one of the largest volcanic fields on Earth, made up of over 150 Holocene volcanoes
spread across 17,000 square miles.
Yeah, Libya used to be a hotbed for volcanic activity a long time ago.
Just a skip south, you find the most iconic volcano, the darkest spot on the map, Waw an Namus,
probably the most remote and eerily beautiful natural landmark you can find in this world,
complete with black sand, rocks, and an oasis at the bottom.
It is really hard to get here, and few people make it.
If you do, take a picture and send it to GeographyLater@gmail.com.
A little further south, you hit the Tibesti mountain range, shared with Chad, where you can find the highest peak:
Bikku Bitti, at over 2,000 meters.
Now, when it comes to water, Libya is interesting, because
the sands lie on the underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, the largest fossil aquifer in the world,
holding around 150,000 cubic kilometers of water
Which, in return, allows a complex patchwork of oases to pop up randomly throughout various spots
in the desert. This, in return, has also allowed Libya to build the world's largest man-made irrigation system.
Built by Gaddafi in five phases starting in 1991, the GMR, or Great Man-Made River, takes water from the aquifer
and supplies water to desert communities, throughout the underground pipes that go nearly 3,000 kilometers
in overall length, with over 1,300 wells.
In addition, Libya hosts the ninth-largest crude oil reserves in the world, largest in Africa,
mostly heavily concentrated in the Al-Wahat district in the East. This alone makes up 97% of exports, mostly
headed to Europe, and over half the nation's GDP.
Oh yeah, the national animal is the Arabian Eagle.
Oh, and back in ancient times, there was this contraceptive plant, related to Silphium, grown in Cyrene.
It was used to extinction, because, you know, back then, well...
Let's just say, ancient or modern, some things never change with the Greeks.
Oh yeah, we gotta talk about food. Okay.
I asked some of you guys, the Libyan geogra-peeps, what I should mention, and here are some of the dishes you suggested:
couscous,
bazin,
asida,
fataat,
osban,
and macarouna embawkha.
Yeah, you heard me right: macarouna, or macaroni. Lots of Italian influence here, okay?
Let's cover that in...
Here's a story: Once upon a time, there was a room full of Arabs of all different countries, partying.
Suddenly, one of them said, "Shh! Guys, guys, Libya's coming!"
Immediately, everyone started hiding their beers and shot glasses, straightened up, and upon Libya's entrance
they all said, "Oh, salaam. Peace be upon you, Brother."
Okay, a little exaggerated, but Libyans are kind of like "that guy" when it comes to the Arab world.
First of all, the country has about 6.5 million people and has only about 3 people per square kilometer.
The majority of the country, at about 97%, is made up of Arab Berber peoples, whereas the rest is made up of
small minorities of Turks, Egyptians, West Africans, and a few remaining Italians.
The country also uses the Libyan dinar as their currency, they use the type D plug outlet,
and they drive on the right side of the road.
Now let's go back to the ethnic thing, though. Like most nations in the Maghreb, over half of the population
identifies as having roots with the Amazigh, or Berber, community, whether fully or mixed.
Berber culture plays a strong yet historically disenfranchised role in Libyan society,
as it was suppressed during the Gaddafi years.
We've discussed this before, but... recap!
Berbers are basically the nomadic natives of North Africa, predating any Arab or Islamic settlement.
They speak their own language and dialects. To this day, they hold fast to the long line of traditions, customs,
and lifestyles that they're known for.
For the first time in decades, after the fall of Gaddafi, ethnic Berbers were able to celebrate their traditional
holidays, speak their language openly, and even broadcast on newspapers and radio stations.
They were even able to teach Berber in schools with the unique writing system.
Now, added on top of that, Italy once colonized Libya for a short while, which is why Libyan Arabic has a slight
Italian twang to it. They even use Italian words, like "forchetto" and "marciapiede".
Libyans are kind of seen as, like, the more conservative peoples of the Arab world, known for being the best
Quran huffaz, or Quran memorizers. Many kids grow up going to madrasas, or schools, that teach the Quran,
and it's well known that Libyans usually win Quranic competitions worldwide.
Okay, we're jumping around on way too many tangents.
Let's organize this segment with a quick summarized-history montage thing, shall we?
Berbers
Phoenicians
Greeks
Cyrene was a very sexually active, hedonist society.
Romans
Arabs
Ottomans
Barbary wars
Italian occupation
Split between French and British
Independence in 1951
Very brief monarchy
All the Gaddafi years with drama
Gadhafi taken down
Current civil war
...and here we are today.
Basically, when Gaddafi took power in a coup in 1969, things changed drastically.
And he did some really weird things. He took his nomad tent abroad many times. He once even pitched his tent
in Donald Trump's garden. He brought horses and camels with him on trips to Europe. He apparently
crowned himself the "King of Kings of Africa" in 2008. He denounced Switzerland for some reason.
He gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts to Condoleezza Rice upon her arrival visit in 2008.
He composed a song for her and had a whole photo album filled with pictures of her.
He refused to find more than eight hours or go more than thirty-five stories high in any building.
And finally, he had a female-only bodyguard troop.
That last one kind of caught everyone off guard, but some claim, apparently, what I was told, that it may
have had to do with the fact that Gaddafi had pissed off some Islamic extremist groups, who believed that they
would be sent immediately to hell if they were killed by a woman, so... strategy?
But under his regime, some good things did, kind of, happen. In addition to the Man-Made River Project,
medical care and electricity were free, newlywed couples were given a fifty thousand-dollar bonus by the
government to start new lives, a portion of the oil wealth was stipend to the citizens, literacy rates soared as
education became free. Nonetheless, overall it was a four-decade-long authoritarian dictatorship, saturated
with human rights violation after human rights violation, until the Arab Spring revolutions happened and he fled,
and then he was killed in crossfire.
After Gaddafi, though, unfortunately, transitional leadership became a source of contention,
and another civil war broke out in 2014.
Today, the dispute is mostly had by three opposing parties:
the Tobruk-led House of Representatives Party in the East, which has the support of the National Army
and has control of most of the oil fields;
then there's the General National Congress in the West, based in the capital Tripoli;
and finally, you have the smaller Government of National Accord, or GNA.
This is where the center of diplomacy begins, when it comes to Libya's international outreach,
which brings us to...
Now that Libya is kind of in an internal conflict, it really depends on which side of the civil war you support
if you're gonna befriend Libya. It's incredibly complex and hard to explain, but, to the best of my ability...
This is what you guys, the Libyan geogra-peeps have told me.
Egypt is a close friend and shares a deep-rooted history and culture with Libya, but today they seem to favor the
eastern Tobruk-led government, as does Russia and Saudi Arabia.
However, despite efforts, the party doesn't seem to always get onboard with many of their ideas.
Turkey and Qatar have expressed support for the GNC, which is a source of controversy, as some Islamic
militant groups have also pledged support to the party, which has allowed certain groups, like ISIS, access to
the nation in the past. The UN and EU both show support for the GNA, the party that has the greatest amount of
international support but not much domestic. Nonetheless, if you kind of take all the politics
outside of the equation, Tunisia and Algeria would probably be the best friends. Libyans love to go to
Tunisia for tourism and medical treatment, and Algeria is like the big French-speaking brother that has always
helped Libya in times of need, when things got very messed up. Usually.
In conclusion, if you take out everything modern, Libya is actually a land inundated with colorful backdrops of
Saharan mysteries, both land-wise and people-wise. Let's just hope our visas get accepted.
Stay tuned!
You know it, don't forget little Liechtenstein!