http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=44403
The Saturday Profile: Muammar Al Gaddafi
MUAMMAR Al Gaddafi is just misunderstood. The leader of Libya is not the
international pariah of western news reports, but an original thinker loved
by millions the world over. He is also the author of a book of allegorical
short stories, and the inventor of a car - a green Knight Rider-ish thing
with a pointed nose - which represents the future of motorised transport. The
Saroukh el-Jamahiriya (Libyan rocket) was launched in 1999, on the 30th
anniversary of the Libyan revolution, and came complete with an electronic
defence system and a collapsible bumper which protects passengers in head-on
collisions.
Gaddafi is also a cultural scholar, whose findings include the little-known
fact that William Shakespeare was an Arab (real name Sheik Espir), and that
the Native Americans originated in Libya and Yemen.
It is hard to tell whether Brother Gaddafi will be pleased to be back on the
front pages of the western press, but the pictures of him embracing the freed
prisoner, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, on his return to Tripoli show that the
Libyan leader has lost none of his taste for grotesque theatre.
The simplistic understanding of the machinations behind the Lockerbie trial
was that Gaddafi had sacrificed two men in return for the suspension of trade
sanctions against Libya, but the verdict - one man guilty, one not - has
complicated the outcome. Libya has not yet complied in full with the UN
resolution which sets out the requirements for the abolition of the
sanctions, and Gaddafi has wasted no time in seeking to exploit the
differences between the pronouncements of the western governments.
There exists a possibility that after the Foreign Office’s "assessment" of
the latest diplomatic pronouncements, a formula will be found - some
compensation, and the abandonment of the convicted bomber Megrahi, perhaps -
which allows Libya back into the international family of nations. A precedent
was set by Libya’s acceptance of "general responsibility" for the shooting of
WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984 and the subsequent offer of compensation - moves
which allowed Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to restore diplomatic relations.
The hunger of the popular media for a simple answer to the sad riddle of
Lockerbie - who ordered the bombing of PanAm 103? - has, if anything, played
into his hands. The trial did not consider the chain of command which ordered
the bombing, so Gaddafi can assume a posture of wounded innocence.
His propaganda has an answer, anyway: visionaries are always distrusted. As
one devotee, Prof Francis Dessart, observes on the website which carries
Gaddafi’s name, his brand of intellect is hard to classify: "To all
exploiters and enemies of humanity, Muammar Qadhafi [the spelling is
transliteral] is the world’s number one ‘terrorist’. But to the oppressed,
the exploited and the struggling people’s of the earth he is a teacher,
guide, brother."
Gaddafi’s vision, set out in his Green Book, is a jumbled mix of socialism
and dogma. Elected parliaments, he argues, are demagogic, as votes can be
bought and falsified. Only the rich get elected. Instead, he proposes The
Third Universal Theory, a Soviet-style system of "direct democracy", based on
tribal lines. This, he argues, has replaced capitalism and communism with the
precepts of the Jamahiriyan era (meaning "an entity of the masses").
It would not do to dwell on the intellectual incoherence which is employed to
prop up Gaddafi’s rule, but his skill as a manipulator of moods should not be
underestimated. For example, the ITN newsreader, Trevor McDonald, recalled
meeting Gaddafi for a television interview in 1994.
"I rather liked Gaddafi," he observed. "He made an entrance which I’ve never
seen in 25 years: he came from behind bushes and caressed this rose. His
people were crawling around on their stomachs with sub-machine guns when I
was the only person around. I thought this was farce of a high order. And yet
one recognised this man led a country and had survived and ruthlessly kept
his opponents at bay.
"What I admired most was that he looked terribly smart when I saw him. He had
Arab clothes on but beneath that there was a rather neat Italian jacket and
after-shave which came straight out of Milan or Paris. I asked him to speak
in English and he said he would try. It was very generous of him. That’s the
kind of personal thing you remember. Forget his politics, he was very kind in
the end."
His kindness is easy to over-estimate. One of the most widely-touted theories
about the Lockerbie bomb is that is was ordered by Gaddafi as a reprisal for
US President Reagan’s 1986 attack on Tripoli, in which Gaddafi’s adopted
daughter, Hanna, was killed. The bombing of Tripoli was a punishment for the
attack on a Berlin discotheque in which two American soldiers were killed.
Official biographies of Gaddafi use mystical terms to explain his rise to
power. He was born in 1942, the youngest child of a nomadic Bedouin family of
the Gadadfa tribe. The symbolism of this is precise. It was in the desert
that Moses and the prophet Elijah received instruction from God. Gaddafi was
on only son, and he claims his Bedouin upbringing gave him an appreciation of
"life in its very primitive stages".
As a youth, he was politically active, and on 1 September 1969 he led the
overthrow of the monarchy of King Idris, imposing his own revolutionary
philosophy, which mixes the precepts of tribal culture with the austerity of
Islam, as outlined by Gaddafi’s hero, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and his book The
Philosophy of the Revolution. He alludes to the unstructured democracy of
Bedouin life, yet interprets it through a regime of terror and absolute
political control, executed in the name of the people.
Gaddafi has remained a marginal figure in world affairs, despite winning the
vocal support of Nelson Mandela. The Libyan leader has allied himself with
the Provisional IRA and the Palestinian Abu Nidal, but overestimated his
status when he attempted to buy nuclear weapons from China. His diplomatic
importance is based on oil. From the 1970s on, Libya became Europe’s largest
source of petroleum.
Despite a ring of female guards surrounding the colonel, there have been
several assassination attempts - though the 1996 MI6 plot against him
outlined by David Shayler has been dismissed by British government sources as
"completely and utterly nutty".
Gaddafi’s grip on power is strong enough to suggest that he could be the
founder of a dynasty. His second wife, Safia el-Brassai, has made political
appearances and is said to be a strong influence on her husband’s thinking.
His daughter, Aicha met Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad and made a pro-IRA
speech in London. The eldest son, Mohammed Sayef al-Islam, leads the Gaddafi
International Charity Foundation and worked alongside Jörg Haider in Austria,
where he has business interests. His second son, El-Saidi, plays football for
the Libyan national team and acts as a political lightning conductor for his
father.
In 1986, Colonel Gaddafi gave an interview where he talked about his love of
reading. He had enjoyed Roots and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he said, but his
favourite book was by Colin Wilson. It was called The Outsider.
