http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1054/re4.htm
30 June - 6 July 2011
Issue No. 1054
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Gaddafi's gadfly
NATO is the toast of Libya's National Transitional Council even as Gaddafi's
gaffes and guilt do not fade in his foes' books, cautions Gamal Nkrumah
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Back before the NATO bombardment drowned everything else emanating from
Tripoli, Libyan political noise meant Muammar Gaddafi, the country's leader
since 1969. This is a man who after four decades in absolute power is now
designated as a danger to society and enemy of his people by his adversaries.
The heart of the war for the heart and minds of Libyans comes in the debate
over the country's political future. It is a sort of mortal combat in words and
ideas, ideological orientations and radically different perspectives of looking
at the world.
Click to view caption
Libyan women celebrate after receiving news of an arrest warrant issued
against Gaddafi at the courthouse in Benghazi on Monday
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Gaddafi's take on his mentor the late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt,
though inspired and far-reaching, goes against Nasser in that the latter
offered to step down and relinquish power when Egypt lost the Six Day War of
June 1967. Gaddafi on the other hand declined to cede authority and surrender
to his enemies some of who had been lifelong comrade-in-arms and close
political associates. Gaddafi's gaffes repeatedly demonstrate the consequences
of overreaching, of excessive confidence in his own capabilities and personal
charisma. He swerves violently between self-righteousness and reason,
inventiveness and imbecility. The denial of human dignities to his Libyan
adversaries coupled with the short circuiting of the legal process and kangaroo
courts now threatens to embolden the grief-stricken victims of his excesses to
take the law into their own hands. And, the international community, Western
nations to be precise, to egg them on.
However, Gaddafi is making much political capital of one of the great
humanising moments in Libyan history. Gaddafi is determined to demonstrate the
power of his regiments run by his sons and cohorts and not just to annihilate
but to humiliate and dehumanise those who dared to threaten his autocratic
governance.
This issue has come to the fore because of the stunning military triumphs of
the pro-Gaddafi regiments in western Libya. Tripolitania has emerged as the
battlefront for the race to rule Libya. There is a crucial difference between
the fighting in Cyrenaica three months ago over the subjugation Òê" or
liberation Òê" of eastern Libya, depending on one's political standpoint, by
anti-Gaddafi forces, and the protracted conflict to control Tripolitania.
Tripoli, the Libyan capital, is the bedrock of Gaddafi's Fateh Revolution. The
green flag of his Jamahiriya flutters freely over the city. Elsewhere in
Tripolitania, the situation is more in flux. The Gaddafi regime has slimmed
down in structure and brought in a new team of diehard Gaddafi loyalists.
The opposition forces are now determined to remove Gaddafi and his family from
power. Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the Benghazi-based National
Transitional Council (NTC) said intermediaries had indicated that a proposal
from the Libyan strongman was in the works, but he did not disclose any
conclusive details.
"We expect to get an offer from Gaddafi very soon. He is unable to breathe,"
Ghoga extrapolated. "We want to preserve life, so we want to end the war as
soon as possible," Ghoga added. "We have always left him some room for an
exit," Ghoga summed up tongue-in-cheek. The irony is that it has become
increasingly difficult for Gaddafi, his family and close aides to secure safe
passage out of Libya.
"Crimes continue today in Libya. To stop the crimes and protect civilians in
Libya, Gaddafi must be arrested," International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief
Prosecutor Luiz Moreno-Ocampo said this week. Promptly thereafter arrest
warrants were issued against Gaddafi, his son Seif Al-Islam and Libya's
intelligence chief Abdullah Al-Sinoussi. Libya's Justice Minister Mohamed
Al-Gamoudi protested that the ICC indictment of Gaddafi was a cover for NATO to
pursue its ultimate aim of assassinating the Libyan leader.
It is obvious that Moreno-Ocampo and the ICC want to make an example of the
unrepentant Libyan leader. Gaddafi and his son "conceived and orchestrated a
plan to deter and quell by all means the civilian demonstrators," presiding
judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng declared in reading out the ICC ruling. NATO
officials, however, are uncertain as to who exactly would arrest Gaddafi and
hand him over to the ICC. "It is not for NATO to enforce that warrant, that is
for the appropriate authorities," said NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu, failing
to state precisely who the appropriate authorities are.
"Time is on our side, not on Gaddafi's side," declared British Prime Minister
David Cameron. Western leaders are determined to see Gaddafi brought to book.
Yet, the West is invoking arbitrary law and demonstrating the least proficient
kind of double standards. The cost of the war in Libya is fast escalating and
nobody has a clue as to precisely which country is footing the bill. The
Western taxpayer is paying dearly for a conflict in which there is no end in
sight.
NATO has predictably taken the side of the Libyan collaborators and against
Gaddafi's resistance to foreign interference. The pertinent point, and terrible
tragedy is that there is little hope now that mediators Òê" the United Nations,
the African Union and certainly not the Arab League Òê" can reconcile the
different claims of the contending factions and Libyan protagonists.
Fissures, meanwhile, are now showing within the Western alliance. The
discrepancy in the Western stance on Libya on the one hand and Syria, Yemen and
Bahrain on the other hand has given the international community cause for
pause. The grandees of Western powers have proven incapable of winning a war by
proxy in Libya.
Britain's shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy concluded that Western leaders
must heed the advice of the military in military matters. "It is time to listen
to military adviceÒê¦ and provide our forces with capabilities that match our
foreign policy ambitions," Murphy upped the ante. The cost of military
operations in Libya to the British taxpayer has now exceeded the $150 million
mark.
British Premier Cameron was furious that Air Field Marshal Sir Simon Byrant
openly admitted to the international media that morale was "fragile" among NATO
troops in Libya. There is a sense of d³©j³ vu Òê" the Western aggression
against Iraq, based on the WMD lie led to a fracture of the allies. The Libyan
operation is going down the same road.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini was even more forthright than Sir
Byrant. He called for a suspension of the NATO campaign because of the high
civilian casualties. Ironically, Italy was among the Western nations most eager
to bomb Libya into a pulp.
General Charlie Bouchard, head of the NATO aggression against Libya, was far
more upbeat. "We will see this mission through. We have significantly destroyed
Gaddafi's military capacity to the point that he has no capability to run any
offensive," Bouchard boasted. Wishful thinking, perhaps?
>From his headquarters in Naples, Italy Bouchard reaffirmed NATO's
>determination to hunt down Gaddafi. "I don't believe that any scaling down of
>operations is appropriate or required at this time. In fact, we stay the
>course," he quacked.
The Libyan leader is not accustomed to the Western-style democratic practice of
now-you-see-them, now-you-don't world of multi-party pluralism. Moreover, his
people, too, are not so familiar with such lurid scenarios. Western leaders and
alliances with Third World potentates have an irritating habit of changing in a
flash, something that a 40-year-old dictatorship finds hard to deal with.
The most remarkable thing about Gaddafi's probable relinquishment of power in
Libya as his friends drop off one-by-one will be the manner of his leaving
office. NATO's unremitting bombing of Tripoli means that the intrepid Libyan
non-leader may soon have to evacuate his beloved capital. There are talks going
on with senior South African officials to provide him asylum. There are
precious few spots in the world that lie beyond the reach of Western political
and economic tentacles; South African leaders may not like the latest imperial
thrust into their continent, but they are realists and feel it is better to
make their presence felt in the void now being created in Libya to prevent the
worst-case scenario. South Africa has in the past given political asylum to
renegade African potentates such as Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile-Mariam.
International condemnation of the "extreme and lethal violence" of the Gaddafi
regime, especially in Western and Gulf Arab circles, merely reflects the
stranglehold the West holds on public discourse on such matters and is a
bargaining chip intended to paint the NATO "extreme and lethal violence" in
soft pastille shades, as Western plans to reshape a pro-Western Libya proceed.
Gaddafi is habitually portrayed as the imperial gadfly, pesky nuisance. Now the
tables are turned with NATO warplanes buzzing overhead.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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