It’s happening.

If I had told you four weeks ago that U.S. forces would be bombing another Muslim country in less than a month, you would have said that I was out of my mind.

As I write this, U.S. carriers are beginning a second night of cruise missile strikes against Libyan air defenses to clear the way for Europe’s air forces to halt the advance of Colonel Ghaddafi’s forces toward the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

What made this ok?

Well, the Security Council resolution made it ok.

But beyond that- which aspects of the situation in Libya made intervention conscionable by all five permanent members of the Security Council?

As I understand it, the following combination of circumstances made intervention in Libya palatable to the powers that be:

1. Clear and present danger to large numbers of civilians. Of course, many of these civilians had taken up arms in a combination of rebellion and self-defense, thus slightly complicating the notion of ‘unarmed civilians’.

2. Acquiescence by the relevant regional/cultural body. In this case, the Arab League.

3. The speed at which events unfolded. Benghazi was going to fall and fall fast. The rebels were outgunned and outmatched, and it was too late in the game for indirect assistance.

4. Nobody cares. Libya, while an important crude supplier, does not have a powerful backer. China and Russia may not be happy about the precedent of interfering in another country’s internal affairs, but we are not talking about North Korea, Bahrain, or Belarus, whose fate is of great concern to China, Saudi Arabia, or Russia, respectively.

5. Plausibility. Libya does not have a nuclear weapon or a massive army. Concerted military action will halt Ghaddafi’s advance. Notice I said plausibility, not likelihood, of success. I think this will most likely lead to a stalemate and short term partition between East and West Libya.

So people were dying, the main regional body agreed with the international community on who the bad guys were, the bad guys were winning, nobody powerful enough to put the kibosh on the intervention had vital national interests at stake, and the Libyan army simply doesn’t have what it takes to shoot down too many Western fighter planes.

Lets apply these metrics to another conflict, say, Cote d’Ivoire.

1) Civilians dying, and likely to continue dying in greater numbers…..check. (500 to date and escalating.)

2) Agreement from major regional/cultural grouping on who the bad guys are…..check. (ECOWAS, and the AU have clearly stated the Gbagbo must step down.)

3) Violence escalating quickly ……..1/2 check. (Clashes are indeed increasing in pro-Outtara districts, but not at the rate that Ghaddafi’s forces were gaining ground in Libya.)

4) Nobody cares………check. (While many countries have major investments in Cote d’Ivoire, none of the Security Council members think of Gbagbo as promoting their most vital national interests.)

5) Plausibility……1/2 check. (Removing Gbagbo would likely require someone’s boots on the ground. In theory, the 10,000 U.N. troops in Cote d’Ivoire should be the ones protecting civilians, but they have not been that aggressive in executing this mandate.)

So what do you think?

Is it just a matter of degree?

Were there simply more people dying in Libya, and dying faster?

Was ECOWAS (West African regional grouping) more divided than the Arab league?

I think these are all reasonable arguments, but I worry that now, as always, ambiguity reigns when deciding when and how to intervene.

This ambiguity affects the strategic calculus of rights abusers like Gbagbo—I think he knows that African countries will not coalesce around major military action.

Yesterday President Ouattara called on the international community to “passer a l’action,” in order to protect civilians and to give him the means to govern the country.

I hope the Security Council can explain why warplanes aren’t on the way.

News on the ongoing conflict in Libya continues to head the news on the front page of The New York Times, and thus there is little I can add in terms of late breaking news that isn’t one click away.

What I can do, however, is go a little deeper than the coverage I have read so far on Libya’s unique tribal dynamics.

There is a reason that Reuter’s stringers on fickle and expensive satellite connections, trying not to get in the way of a stray bullet, haven’t been able to do in-depth research on tribal alliances in Libya—they are helluh complicated.

While I’m sure a Libyan eight year old could rattle off tribal histories like my little cousins can the Johnny Appleseed story, it took me a few hours of background reading just to master the basics.

I believe that geography is the defining influence in how individuals and societies develop, so I like to start with a map.

In reality, the overwhelming majority of Libyans are ethnically mixed, especially among the nominally Berber or Bedouin/Arab populations.

Look at the physical map and note the three natural/historical regions of Libya; Tripolitania in the West, Cyrenaica in the East, and Fezzan in the dessert interior.

The two most densely populated regions—Tripolitania and Cyrenaica—are separated not only by the Gulf of Sidra but also by an inhospitable stretch dessert.
Historically these regions have seen the world quite differently.

For most of the last thousand years, Tripolitania considered itself part of the North African Maghreb, the sandy north western swath of the continent that takes its name from the Darija Arabic word for Morocco — Maghrebi, or land of the setting sun.

Cyrenaica in the East was always oriented toward the Islamic world, with closer ties to neighboring Egypt than to Tripolitania, the West.

This Islamic orientation is the genesis of Colonel Ghaddafi’s seemingly absurd comments about Al-Qaeda infiltrating the Cyrenaica based protest movement centered in Benghazi, Cyrenaica’s capital.

Fezzan, the dessert interior, is home to a variety of traditional dessert peoples whose seat at the negotiating table comes from their ability to sabotage oil fields and equipment in the interior.

Now overlay the politics of 140 tribal groupings on top of this geographic powder keg.

Moammar Ghaddafi is not one Goliath against armies of Davids. Autocrats almost never are.

Dictators exert power and influence by dispensing patronage and maintaining the loyalty of what Professor Graeme Robertson calls “critical elites.”

This class might include military and security services, business people, religious leaders, or influential local leaders.

Momar Ghaddafi hails from the small al-Qaddafa tribe based in Tripolatania, and he has maintained power and influence for 41 years by dispensing patronage to several key tribes including two of the largest, the Warfallah and the Margariha. Both these tribes originate in Cyrenaica, or eastern Libya.

Almost immediately after Ghaddafi responded with deadly force to the first protests in Tripoli, a group of elders representing the Warfallah tribe publically broke with Ghaddafi.

And thus fell one pillar of the tripartite alliance of the al-Qaddafa, Warfallah, and Margariha crashed to the ground.

This set off a series of smaller tribal defections that further weakened Colonel Ghaddafi’s military readiness.

The third pillar of the ruling alliance, the Margariha tribe, originally hails from the desert Fazzan region but today can be found in most coastal cities.

The balance of power currently rests with decision makers in this tribe.

While the tribe has not publically broken with the al-Qaddafa, many of the tribe’s most prominent personages have been seen aiding the rebels.

If the Margariah jump ship en mass, Colonel Ghaddafi will find himself surrounded by enemies with only the al-Qaddafa for support.

If this comes to pass, members of the Colonel’s own tribe may be tempted to assassinate him to stave off the inevitable reprisals.

If you want more information on the 135 tribes I did not mention, check out this special report on Libya’s tribal dynamics by STRATFOR Global Intelligence.