Unity in diversity

A little cultural diversity can do a lot of good for national unity.

That was quite a party in Nalut, in western Libya, last week. For the first time in decades, the Amazigh people of the region were free to celebrate their spring festival Tifsweet as they chose. Under the late Muammar Qaddafi, traditions of the Amazighs (sometimes called Berbers) of the region had been suppressed, in the supposed interest of national homogeneity. Now, Al Jazeera reports, the Amazigh are fully enjoying the liberty to speak their language, wear their traditional clothing and sing their songs.

This is more than a charming bit of ethnography. The freedom of such cultural affirmation is one key measure of liberty, and the contempt inherent in suppressing such festivals is the essence of tyranny.

The Berber peoples are spread across much of North Africa. Some of them, the Tuareg, have agitated for their own state; Tuareg fighters (some of them from Libya) have recently seized half of Mali. The surest way to spark such movements is to discredit their traditional culture.

Libya has its share of problems but the new leaders do at least understand some of the basics about building unity: the deputy prime minister, Omar Abdelkarim, no less, attended this year's Tifsweet. Sometimes a little diversity can, paradoxically, help to build national unity.