By Matt Robinson

Reuters 
 

JADU, Libya: On entering the building after the revolution began, the first thing Mazigh Buzakhar and his colleagues did was to unplug the surveillance cameras and switch the satellite Internet provider.
The smartly furnished building in the Libyan town of Jadu belonged to an investment group led by Saif al-Islam, son of Moammar Gadhafi, and was rumored to be used by the state security agency. Then they began publishing, in a language banned for four decades under Gadhafi.
“For us the revolution is a revolution of a new Libya, with its own identity and root and history – it’s an Amazigh country,” said Buzakhar, editor of the Tilleli newsletter in both Arabic and the language of Libya’s Berber, or Amazigh, minority in the rebel-held Western Mountains.

“We couldn’t express the Amazigh language and culture and identity. It was like you’re committing a crime, you’re threatening state security,” said Buzakhar, 29.
Berbers, who call themselves Amazigh or “Free Ones,” inhabited North Africa for thousands of years before the Arabs brought Islam to the region in the seventh century.
They remain in large numbers in Morocco and Algeria, and smaller communities in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Mauritania, and say they struggle with discrimination.
Looking to a Libya without Gadhafi, Berbers say they have one key demand; that their language hold equal status with Arabic in Libya’s new constitution.

Already, the Libyan television channel of the revolution, broadcasting from Qatar, carries Berber-language news broadcasts and the Berbers of the rebel-held town of Jadu plan to start up a radio station in their own language.
“We have hope that in the new constitution for a free Libya, Amazigh will be included as an official language, to be taught to all Libyans, that they have the right to learn Amazigh and also a right to express themselves in Amazigh,” said Buzakhar.

“For the first time in 42 years we have news in Amazigh, we have programs in Amazigh. Now the newspapers are being distributed in the Nafusah [Western Mountains].”
“We hope one day it will be printed in an official format, and will be distributed in the whole … of Libya.”
The idea would be anathema to Gadhafi, who espoused pan-Arabism.
Buzakhar says he and his brother were jailed late last year for contacting Berber émigrés groups in Europe and for promoting Berber culture.

It remains to be seen how post-Gadhafi Libya will accommodate the competing demands of groups who have found a voice in the rebellion, let alone the more than 140 tribes and clans that form the basis of society in the absence of political life under the system created by the Libyan strongman.
For now, people in this region say the war has joined Berber and Arab in a common cause to overthrow Gadhafi.
“We are just seeking our right, as a whole Libyan people,” said Colonel Tarek Zanbou, a senior rebel in the Berber town of Kabaw. “It’s our right, our language.”