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.”

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.

Life on three continents: Of Ahmadinejad, Peter Costello and Omar Bongo

I was determined to write about Gabon today. After all, the West African nation has installed a female president Rose Francine Rogombé as an interim replacement for Africa’s longest serving dictator Omar Bongo Ondimba. And I will write about Rogombé and Bongo later in this article. However, a couple of other matters in Iran and Australia have grabbed my more immediate attention.

The biggest news worldwide is the continuing fall-out from the Iran election. Mousavi supporters are continuing a violent protest against what they say was a rigged election. Yet while the uniformity of the results does look suspicious, the wide margin suggests that Ahmadinejad probably did win. As the BBC’s John Simpson said “This was not, of course, the result the West was hoping for.” Of course. But the West needs to come to some rapprochement with Ahmadinejad (and his boss the Ayatollah Khamenei) if they are to end Iran’s international isolation. As Simpson said, Obama and the EU will “surely prefer President Ahmadinejad, with his reputation tarnished” than support the riots that have crippled the streets of Tehran since the result was announced.

The communication of those riots also became the news of the day. The revolution may not be televised but it could very well be Twittered. Ahmadinejad claimed that Western media are behind the protests against him but the fact is that CNN simply weren’t interested. It was Twitter where the action was both in #CNNFail US and opposition Iran. After being silent for several hours, defeated leader Mir Hussein Mousavi’s twitterstream announced on Sunday morning “Dear Iranian People, Mousavi has not left you alone, he has been put under house arrest by Ministry of Intelligence.” It was confusingly later updated to say the BBC confirmed that Mousavi is NOT under house arrest. As of today the man is free and is on the way to a protest where he is asking his followers for calm.

Back in the more rarefied atmosphere of Australian federal politics, one man did exhibit a Zen-like calm today. Peter Costello finally hung up his Overshadow and walked off the Canberra stage today with his decision to retire from politics. The actual end date for the meddlesome member for Higgins is not immediate; it will be effective next election. But the news means that Malcolm Turnbull will now probably lead the Liberals to the next two elections. Former Treasurer Costello was relaxed and joking as he spoke at Parliament House today. When he said his announcement would be welcomed by “both sides of the dispatch box”, everyone laughed knowingly. It was funny because it was an obvious truth and one that could not be admitted beforehand by Costello, the Liberals or indeed, by Labor.

While I paused to consider what that breathtaking insouciance says about the Australian polity, I cast my eyes back to Gabon. Situated on Africa’s west coast between Cameroon and Congo Republic, Gabon doesn’t get much press in the west. Nothing much happens in this small country of 1.5 million. It had known only one leader for 41 years. Omar Bongo was Africa’s longest serving head of state but died of cancer in Spain last week aged 73.

No one was terribly upset by his death. The Kenyan Standard called the diminutive Bongo “a pint-sized dinosaur who stifled Gabon”. He stole millions from his country in offshore oil revenues. Allafrica.com called him “a notorious looter-for-life” who spent $800 million on his palace while the capital Libreville did without a major hospital. But Bongo got away with his crimes because he was protected by former colonial power France. Nicolas Sarkozy will be one of ten heads of state to attend his funeral on Thursday.

Meanwhile Rose Francine Rogombé was sworn in overnight as Gabon’s interim president. The 66 year old Rogombé is Gabon’s first female president. Rogombé is a member of the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) founded by Bongo, was speaker of Gabon’s senate and is a human rights lawyer. She has been given all an elected president’s powers apart from authority to dissolve parliament or to hold referendums. Rogombé will be a breath of fresh air for a nation that has been used to Bongo's absolute power for almost half a century. The downside is that Rogombé doesn't have much time to make an impression. She will be ineligible to contest the presidential poll for a permanent replacement constitutionally due in the next two months.

The longer-term prognosis is not good. The favourite for the election is Bongo’s son and Gabon's Defence Minister Ali Ben Bongo. The 50 year old was parachuted into the role in 1999 as a move to pre-empt coups against the dictator while grooming the son to succeed. Ben Bongo is of the same corrupt cut as his father and enjoys conspicuous spending. In 2003 executives of French oil company Elf paid the pair $16.7 million in bribes to allow them pillage the nation’s oil wealth. Meanwhile, his wife Inge has been busy buying a $25 million mansion in LA’s most exclusive neighbourhood Malibu. But watch out for Ali Ben to resuscitate the party motto that only a Bongo can unify the country’s ethnic groups.

With Omar Bongo’s death, the mantle for the longest serving dictator in Africa now passes on to the estimable Muamar Gaddafy. The Colonel launched his Libyan revolution on 1 September 1969 meaning he is almost 40 years in power. He is currently being feted in Italy by Silvio Berluscone who will probably appreciate Gaddafy’s request to meet 1,000 prominent Italian women on the trip. And new president Gabonese Rogombé would be impressed by his all female bodyguard. Yet the man himself is as inscrutable as ever. "There is no difference between men and women on a human level," he exclaimed. "God made men and women, we must respect the differences between the sexes."

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.

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.