Gadaffi and the 2012 Tuareg Rebels?

[TheNordicBrit]

Hey Guys,

Let's say that Gaddafi wins the Libyan Civil War, without western intervention and nasty reprisals in Benghazi. Whilst there may be sporadic fighting continuing into 2012, the rebellion generally dies off and Gaddafi has secured his position.

So, how would Gaddafi's success affect the Tuareg rebellion in Mali that, IOTL, began in January, 2012. Would Tuareg's still return to Mali with weaponry left over from the war? If so, how would Gaddafi react to them? They've just helped him secure his place as dictator of Libya, so would he try and help fund them and perhaps even try and give them more weaponry?

 

[Servant]

Other than money and guns for "services rendered", I don't think Qaddafi would do anything more to help the rebels once they leave his country. He's probably too busy keeping his country stable to care what happened in Mali.

Then again, this is the same Qaddafi that funded and armed the IRA, and supported a vast assort of insurgencies in Africa. So I may be wrong. And since relations in the West has torpedoed during the Civil War, Libya has no incentive to "behave".

All that assumes that Libya remains stable and the rebellion dies off. If the bloodshed increases, you'd probably see the mercs stay in Libya for a bit longer. That'll postpone the Turag rebellion for a bit.

 

[Incognito]

As I recall reading on the subject, the Tuareg's seem to be kind-of like an African mix of Kurds and Gypsies -- an ethnic group without a nation of their own and disliked by other ethnic groups in the area. Many of them did not have citizenships and Gaddafi was apparently one of the few people that treated them half-decently, granting them citizenship in 1970s IIRC (not sure why Servant called them "mercs" -- I don't recall ever reading that the Tuaregs in Col. G's services were foreign fighters). Hence why they fought for him. If Gaddafi stays in power, why would they leave Libya?

 

[Servant]

The reason I called them mercs is that the sources that I read said that they were ex-rebels from Mali who previously received help from Qaddafi and thus Qaddafi tried to use them to help crush the rebellion. That being said, Qaddafi did have a lot of African migrants who did immigrate to the country, so its possible that both stories are, in a sense, true.