A Year of Revolt: In memory of Mohammed Bouazizi

Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History and The Last Man was misinterpreted as a triumph for democracy in the wake of the fall of western communism. It was therefore easy to laugh at him being hopelessly wrong as the New World Order collapsed in the late 1990s and new enemies appeared to replace old bugbears. Yet the “end of history” Fukuyama spoke about was the foremost importance of dignity in life not the success of democracy. This thesis was right then and remains true today. Democracy has massive failings but it always offers the dignity of revenge against oppressive or incompetent rulers in the promise of a future ballot box.

The Eastern European revolutions of the 1980s understood this as do today’s democracy-deprived Arab World. Societies dominated by single parties and long-term dictators are almost always intrinsically corrupt. People always privately grumbled about this lack but were too smart or too fearful to do much in public. It took someone to strike a match to bring serious people power out on the street. That someone was Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi and it was his search for dignity that began a worldwide revolution. When authorities took away Bouazizi’s vegetable cart because it was unlicensed and then slapped and humiliated him when he paid the fine, they unleashed consequences that would not just wipe away the certainties of their world, but also of our world.

Because Bouazizi was “humiliated and dejected”, he set fire to himself outside a Sidi Bouzid police station on December 17. The burns were horrific but Bouazizi did not die straight away. After 18 agonising days, he died on 4 January 2011, almost exactly a year ago. But by then the spark had already been lit. While Bouazizi lay dying in hospital, an impotent rage exploded across Tunisia. Hundreds of thousands had been victim to similar pettinesses at the hands of Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-old regime and rose in protest at his treatment. An alarmed Ben Ali visited the dying man in hospital but it was too late for both of them. Bouazizi died a week later and Ben Ali was out of power just 10 days after that.

With winter still in full swing, Bouazizi gave birth to the Arab Spring. It is only the west that calls it the Arab Spring, in the affected countries it is the Sidi Bouzid Revolt in honour of his hometown. Bouazizi’s enraged relatives, friends and acquaintances were first to take to the streets in support of his act of mad defiance.

The Labour unions quickly got on board. Inspired by the same need for dignity and respect, the country’s largest trade union, the normally pliant General Tunisian Workers' Union (UGTT), mobilised its half million members in favour of the revolution. Top level officials previously loyal to Ben Ali changed their tune under pressure from members and a vibrant youth movement.

The tremors from the earthquake epicentre on Sidi Bouzid quickly spread across the region once Ben Ali was overthrown. Just 11 days later, there were massive protests in Cairo against the regime of Hosni Mubarak who had been in power for 30 years and about to effect a handover to his son Gemal. After three weeks of mass protest across the country, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak was handing over power to the military much to the joy of the Tahrir Square protesters. But their joy was short-lived with the military junta showing no signs of wanting to share power and the protests continue a year later.

Between Tunisia and Egypt lay Libya, complete with its own long-term dictator. Mad Muammar Gaddafi had clever held on to power for 40 years despite often being public enemy number one in the West. In the end it was his own people that dislodged him after a bitter and long-lasting war. Riots independent of Tunisia’s problems were happening in Benghazi in January over chronic housing shortages but Gaddafi threw Libyan oil money at the problem to quieten the Benghazi protesters.

Those riots were still fresh in the mind at the end of the month when dissident writer Jamal al-Hajji issued an Internet call for demonstrations across Libya “in the Tunisian and Egyptian fashion”. Al-Hajji was arrested in early February and Gaddafi issued a warning to political activists, journalists and media figures to behave.

When Libyan lawyer Fatih Turbel was arrested in Benghazi on 15 February, police broke up protests and made dozens of further arrests. Yet the riots spread quickly through the east and a Day of Rage two days later shook the regime to its core. Within 24 hours, rebel forces controlled Benghazi. In the first week they pushed east to Misrata and Tobruk fell in yet another war. The rebels shouted the same slogans heard in Tunisia and Egypt: the people want to bring down the regime.

It seemed to the watching world a third regime was about to quickly topple but Gaddafi had no intention of quitting gracefully. Those that did not love him deserved to die and he threw the full force of his armies on the rebels. Their majority support among the people was endangered by Gaddafi guns purchased from Western countries.

Perhaps inspired by guilt for this – or more likely for their own political expediency – David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy pushed for intervention to save the revolution. Obama, already stretched by two wars in Islamic states, was harder to convince but eventually NATO airpower swung the pendulum back in the rebels favour. Tripoli fell in August and Gaddafi was butchered in October. Cameron and Sarkozy were heralded as heroes in Libya and Tunisia’s Burning Man had played a small part in overthrowing a third tyrant.

Bouazizi also indirectly or directly inspired protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Palestine and Yemen with varying degrees of success. Bouazizi could well claim two more leaders this year in Saleh in Yemen and Asad in Syria. The Arab Spring template was closely watched by many in the western world and played a symbolic role in the Occupy movement. Time Magazine, with eyes on both phenomena, called the anonymous protester its person of the year. But there is a good case to be made the protester was far from anonymous. Mohammed Bouazizi’s loss of dignity and death sacrifice was a pivotal “end of history” moment across the planet.

The fall of Muammar Gaddafi

“While it is democratically not permissible for an individual to own any information or publishing medium, all individuals have a natural right to self-expression by any means, even if such means were insane and meant to prove a person's insanity” – Muammar Gaddafi, The Green Book
(photo: @Politisite)

The Arab Spring has delivered a rich summer harvest. Libya is the latest domino to tumble joining his neighbours in Egypt and Tunisia and it not hard to believe Syria and Yemen might be far behind, despite the grandstanding of their own long-standing leaders. For now, it is difficult not to feel almost universal joy at the astonishing fall of Gaddafi. With the exception of members of the regime and maybe Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the world is rejoicing Gaddafi’s 42 year reign is over. It's a big moment. Gaddafi has been in power since man first landed on the moon, and of civilian leaders in the last century only Fidel Castro, Chiang Kai-Shek and Kim Il-Sung have lasted longer.

His overthrow has been supported by the left and the right though some on the left agonised hard over the NATO bombing campaign. That campaign now looks to be the crucial turning point when Gaddafi threatened to crush the rebellion in March. Then when matters drifted into a three month stalemate, NATO’s bombing of Tripoli in May proved the spark for the revolution. Gaddafi had lost the support of people on the ground, a mood the rebels sensed as they moved eastwards.

It was a long fall from grace. Gaddafi was reasonably popular at home in the 1970s and 1980s and loved among the European left for the way in which he thumbed his nose at the western establishment. Few loved him for his own eccentric political philosophies. Gaddafi’s Third International Theory was taken from the mishmash of aphorisms that is the Green Book which prognosticated on matters as diverse as breast feeding and genetic differences and attempted to steer the country in a middle (or muddle) path between capitalism and communism.

In the 1980s his willingness to help western resistance organisations such as the IRA and Red Brigades put him more on the outer leading to pariah status after the 1986 Berlin disco bombing and 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Yet his power internally was never threatened. By the 2000s, he was making a remarkable international comeback. In 2008 200 African kings and tribal leaders pronounced him “king of kings” and then more importantly African leaders and presidents (many of whom he trained in Libyan camps) made him head of the AU in 2009.

The West was also having a rapprochement with Gaddafi. Bush’s wars after 9/11 left the west needing allies wherever they could find them. Tony Blair killed two birds with one stone when he praised Gaddafi in 2004 for his support in the War while lobbying for a half billion dollar investment in Libya for Shell. In the end it was the oceans of oil that brought Gaddafi back in from the cold. Never anxious to give Britain a leg up when it comes to petroleum deals, the US normalised relations for the first time in 28 years under President Bush in 2008.

The west finally felt they could do business with Gaddafi. But it seems the Libyan public did not agree. Gaddafi stifled resistance by ensuring almost one in five Libyans worked as informants. Surveillance was a normal part of every workplace. Military service has been compulsory since 1984. Gaddafi has survived coup attempts in 1969 (barely two months into the job), 1975, 1977, 1985 and 1993 and having emerged from the military in a coup himself has abolished traditional military rank to avoid having to deal with a powerful leader caste.

Ultimately Gaddafi made enough enemies who just needed an excuse to act. The Tunisian actions lit the tinder and sparked a civil war that took the east easily but which met sterner resistance on the road to Tripoli. Gaddafi’s willingness to bomb his own people showed his tenacity to survive above all else. But as Juan Cole notes, once enough of his heavy weapons capability was disrupted and his fuel and ammunition supplies blocked, the underlying hostility of the common people to the regime could again manifest itself, as it had in February. While his exact fate remains unknown at the time of writing, Gaddafi is a dead man walking. It is a triumph for NATO. The template for military action should now be used in Syria which has also turned its military against its own population.

The Ghost of Omar al-Mukhtar haunts Gaddafy

When Muamar Gaddafy made his first ever visit to Italy in 2009, he wore a ill-fitting, gold braided military uniform with an image of Omar al Mukhtar pinned to his chest. It was a pointed borrowing of the legacy of an older Libyan hero, whose face still adorns the Libyan ten-dinar note. Al Mukhtar was the Lion of the Desert, the Libyan resistance leader who fought a brutal Italian regime for 20 years and was hanged by colonial forces in 1931. (picture of the arrest of Omar al-Mukhtar from Wikipedia)

Like the current insurgents, al Mukhtar came from the east of the country, Cyrenaica, named for the city of Cyrene, the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region. Cyrenaica was a part of the Ottoman Empire as al Mukhtar grew up but was claimed by Italy with Tripolitana and Fezzan who together formed modern Libya. The Italians launched an invasion of Libya in 1911 under the bogus claim of liberating it from the rule of the Sultans.

The Libyans weren’t fooled and organised by al-Mukhtar they fought a resistance that would last until World War II. For 20 years he was a thorn in the colonists side until Mussolini placed 100,000 Libyans in internment camps and closed the borders preventing foreign aid. In September 1931 Al-Mukhtar, then aged 70, was wounded in battle in the eastern town of Slonta and captured by the Italians. After a three-day trial, he was hanged and his last words were “to God we belong and to Him we shall return.”

After the war, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya which was one of the first African countries to gain independence in 1951. The former Emir of Cyrenaica, Sayyid Muhammad Idris was anointed as King Idris, head of a constitutional monarchy as the Libyan economy prospered with oil wealth. But Idris was increasingly disliked at home for his close ties to the US and UK. His vulnerability increased due to ill-health and the death in childhood of all of his male heirs (a female monarch was unthinkable). Purges against Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Syrians and internal Baathists did little to endear him to his people. On 1 September 1969, a group of officers acting under the name of the Revolutionary Command Council launched a coup while Idris was recuperating in Turkey.

Seven days later the new cabinet was announced. The commander in chief of the armed forces was named as Colonel Muammar Gaddafy, then 27. The monarchy was abolished and the Libyan Arab Republic was proclaimed. Initially the Americans believed they could work with the new ruler and killed a secret British plan to restore the king with the aid of mercenaries. Slowly the cult of personality took over. The Idris portraits were banished and even the worshipped iconography of al-Mukhtar took a back seat to the new Lion of the Desert. Gaddafy was supported by Nasser as Egypt provided advisers and advice on media, propaganda and use of the security apparatus.

As Mohamed Eljahmi noted in the Middle East Quarterly in 2006, Gaddafy used various means to hold on to power. He made it a criminal offense to proselytise against the state, to arouse class hatred, to spread falsehood, or to participate in strikes and demonstrations. He instituted an Islamisation and Arabisation campaign to rid the country of Western influence. He removed European street signs, banned alcohol, closed US and UK bases, and expelled foreigners and Jews. He converted Tripoli's cathedral to a mosque and Benghazi's cathedral to a headquarters for the Arab Socialist Union. He even forced the Italian community to exhume the remains of their dead to take back to Italy, an event he televised live.

Gaddafy’s sponsorship of international terrorism brought the wrath of the Reagan administration in 1986. He narrowly survived the bombing of Libya after being tipped by the Prime Minister of Malta who told him unauthorised aircraft were flying over Maltese airspace heading south towards Tripoli. He also won the subsequent propaganda war inventing the death of an adopted daughter which was swallowed whole by western media. Libyan isolation grew in the 1990s after Gaddafy’s agents were blamed for the Lockerbie disaster.

It wasn’t until George W Bush’s executive order 13477 in October 2008 the Gaddafy regime finally came in from the cold. Libyan oil revenues were too lucrative to ignore and American and European energy companies lined up to do business with him. The West ignored the fact his behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic. No one paid attention to the growing internal grumblings. The National Conference for the Libyan Opposition was founded in 2005 in London but could not mobilise in Libya until the protests started last month. Then the people power revolutions spread across the border from Tunisia and Egypt and quickly escalated into civil war.

Gaddafy claims he is fighting against Al Qaeda, though in truth Al Qaeda were caught as flatfooted as Western leaders by the speed of the revolution. The wheel has now come full circle with Omar al-Mukhtar’s 90-year-old son coming out in support of the opposition. “I was proud to be there. I went to help raise their morale,” he told the Irish Times. “There was a lot of cheering when they saw me because of my father’s legacy.” Asked how his father might view the situation if he were alive today, his son replied: “[He] loved Libya. He would have a similar position to mine for the benefit of the country.”

Dances with democracy: Tunisia at the crossroads

Tunisia’s leaders resist change. It has had only two leaders in the 55 years since independence (though two more in the last 12 days). Colonial master France not only left its language and its culture but it also imparted the doggedness of its political elites. It was a lesson well absorbed by Habib Bourguiba. Bourguiba spent 11 years in French and Nazi custody for sedition where he picked up western ways with power. The Rassemblement Constitutionel Démocratique party was the vehicle for Bourguiba to seize power in 1956. The RCD became synonymous with Tunisian politics and The Supreme Warrior was voted the honour of president for life in 1975. He lasted another 12 years. (photo of Tunisian protests courtesy AP)

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was Bourguiba’s Prime Minister and natural successor. Ben Ali had widespread experience in the military, politics and diplomatic service. With a sluggish economy and the support of the west he took control he used an 1987 medical report and Article 57 of the Tunisian constitution to show his boss should be removed on the grounds of “total incapacity”.

Ben Ali would prove just as tenacious in power as the man he replaced, with the added knowledge of knowing just how vulnerable life at the top could be. He kept Bourguiba under house arrest for the rest of his life and set about cementing his own reputation. He kept the ruling class of the RCD onside by keeping most of them in the powerful positions they had during the Bourguiba era. He won five elections, all of them rigged. After the Soviet era, the West was happy with Ben Ali because he was a strong and stable and secular ruler. Over time, Ben Ali was an elder statesman of the region. The US rewarded the Ben Ali’s regime with an estimated $350million in military aid between 1987 and 2009.

The Americans were not blind to Tunisia’s problems. As a Wikileaked cable said, Tunisia was a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems. “They tolerate no advice or criticism, whether domestic or international," the cable said. "Increasingly, they rely on the police for control and focus on preserving power. And, corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising.”

Despite knowing all this, the Obama administration continued to distribute largesse. As recently as last year the US sold Tunisia $282 million worth of 12 Sirkorsky military helicopters to Tunisia. Congress approved the deal on the grounds they would “enhance the modernisation of the Tunisian Air Force's overwater search and rescue capability and enable continued interoperability with US Armed Forces and other coalition partners in the region.” The sale would also improve “the security of a friendly country that has been and continues to be an important force for economic and military progress in North Africa.”

The sale of the helicopters showed the military progress. But it was harder to make the case for economic progress in Tunisia, particularly for the lower classes. There wasn't much progress in the life of 26-year-old Mohammed Bouazizi. Bouazizi had a computer science degree but sold fruit and vegetables without a licence in Sidi Bouzid because he could not find any other job. On 17 December, police confiscated his produce when he could not produce a permit. When he tried to snatch his apples back, the police officer slapped him in the face. Two other officers then beat him up. Bouazizi walked to the municipal building demanded his property, and was beaten again. Then he walked to the governor’s office, where he was refused an audience. In front of the governor’s gate he drenched himself in paint thinner and set himself alight. The burns covered 90 percent of his body. He died a painful death 18 days later in hospital.

Bouazizi had tapped into something in a repressed national psyche. People protested on the street in Sidi Bouzid where he was arrested. In a country where protesting is rare and the media is oppressed, the word was spread through amateur video which eventually made its way to Al Jazeera. A mass uprising was springing up from a groundswell of long-term grievances with the regime. Ben Ali knew the writing was on the wall and fled to Saudi Arabia on the 14th.

Within 24 hours his longtime ally and prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, assumed power. But the Constitutional Court ruled Fouad Mebazaa, the speaker, should be made president and given 60 days to organise new elections. Both men are heavily associated with the RCD and the protesters want the party removed from power, not just a new name at the top. Another Ghannouchi lies in the wings. Rachid Ghannouchi is the exiled head of Tunisia's Islamist party who plans to return to the country within weeks.

The likelihood of an Islamist Government if true democracy was restored is what scares the West the most. It also scares the other leaders in the Maghreb. The Algerian elite overturned the 1993 election when it seemed the Islamists were going to win at the ballot box and unleashed a civil war that killed 150,000 and goes on to this day. Other long-term leaders fear copycat immolation suicides such as the one in Mauretania. Egypt has also had copycat suicides and activists in Cairo using social networks are launching a "Day of Wrath" against Mubarak’s 30-year rule later today.

Next door in Libya Gaddafy is also worried. When he told Libyans in a broadcast “Tunisia lives in fear” he was really referring to himself. “Families could be raided and slaughtered in their bedrooms and the citizens in the street killed as if it was the Bolshevik or the American Revolution,” he railed. Gaddafy, in power for 40 years, has strong self interest at work but he does have a point. Nobody is sure what Tunisia’s troubles will lead to: a transition to multiparty democracy, an Islamist Government, a military coup or a prolonged period of turmoil.

Rachid Sfar, a former prime minister, outlined the problem in an editorial he wrote in La Presse yesterday. "We have to make the democratic process real and irreversible and at the same time guard against the violence and anarchy that threaten our country,” he said. Striking unionists have refused to recognise the new government because Mohamed Ghannouchi is there. A democratic vote will be held in six months but what if people suspicious of the West and the elites that serve it award it to the other Ghannouchi? The unions, and the left generally, should be careful about what they wish for.

Gaddafy still larger than Libyan life 40 years on

(photo by openDemocracy)

Libyans have started six days of celebrations with a massive showpiece event marking 40 years since Muammar Gaddafy came to power. in a bloodless coup. Libya celebrate Revolution Day on 1 September, the anniversary of Gaddafy’s bloodless coup against western-backed leader King Idris and this year’s event was probably the biggest yet. Most African leaders and several from other parts of the world came to Tripoli to fete the continent’s longest lasting leader. But most European and American leaders stayed away in protest of Libya’s over-exuberant celebration of the freeing of supposed Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.

Al-Megrahi was greeted by Gaddafy on arrival. The head of state was also at the airport when Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi came calling last week to sign a friendship pact and discuss the thorny matter of illegal immigration. Gaddafy has no official title (the head of government since 2006 is one al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmudi) but no one is in any doubt who runs the country. And the former “mad dog of the Middle East” as President Reagan dubbed him is enjoying a late renaissance of respectability.

But the now 67-year-old "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution" remains an unpredictable object of scrutiny. He surrounds himself with female bodyguards, is quite happy to break wind noisily during interviews and stormed out of a summit of Arab leaders in Qatar earlier this year declaring himself "the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of all Muslims".

The rant shows Gaddafy’s joy of grandiloquent names. The official name of his country is the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Jamahiriya means “state of the masses” and in theory, the country is governed by the populace through local councils, but in practice Libya is an authoritarian state. Despite his socialist rhetoric Gaddafy treats Libyans as subjects rather than citizens. According to Libyan scholar Dirk Vandewalle, his regime has shown “a remarkable continuity with the monarchy that preceded it”. And Gaddafy has shown no tolerance with opposition wherever it emerges from, as the death of two high profile Libyan prisoners (one associated with Al Qaeda, the other a political dissident) earlier this year showed.

Without an institutionalised state and meaningful political participation, Libya relies on powerful coalitions and patronage systems. Oil provides 95 percent of Libya’s export earnings and a quarter of GDP. Libyan oil and gas licensing rounds draw high international interest but little of this wealth flows down to ordinary people. Yet even opponents of his regime such as The Economist admit that literacy is universal, life expectancy is up 20 years and infant mortality has fallen to less than a tenth of the level it was 40 years ago.

And the world desperately wants access to its $46b annual oil industry. After secret talks that began in 1999, the Libyans handed over the two men accused of the Lockerbie Bombing and paid compensation to the victims. Libya then offered to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and open their facilities to inspection (it was the possible presence of WMDs, and not the country’s poor human-rights record and lack of democracy that bothered the Bush administration).

In 2004, the US finally rolled back sanctions helping the country attract more foreign investment. Gaddafy did his bit by criticising countries that were not taking part in Bush/Cheney’s War on Terror. “It is not logical, reasonable or productive to entrust this task to the US alone,” he said. “It requires international cooperation and joint action on the world level.” This wasn’t just grandstanding – Gaddafy was motivated by self-interest. He has long been a target of Islamic extremists and Libya has its own dangerous (and illegal) Islamist political movement.

But in truth there is little danger of Gaddafy losing power any time soon. He is now busy grooming his seven sons to follow him in creating a new North African dynasty. Youngest son Hannibal crossed the Alps to Switzerland where his arrest last year for beating up his servants prompted a grovelling apology from the Swiss President. Another son, Saadi, preferred to play football in Italy’s elite Serie A competition before being hobbled by a drugs scandal. But the most prominent of the sons is Saif al-Islam Gaddafy who officially retired from politics last year but still widely seen as successor. It was his embrace of the returning al-Megrahi that Libyan TV still shows on high rotation. The captive media likely knows which way the sirocco is blowing across the desert of Libyan politics.

Lockerbie anguish continues as Al-Megrahi protests innocence

While many in Britain and America have condemned the celebratory nature of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi’s Libyan return, they conveniently overlook the fact he was unlikely to be the Lockerbie bomber. The Scottish government released the 57 year old cancer suffering al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds last week after serving eight years of his life sentence. But dying or not, al-Megrahi says he is still intent on proving his innocence. “If there is justice in the UK I would be acquitted or the verdict would be quashed because it was unsafe,” he said this weekend. “There was a miscarriage of justice.”

Al-Megrahi has a good point; justice has always taken a back seat to politics in the Lockerbie bombing. Pan Am flight 103 blew up over the small Scottish town a few nights before Christmas 1988 en route from London to New York. 270 people died - 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 residents on the ground. Scotland claimed jurisdiction for the crime as the plane was destroyed in Scottish airspace.

The initial suspect was a Syrian group with the unwieldy title of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC). The PFLP-GC had a motive by acting for Iran in revenge for the American attack on an Iranian Airlines passenger plane a few months earlier. Two years before Lockerbie, the group’s Syrian leader Ahmed Jibril had publicly warned there would be "no safety for any traveller on an Israeli or US airliner". Although PFLP-GC subsequently denied responsibility for Lockerbie, the early years of piecing together evidence focussed firmly on the Syria-Iran link.

But by 1990 Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Neighbouring Iran and Syria were now suddenly proxy-allies whom the west could not afford to alienate. The Lockerbie case refocussed on the “Malta connection” and later that year the US and British governments issued indictments of murder against two Libyan men Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. In 1991 the pair were back in Libya and the US and the UK requested their extradition. Libya refused as it had no extradition treaty with either country. Libya arrested the pair but a local prosecution went nowhere as US/UK refused to hand over their evidence. The UN then made an unprecedented move to impose sanctions for not complying with the extradition request. The sanctions lasted six years.

After years of negotiation the UK agreed to Libyan demands for it to take place in a neutral country due to concerns of safety and a fair trial. The juryless trial began in May 2000 in the Netherlands under Scottish law and three Scottish judges. The key evidence was the brown Samsonsite suitcase which contained the bomb hidden in a radio/cassette player. The clothing in the suitcase was purchased at a shop in Malta and the store owner swore that a Libyan he could not identify bought them. Al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was in Malta on the day of the purchase and stayed near the shop. He was unable to offer the court a reason for his stay on the island. This evidence plus his connections to airport security and the Swiss company that built the timer in the explosive device was enough to convict him. Al-Megrahi was given a life sentence.

The second defendant Fhimah was an acquaintance of al-Megrahi and an Air Malta employee. They both arrived in Malta on the same flight from Libya two days before the bombing. The prosecution argued Fhimah knew how to get unaccompanied baggage onto a plane but the court found no evidence to show he had assisted al-Megrahi and acquitted him. But with Fhimah’s acquittal part of the case against al-Megrahi collapsed too. How did he get the bomb out of Malta?

Also, as part of their defence under Scottish law, the pair accused the Syrian-backed PFLP-GC of carrying out the attack. A German police officer testified that PFLP-GC had the means and intention of attacking an airline but the timers and cassette player used were not consistent with other PFLP-GC attacks. A Jordanian agent Marwan Khreesat who had infiltrated the group said he had never seen radio cassette players with twin speakers converted into explosive devices. On the basis of the German and Jordanian evidence the court concluded the PFLP-GC did not make the bomb.

The UN appointed five observers to watch the trial. Of these only one, Professor Köchler from Innsbruck University, published his findings. Köchler concluded the trial was unfair based on two points of objection. He noted the extraordinary length of detention (though this had been requested by the defence to prepare its case) and said the “presence of foreigners” at the prosecution and defence tables hampered the judges’ ability to find the truth and introduced a political element to the case (though there was no evidence that the judges were swayed by the “foreigners”).

Al-Megrahi appealed against the sentence based on the strength of the evidence linking him to the fatal suitcase. There was also the startling evidence that emerged in September 2001. A former security guard at Heathrow named Ray Manley made a sworn affidavit he had told anti-terror police one of Pan Am's luggage rooms had been broken into on the night of the bombing. This evidence cast complete doubt on the whole Malta connection. But for many years Scotland fought the appeal process.

The Scottish law professor who negotiated the Netherlands trial says many people believe there was overt political pressure placed upon the judges. Robert Black says it was probably necessary to reach a conclusion that was satisfactory to the British and American governments. “I think that consciously or subconsciously, these judges appreciated that if neither of the two Libyan accused were convicted in this trial, this would be an enormous embarrassment to the prosecution system in Scotland,” he said.

But by 2003, Libya was no longer a public enemy. Gaddafy told the Americans about his weapons capability. The west lifted international sanctions against Libya after it admitted responsibility for Lockerbie in 2005 and paid about $2.7bn in compensation to the victims’ families. Libya has since got that money back and much more in oil revenues. As The Times points out, al-Megrahi’s freedom is a further product of the effort to bring Libya out of dangerous isolation. “This is as much to America’s advantage as Britain’s, but Washington has too much baggage to be openly involved,” said The Times. And 20 years on, everyone is happy except the families of the Lockerbie victims who are still no closer to knowing who killed their loved ones.

Arab League Summit ends in Gaddafy chaos

The troubled Arab League Summit has ended in disarray after Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafy launched a blistering attack on the Saudi King Abdullah over his links to the US and Britain. Although his mike was eventually switched off by Qatari television, Libyan state television reported that Gaddafy was incensed Abdullah had not visited him in six years. After making his impassioned speech, Gaddafy then got up and walked out of the summit hall while Arab League head Amr Moussa was speaking.

The speech displayed an extraordinary sensitivity to Gaddafy’s role in history. Libyan official JANA news agency was there to publish the full text of his words "I am the leader of the Arab leaders, the dean of Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of the Muslims," proclaimed Gaddafy to Abdullah. "I am ready to visit you and for you to visit me..I tell my brother Abdullah, that you have avoided me for six years and you are afraid to confront me.” But Gaddafy didn’t stop there and criticised Abdullah over his links to the West. "You are a product of Great Britain and protected by the United States," he said. "Out of respect for the (Arab) nation, I consider the personal problem between us over and I am ready to visit you and to welcome you to Libya."

Gaddafy then stormed out of the meeting with aides saying he was off to visit a museum. Host Qatar held a reconciliatory summit between the Libyan leader and King Abdullah. Gaddafy’s personal envoy said the meeting was “friendly and frank” and said there were no differences between Libya and Saudi Arabia. “There was misunderstanding and it’s over now,” claimed the envoy.

These weren’t the only differences at the conference. Major regional power Egypt did not attend because of the League’s perceived drift towards outright anti-American attitudes. However President Mubarak did send a message to the Summit that claimed Egypt was keen to achieve a genuine Arab reconciliation. The message claimed Egypt was keen to achieve the Palestinian unity and to rebuild Gaza. In a possibly very dodgy cooking metaphor, Mubarak claimed Egypt was also interested in “marinating” Sudan's unity and territorial integrity. He said Egypt supports the Sudan in its crisis with the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir.

Beside’s Gaddafy’s strop, this year’s hot issue is the appearance of Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir who has an arrest warrant out for him from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Bashir was treated with respect by Qatar which is not a signatory to the ICC (but is in good company; neither are the US, Russia, China and India). The final communiqué of the meeting rejected the warrant and wanted continuation of talks between the Sudanese government and anti-government groups on Darfur under the mediation of Qatar. "We emphasis our solidarity with Sudan and our dismissal and rejection of the decision handed down by the International Criminal Court,” read the communiqué. “The decision to arrest Bashir was aimed at undermining the unity and stability of Sudan".

The league’s solidarity behind Sudan is testament to its bonds. This is the 21st summit since the Arab League was founded in 1945 and after a slow start has been an annual event since 2000. Egypt’s absence at this year’s summit is particularly poignant as it was their suggestion to decide to form the League and adopt its Charter. There are 22 member states and the Summit is the League's highest organ of power, as well as being the Arab world's top-level forum devoted to the discussion of major regional issues. Where better for a grandstanding Gaddafy to strut his stuff.

Indicting Gaddafy: Lebanon raises the stakes on Musa Sadr disappearance

Lebanon has indicted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafy over the disappearance of a prominent Shia cleric 30 years ago. Sheik Musa Sadr disappeared in 1978 when he visited Libya though Tripoli claimed he left the country on a plane bound for Rome - a claim denied by Italy. Lebanon has charged Gaddafy and six other Libyan officials with conspiring to kidnap and false imprisonment which carry a maximum death penalty. However, Gaddafy and the others are highly unlikely to ever face trial in Lebanon.

The person assassinated, Imam Musa Sadr, was a major influence in Lebanon’s 1970s sectarian politics. He was born in Iran and got a law degree from Tehran University. His family was Lebanese and in 1960 he accepted an invitation to be the Shia religious leader in the Southern Lebanese city of Tyre. An intellectual, he spoke several languages and was equally conversant in Western thought as he was in Shia philosophy. Similar to South American liberation theologian priests, Sadr was a charismatic speaker and a tireless worker who gave his downtrodden community a voice and provided them with identity and power in Lebanese politics.

Growing tensions in the south near the Israeli border spurred a mass Shia exodus to the slums of southern Beirut. Sadr was religious head of the Shia community and he organised the fragmented slums of southern Lebanon and the western Beqaa Valley into a new political movement. Sadr called the movement Harakat al-Mahrumin (movement of the deprived) and it quickly became the voice of Lebanese Shia.

When Lebanon’s civil war began in 1975 the Harakat divided into political and military wings. The political party Amal (Hope) became an international organisation and the party of choice for diaspora Shia businessmen as far away as Freetown, Accra, Kinshasa and Detroit. These communities provided the financial muscle for the new party. Sadr used his Amal militia to run social services but his pleas for help in the Shia slums fell on deaf ears in Beirut.

Slowly but surely he began to undermine the pan-Arab unity of Sunni hegemony. Sadr was the figurehead of a growing Shia awakening. In the 1970s Amal camps trained Shia activists from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. As the civil war raged, Sadr’s Shia-centric actions and Persian accent brought about great distrust in the Lebanese Sunni community. Many accused him of treason and saw him as a threat to the Palestinian establishment and by extension to the larger Arab world.

His assassination was well-planned and well-known in advance. Before he left for Libya in 1978, the feared head of Syrian security Rifaat al-Assad (younger brother of then President Hafiz al-Assad and uncle of current leader Bashar al-Assad) summoned the Shah’s ambassador to Damascus to warn him of Libya’s plan. Sadr still held an Iranian passport and Assad did not want to damage relations with Tehran. But Sadr and two assistants left as planned to visit Gaddafy and none of them were never heard from again.

To his supporters Sadr became known as the “vanished Imam”. Despite his disappearance Amal remained a major force in Lebanese politics. He welcomed the 1982 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon as a liberation and flexed his power in the refugee camps after Israel expelled the PLO. They remained the leading Shia group until they were overshadowed by Hezbollah backed by the new theocratic Iranian government. Hezbollah won respect in Sunni communities after it took on the IDF and forced it to retreat from southern Lebanon.

The issue of Sadr’s disappearance dragged on to become the subject of a major dispute between Libya and Lebanon. Gaddafy refused to attend an 2002 Arab summit in Beirut after Shia groups threatened him. Libya closed its Beirut embassy claiming it was insulted by Lebanese pressure to reveal Sadr’s fate. In 2004, Sadr’s son filed a suit against Gaddafy and 17 members of his government. Lebanon claimed to have new information about the disappearance and the country’s chief prosecutor said former Libyan Prime Minister Abdel Salam Jalloud and a former Libyan ambassador to Lebanon should also be summoned.

But the Libyan leader never responded to the summons. Gaddafy has not been back to Lebanon since Sadr disappeared. The arrest warrant against him allows magistrates to take such measures against suspects who fail to respond to an official summons. Lebanon knows its current arrest warrant is highly symbolic, but is unwilling to let the matter lie. Their Shia have emerged as a major political force and remain determined to get to the bottom of the fate of their “vanished imam”.

US Democrats oppose Libya relations

At least four Democrat senators including Hillary Clinton have threatened to block the appointment of the US’s first ambassador to Libya in 35 years. George W Bush nominated Gene Cretz to fill the vacant role on Wednesday. However Senate Democrats led by Frank Lautenberg (NJ) said no American ambassador should set foot in Tripoli until Libya fulfilled the financial commitments made to the Lockerbie victims' families. Lautenberg and Clinton’s move has been supported by Robert Menendez (NJ) and Charles Schumer (NY). “The US must not pursue fully normalised diplomatic relations with Libya until they fulfil their legal obligations to American families” said Lautenberg yesterday.

Gene Cretz is a possibly provocative choice of ambassador. Cretz is Jewish and currently based in Israel as the deputy chef de mission. He has often been the top US representative in Israel at Jewish memorial services, offering prayers in Hebrew. He spoke at the September 2005 funeral for Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Cretz is a veteran diplomat who has served at the US embassy in several Arab countries. Prior to serving in Israel, Cretz was the charge d'affaires at the US Embassy in Syria and has also served in Egypt.

However the appointment needs to be confirmed by the Senate and the four Democrats are leading the arguments to push the White House to make Libya do more to account for Lockerbie and the 1986 Berlin disco bombing that killed two US servicemen. The senators want Libya to pay $2.7 billion compensation stipulated in a 2006 agreement with the families of the 270 Lockerbie victims. "A promise made must be a promise kept," said Senator Menendez. "Libya has not made good on its promise to the victims of Pan Am Flight 103, and it must be held responsible."

The US had not had formal diplomat relations with Tripoli since 1980 and Libya was regarded as a pariah state until 2004. The US imposed a trade embargo in 1986 after a period of tension that ended in American air strikes against major targets in the capital, Tripoli, and elsewhere. In 2004 Britain facilitated a thaw in hostilities which enabled Washington to open a diplomatic office in the country. In May 2006 the Bush administration announced it was resuming regular diplomatic relations when it removed removing Gaddafy’s regime from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Not everyone in the US was happy with the decision. When Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte planned a visit to Libya to discuss Darfur, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton urged him to use the visit to tell Gaddafy to settle the remaining terrorism cases against his country before the US fully normalise diplomatic relations. Clinton quoted 1985 Egypt Air Flight 648 and the 1985 Rome Airport attack, the reneging of a proposed settlement with the victims of the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle discotheque in Berlin, and the fact they had not fully paid the Lockerbie families.

However new evidence has emerged that has cast doubt on the conviction of the Libyan convicted for the bombing. 55 year old Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was a former Libyan intelligence officer and head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 on 270 counts of murder for his part in the bombing. The prosecution alleged al-Megrahi arranged for an unaccompanied case containing the bomb to travel on an Air Malta flight from the island's Luqa airport. But the Scottish Sunday Herald claims the airport's then head baggage loader told the Maltese police investigating the disaster that there were no unaccompanied items on the flight to Frankfurt.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has now announced it has granted a fresh appeal into al-Megrahi’s conviction. The UN observer appointed to oversee the Lockerbie trial, Dr Hans Köchler, has called on First Minister Alex Salmond to agree to demands for an international inquiry into the handling of the case. In a letter to Salmond, Dr Köchler called for "a full and independent public inquiry of the Lockerbie case and its handling by the Scottish judiciary as well as the British and US political and intelligence establishments". Megrahi’s appeal will not be heard until later next year.

New hope for Libyan AIDS six

The EU said yesterday it has made substantial progress in talks with Libya over the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. The six, who have spent eight years in prison already, are accused of the murder of 240 children EU officials spent two days lobbying Libyan officials on the weekend and met with Gaddafy's son who is in favour of an early release. A European Commission told a Brussels news briefing that efforts will continue to release the six, but didn't expand on what that will involve. The news came a day after US President Bush called for their release on a state visit to Bulgaria. The six medics have been sentenced to death after they were found guilty of infecting Libyan children with AIDS in a Benghazi hospital in 1998.

The two officials, EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, left Tripoli on Monday. Steinmeier visited the five Bulgarian nurses on death row in Judeyda prison. "Libya has showed understanding on the case and I hope it will come to a positive end at my next visit to Jamahiriya [Libya]," said Steinmeier, whose country is president of the EU until the end of this month. His calls were echoed by Muammar Gaddafy son, Saif al-Islam, who praised European efforts to end the stand-off on the case.

Libya claims it will free the medics if an agreement is reached to pay compensation to the families of the children. Tripoli has demanded $13 million for each infected child's family. The EU has rejected this as an admission of guilt. However it has offered a fund for treatment for the children at European hospitals and already donated over $3 million to this plan. In 2005 Libya's ambassador to Britain, Mohammed al-Zaway, said Bulgaria should negotiate with the victims' families of the victims to decide on "dia", or blood money, which Sharia law allows to be paid to victims in murder cases to prevent a death sentence. "Any solution other than negotiations is a waste of time," said al-Zaway. "An agreement with the families of the children would reflect positively on the case according to Islamic law."

The nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death in May 2004 by firing squad for infecting 426 children through contaminated blood products at Al Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. They also were ordered to pay a total of $1 million to the families of the HIV-positive children. The Libyan Supreme Court in December 2005 overturned the convictions and ordered a retrial in a lower court. Finally an appeal court convicted the health workers in December 2006 and re-affirmed the death sentence.

The crisis first came to light in November 1988 when a Libyan magazine called “La” published an expose about a mass incidence of AIDS at a Benghazi paediatric hospital. The article quoted the Libyan Health Minister Sulaiman al-Ghemari, who said that most of the 60 known cases were children. The children’s parents blamed faulty blood transfusions for transmitting the virus. The article created a huge stir and countered the official propaganda that Libya was AIDS-free. An outraged Gaddafy shut down the magazine. Despite the shutdown, it soon became apparent that not only was magazine’s allegations correct, it was worse than initially thought. Up to 400 children were infected.

Scapegoats were needed and authorities immediately arrested Filipino, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian clinic workers on suspicion of organising the spread of the virus. Finally the court filed charges against five Bulgarian nurses, a Bulgarian doctor and a Palestinian doctor. They were charged with premeditated homicide, "activities which led to a massacre designed to sap Libya's strength" and "a violation of the Islamic way of life," according to the Bulgarian foreign ministry. The nurses were also accused of working for the CIA and Mossad. "Nurses from little towns in Bulgaria acting as agents of Mossad?" said a daughter of one of the nurses. "It all sounds funny and absurd until you realize your mother could die for it”.

The six have now been in prison for over eight years. Their names are: Ashraf Ahmad Jum’a, the Palestinian doctor, and Nasya Stojcheva Nenova, Valentinaa Manolova Sropulo, Valya Georgieva Chervenyashka, Snezhanka Ivanova Dimitrova and Kristiana Malinova Valcheva, the five Bulgarian nurses. In 1999, Libya commissioned a World Health Organisation (WHO) report on the growing crisis. The report cited multiple causes but particularly blamed the lack of supplies and equipment including sterilised needles and protective gloves.

At the trial, the six suspects claimed they were tortured and forced into confessions. They said police used many methods including sexual assault, electric shock, hanging by the arms, threats with dogs while the prisoners were blindfolded, and beatings with electric cable on the soles of the feet. It was also reported that police officers forced the nurses to undress before them, put insects on their bodies and set dogs on them. But the defence lawyers were denied access to files and investigation results. The court later rejected the torture claim and the accused police officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.

The court also ignored the testimony of Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French discoverer of the AIDS virus and Italian microbiology professor Vittorio Colizzi who evaluated more than 200 of the infected children and found the virus was present at least six months before the Bulgarian nurses arrived at the hospital. Montagnier and Colizzi’s report (pdf) concluded the virus was introduced through a contaminated injection and spread as a result of poor sanitary practices.

But at the trial the judge accepted the confessions backed up by testimony from Libyan medical experts for the prosecution who claimed the medics deliberately injected the AIDS virus into the patients. The six were sentenced to death in December 2006 in front of delighted parents of the infected children. The father of one child told the BBC “justice has spoken out with a ruling against those criminals and the punishment they deserve, because they violated their obligations and sold their consciences to the devil”.

While the fate of the six remains unknown, Libyan children continue to be at risk of AIDS due to poor sanitary practices in hospitals. The Association for Child Victims of Aids in Benghazi told Human Rights Watch in 2005 that 19 mothers of these children are also infected with the virus. The association’s spokesman Ramadan al-Faturi has demanded better training for Libyan doctors and psychological support for the families. “Tell the world that these children are innocent and suffering,” he said.

US breaks its Gaddafy duck

On Monday 15 May, 2006 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the US was “normalising” relations with Libya. Rice hailed "tangible results that flow from the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs".

But normalisation began two years earlier. The US lifted its economic embargo in 2004. Six US companies resumed exploration for oil suspended since 1986 when the US bombed Libyan targets in the capital Tripoli and Benghazi, President Ronald Reagan called it self defence due to “terrorism aimed at America" such as the bombing of La Belle discotheque in West Berlin which killed many US soldiers.

100 people were killed in the 1986 Libyan attacks. These including Hanna Gaddafy, the adopted baby daughter of the Libyan leader, Colonel Muamar Gaddafy when his residential compound took a direct hit. Libya has been ruled by Gaddafy (or Gaddafi or Khaddafi or Qaddafi or any one of 32 different ways to spell his name) since he seized power in 1969. His rule set back a county that seemed to be an African standout.

In 1951, Libya was the first country to achieve independence under the auspices of the UN. It formed a constitutional monarchy under the pro-allies wartime leader King Idris. Idris stayed pro-western even after Britain precipitated the 1956 Suez Crisis which enveloped Libya’s powerful neighbour Egypt.

The young army officer Gaddafy took advantage in typical third world style of Idris’s Turkish medical treatment trip in 1969 to seize control. He took inspiration from Nasser’s power grab from an absent King Farouk in Egypt in 1952 and the new regime promoted a Nasser-like interpretation of socialism that integrated Islamic principles with social, economic, and political reform. Gaddafy rejected communism as atheistic. Nonetheless he destroyed the power of the Sanusi, the Islamic movement which was Idris’s power base.

Gaddafy moved quickly to close British and American military bases. In 1972 he convened the first National Congress of Al-Ittihad Al-Ishtiraki Al-Arabi (the Arab Socialist Union) at Tripoli. Later he issued a government decree prescribing the death penalty for belonging to a political party other than the Arab Socialist Union. Libya was formally a one-party state.

Gaddafy began to assert Libya on the world stage and saw himself as a champion of "oppressed peoples". Tensions with America grew through the seventies and exploded in 1981 in the Gulf of Sidra incident. Libya had earlier declared Sidra to be territorial waters and a “line of death” which if crossed would invite a military response. On August 9, two US aircraft flying combat patrol intercepted two Libyan fighters and shot them down after evading a missile strike. The election of Reagan in November exacerbated tensions between the countries due to Libya’s support for Palestine. The US placed a petroleum embargo on Libya in early 1982. Clashes in Sidra continued in 1986 giving Reagan the excuse to authorise the bombing.

In 1990, British investigators announced they found an electronic chip that linked Libya to the Lockerbie bombing. In November 1991, Scotland's chief law enforcement officer issued warrants for the arrest of two Libyans. One was Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a member of the Libyan Intelligence Services and the station officer of Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta. The other was Abdel Baset al-Megrahi a senior officer in the Libyan Intelligence Services and head of Libyan Airlines security. Gaddafy argued for nearly eight years the suspects would not receive a fair trial in a Scottish court. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya that cost an estimated $33 billion. In 1998, after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and South African leader Nelson Mandela intervened, authorities agreed to Gaddafy's condition the trial be conducted in a neutral third country, Netherlands. Al-Megrahi was found guilty though calls remain to convict his superiors. Libya was forced to pay $2.7 billion to the victims' families in 2003.

With sanctions lifted, Libya adopted market reforms and liberalised the socialist-oriented economy. Libya is an oil-based economy which accounts for 90% of its exports. Libya is the largest oil producer in Africa with low production costs and proximity to European markets. Italy, Germany, Spain and France account for 74% of Libya’s exports. Despite 50 years of production, Libya remains largely unexplored with vast oil and gas potential.

The US moves announced by Rice is also aimed at tapping into the Libyan business boom. The black market and petty corruption have shrunk due to custom tariffs reform. Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem said reforms were positive steps towards turning Libya into a regional trading hub like Dubai or Hong Kong. Though Ghanem was replaced in March (possibly for controversial comments he made when he said Libya had ‘bought peace’) there appears to been a smooth transfer of power. As always Gaddafy is there behind the scenes, pulling all the strings.

The American decision to fully resume diplomatic relations see Libya turn full circle from the ‘rogue state’ of the 1980s. Gaddafy is now seen as a humanitarian and a senior African statesman. It is a remarkable makeover for one of the world’s most durable leaders if unpredictable leaders.