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Jason Pack , ed. The 2011 Libyan Uprisings and the Struggle for a Post-Qadhafi Future. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013. ix + 254 pages, acknowledgments, contributors, maps, footnotes, index. Hardcover US$95.00 ISBN 981-1-137-30808-5.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2016

Dale Hiles*
Affiliation:
Virginia Tech
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Abstract

Type
Briefly Noted
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2016 

Middle East historian Jason Pack has compiled the work of scholars, ambassadors, military leaders, and a former Al-Qaeda commander in an examination of the forces behind the Libyan uprising and rebuilding. Pack and his contributors focus on the constant friction between central and peripheral forces in the country based on various tribal, political, and religious allegiances. Pack attributes Qadhafi's fall initially to his own economic and foreign policy reforms, followed by the organized resistance mounted by separate local and regional movements operating on the outskirts of the country. In the aftermath of the revolution, as Libya rebuilds, Pack identifies the difficulty in managing Libya's periphery as a critical problem. Libya is at once a collection of tribes with competing power struggles, secular political groups organized in local councils, and an Islamic emirate, and cohesion depends on balancing these multiple interests. The difficulty for the new government, Pack contends, will be in creating a unified national identity out of all these disparate groups. Pack suggests installing a central political structure with the aid of Western allies while localizing power in peripheral strongholds to build a stable government to support an expanded economy based on oil revenue and further investments.