LIBYA: Who Else Would Ask for ‘Israel-istine’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Louise Brown

TRIPOLI, Jul 31 2006 (IPS) - In his trademark dark glasses and African robe, Muammar Qaddafi looks down from a huge painting onto a group of businessmen, a look on his face as if to say: I am still the ruler here.

In the auditorium of Tripoli’s only luxury hotel, it is not the Libyan dictator but his huge oil resources that are of any real interest to visitors. Here deals are made, business cards exchanged. But in Tripoli, Qaddafi is everywhere.

Whether on billboards on busy boulevards, paintings in small grocery stores or key rings in Tripoli’s few souvenir shops, the dictator’s face adorns almost every street corner. Beaming, triumphant and windswept, Qaddafi looks more sophisticated film star than ageing dictator.

Yet Qaddafi is far less predictable than your average Hollywood celebrity: most Libyans are still afraid to say his name out aloud, let alone question his policy proposals. And those can be from demands that people use only one bar of soap a week to insisting that every family raise chickens, even those living in inner-city apartments.

With his stubborn views and unpredictable policies, Qaddafi has continued to confound both western and Arab states. In 1974, in the name of pan-Arabism, he attempted a merger with Tunisia, and drove a bulldozer through the fence marking Libya’s border with Egypt.

Today, it is proposals such as that for an Israel-Palestine Union called ‘Israel-istine’ and his castigation of Saudi Arabia for not allowing non-Muslims to visit Mecca which have sparked controversy.

In diplomatic circles in Tripoli, there are particular concerns about Qaddafi’s stirring up of anti-colonist feeling in Central and Western Africa. When Libyan authorities killed 11 people at protests earlier this year against an Italian cabinet minister wearing a T-shirt depicting the disputed Muhammad cartoons, the deaths were not explained as resulting from Islamic fervour, but as stemming from the oppression suffered when Libya was an Italian colony.

Muammar Qaddafi came to power in 1969 at the age of 27. As a junior military officer he helped stage a bloodless coup against the pro-Western King Idris, installed in Libya by the Allies after World War II.

In the early seventies, the leader withdrew to the desert to write his famous ‘Green Book’ – a Libyan version of Mao’s red one – in which he advanced his ‘third universal theory’ as superior to both capitalism and communism.

Central to this theory is his “state of the masses”, the Libyan Jamahiriya, described as “supervision of the government by the people.” But although he claims that Libya is far more democratic than any western democracy, fear of dissent has led to widespread apathy among the Libyan people. Politics, one Libyan says, is just “trouble”.

Abroad, Qaddafi has always been regarded as too big for his country. Despite his struggle for a United States of Arabia, the Arab world has never wanted him. When a number of Arab countries followed the strict United Nations sanctions on Libya following the bombing of the Pan Am flight in 1986 over Lockerbie, Qaddafi turned his attention to Africa..

‘Libya donates food to Malian city’ reads a recent headline in the Tripoli Post. ‘Al-Qaddafi makes successful African tour’ goes another. During celebrations on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad in Timbuktu in Mali earlier this year, Qaddafi led a crowd of thousands in prayer.

“He sees his latest role as a kind of Imam of Africa,” says one European diplomat in Tripoli. Yet even in Africa, Qaddafi is regarded warily, tolerated only by African leaders, according to one observer, due to his financial generosity.

After more than 20 years in isolation, Libya may now be a sought after country – with its estimated 39 billion barrels in oil reserves and some show of change from its erratic dictator. Yet it is Qaddafi that makes working with Libya and foreseeing its future so difficult.

Only recently, despite his repeated pledges to the West, Qaddafi called for African leaders to guard the Sahara region and its much-coveted oil against western interests. As to cooperation with Europe: there will be no camps to hold back illegal immigrants from Central Africa – Qaddafi’s African “brothers” – on Libyan shores.

At the same time, just how Qaddafi treats his “brothers” can be seen in Tripoli, where Libya’s many African immigrants are only allowed the very lowest of jobs.

Everything in Libya still depends on the leader’s moods. “Libya is governed by ludicrous rules,” says one European diplomat. Bureaucracy and corruption are still the determining factors in everyday Tripoli. But what may seem like the whims of a bumbling dictator are all part of Qaddafi’s attempt to hold on to his crumbling country.

In Libya’s dominant tribal structure, Qaddafi continues to play the government’s pro-western elements against its anti-western camp, all to keep his own power intact. Ironically, despite his overpowering presence, Qaddafi claims to have no formal role; he is simply dispensing wisdom as a kind of avuncular figure to a country ruled by its people alone.

Indeed, Qaddafi’s formal title is not head of state but ‘Leader of the Revolution’. This may well be his cleverest trick – distancing himself from day-to-day running of his country in the name of handing power to its subjects. But despite their doubts or fears regarding Qaddafi, many Libyans still tend to look up to the leader as a kind of mentor.