prompting security forces to fire tear gas. Before storming the headquarters, protesters threw stones and metal bars at the building, breaking its windows. Jalil is believed to have been pulled to safety after he went back into the building. On 1 July 2012, protesters calling for an autonomous eastern region stormed the headquarters of the national election commission in Benghazi. Ethnic and tribal reconciliation During the civil war, many Tuareg nomad tribes in southern Libya supported Gaddafi because of his past support of their people's rebellions in Mali and Niger. This led to tensions between Tuareg and Arab Libyans, and in the aftermath of the war, the NTC sent out delegations to mediate disputes and reconcile the region with the interim government. The tribes, who roam Libya's vast desert expanses, are important to security in the region's remote areas, which are often exploited as a safe haven by drug traffickers and Islamist militants. Fathi Ben Khalifa, president of the World Amazigh Congress, criticized the NTC for not formally recognizing the Berber people, saying that his people is experiencing a "déjà vu feeling", as Libya's rulers also failed to recognize the Berbers when the country gained its independence in 1951, making way for Gaddafi's policies of assimilation. Khalifa claims that the NTC is adhering to "Arab and Islamist" ideologies that caused "much of what has happened in [Libya] for the last decades", and that the council envisions the new Libya being rooted in an exclusively Islamic constitution. According to Khalifa, "no [Berber] will accept this situation". Smaller tribal groups complained they had been neglected in the interim government announced by the NTC on 22 November 2011. Members of the Benghazi-based Awagi and Maghariba tribes protested that their representatives were not selected for key posts. A group calling itself the Libyan Amazigh Congress called for a suspension of relations with the NTC until it "reconciles with the demands of Amazigh Libyans." On 23 June 2013, the General National Congress elected Nouri Abusahmain, a political independent from the Berber minority, as its new president. Islamic movement Ali al-Sallabi, a well-known Muslim cleric who played a key role in funneling arms from Qatar to the anti-Gaddafi fighters during the civil war, has announced the formation of a party with the provisional name National Gathering for Freedom, Justice and Development. According to Sallabi, the party is not Islamist, but respects the general principles of Islam