How a pet monkey upset Libya's fragile tribal relations
A pet monkey caused a violent clash between two of Libya's main tribes and former allies, reflecting the fragile relations between clans that could be detrimental to the country's future.
A group of girls were walking home from school in a quiet Libyan town on Nov. 21, when a pet monkey from a shop jumped over one of them and retreated to the shop with her headscarf. It could have been a funny incident — people could have just laughed about it and then forgot the whole thing. But not in Sabha, an oasis city in southern Libya, where tribal tensions have been simmering with occasional violent eruptions since the regime of Moammar Gadhafi was toppled with help from NATO in October 2011.
Right after she got home, the girl, whose name has not been released, told her family what happened. A few minutes later, members of her family shot dead the shopkeeper and his monkey. News of the event quickly spread around the city, and full war erupted between the two main tribes in Sabha — Awlad Suleiman, to which the girl belongs, and the shopkeeper's Qadhadhfa tribe, the same as that of the late Gadhafi.
It is hard to give a precise figure, but by the time tribal mediators brokered a cease-fire 10 days later, 20 people were killed while 50 others were injured, according to news reports and social media pages. Properties, including private homes and schools, sustained extensive damage.
This was the fiercest fighting seen by Sabha since 2013, when two other tribes, Tibu and Tuareg, fought a bloody battle over control of trafficking routes running from Sabha to sub-Saharan countries, including Chad and Niger.
