Qadafi Episode

Until the late 1980s Muammar Qaddafi was a cult-like figure for many Pakistanis. When Libya was subjected to US aggression in 1986, Qaddafi’s support in Pakistan surged to new heights. The revolutionary image he cultivated was not hollow. He manifested the first “Arab spring,” that sparked by Gamal Abdul Nasser. On coming to power in 1969, he played the Libyan Nasser by replacing the monarchy with a republic, championing Arab unity and the Palestinian cause. The closure of the American Wheelus Airbase in Libya, the United States’ largest airbase in Africa, and the nationalization of oil established him as an Arab hero. His monetary and military support to the African National Congress of South Africa, and the liberation movement of what were then Rhodesia, Mozambique, South-West Africa, Angola and the numerous other colonies which are since independent countries, turned him into an African revolutionary icon.

These radical credentials won him wild admiration in the Pakistan of the 1970s, itself convulsed by the Bhutto euphoria. When he came to Lahore to attend the Second Islamic Summit in February 1974, Lahore’s massive Railway Stadium was thronged by tens of thousands of enthusiastic Lahoris eager to listen to the speech he delivered on the sidelines of the summit. The stadium was renamed after him by a fiery Bhutto that very moment.

Under the Zia dictatorship, Qaddafi sided with the democratic movement symbolized by the Bhutto ladies. During those heady days, many Pakistani revolutionaries sought exile in Libya. That he deported thousands of Pakistani workers to express his dislike for the Zia dictatorship was not resented and a so-called “Libya Conspiracy Case” unearthed by the dictatorship’s spy masters in the early 1980s only enhanced Qaddafi’s esteem among the people of Pakistan.

When Nelson Mandela paid a visit to Libya, as that country was facing UN and US sanctions, Washington publicly cautioned him against it. Mandela reminded the United States that during much of his 27 years of incarceration on the notorious Robben Island off Cape Town, it was Qaddafi which supported the ANC, not the USA.

Domestically, Qaddafi initiated a process of welfare reforms, infrastructure modernization and political experimentation. Arab Marxist intellectual Gilbert Achcar calls it “Islamic Maoism.”

Libya began to be transformed from a desert to a country studded with highways, ports, airports, hospitals, universities, steel plants, power-generation plants, cement plants, housing complexes and hotels. Food was available at highly subsidised rates. Even in the late 1990s a Libyan could buy 40 kg of wheat flour, 40 kgs of sugar, 40 kg of rice and 40 liters of cooking oil for just five Libyan dinars each. Life was not exactly comfortable for many, but no one went hungry either. A 1,500-km-long underground water-supply system constructed to bring potable running water to the homes of thousands of Libyans won the hearts of Libyan housewives. Education and healthcare were far superior in Libya by African standards while the $11,000 per capita annual income was higher than in many countries.

Besides welfare reforms and infrastructure modernization, Qaddafi instituted what was presented as direct democracy. Symbolically the name of the country changed over from a republic to a “State of the Masses” (Jamahiriya). He pretended that he had turned Libya into a socialist utopia with direct democracy. But few people were fooled. The “revolutionary committees” were actually acting like Hitler’s Black Shirts, aiding the ruling apparatus along with the security services in controlling the country. To strengthen his control, a revolutionary Qaddafi began to tribalise the country as Saddam Hussein less successfully did in Iraq. Unlike Saddam, however, Qaddafi did not have sectarian divisions to exploit.

With the passage of time, Libya’s governance became repressive one-man rule under individual fundamental rights, freedom of expression, independence of the judiciary, rule of law and political dissent were stifled. Subsidized food kept the common man alive, but this wasn’t enough after a stage. Libyans knew that egalitarian distribution of wealth would dramatically transform their lives. The younger generation of Libya was increasingly aware of the contrast in the conditions faced by the majority of Libyans and the Qaddafi family’s lifestyles, as well as the conditions in their own country and economic prosperity in other countries endowed with rich natural resources.

Libyans’ modest living standards, despite the oil wealth at their country’s disposal, were in stark contrast with the lavish lifestyles the Qaddafi family was famous for. Qaddafi’s eldest son and reported heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, allegedly spent over a million dollars on singer Shakira’s performance at his private party.

This writer personally saw a glimpse of Seif al-Islam’s ostentatious lifestyle during a recent visit to his “flat” In London while he was studying at the London School of Economics. Situated in a posh London neighborhood, the extra-lavish “flat” has been reclaimed by the Libyan diaspora in the UK. Renamed “Revolution House,” it now serves as a community centre.

In the period following the collapse of the USSR, Qaddafi began to shift away from his socialist pretensions and reopened the Libyan economy to Western business. Although he promised that his economic liberalization would be complimented by political reforms, a Gorbachev-style perestroika never followed Qaddafi’s “cultural revolution.” The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” convinced Qaddafi that Libya might prove to be the next target.

His foreign policy took a sudden turnabout, and the West acknowledged his change of heart. From the status of “rogue state,” Libya was promoted to the status of a “responsible state” collaborating with the West. Libya began to help the United States in its so-called war on terror, and the same time to help Europe stem the tide of African workers attempting to arrive on Italian shores. He became a willing gatekeeper for Fortress Europe. Throughout these metamorphoses, his regime was always a dictatorship. Whatever early progressive measures he may have enacted, there was nothing left of progressivism or anti-imperialism in the last phase of his regime. However, for a vast majority in Pakistan – left, right, and centre – anti-imperialism is manifested by admiration for the Muslim world’s caudillos, and Qaddafi was certainly one.

Pakistanis are praising Qaddafi as a “great revolutionary.” For them, the Libyan insurgents are nothing but the West’s paid cops. Hence, the atmosphere in Pakistani is largely not in sync with the mood on Arab Street, Libya in particular. An analogy with Saddam Hussein’s fall would be strikingly justified. A hero for many in Pakistan, Saddam was feared and hated in Iraq. One must condemn the way US forces humiliated him when he was captured, his sham trial and his execution. Similarly, the lynching of a defenseless and unarmed Qaddafi is despicable.

Revenge killings, executions, assassinations merely brutalize the political culture. For the working classes, the best revenge is not to liquidate but to dispossess the class enemy. However, in condemning Saddam’s execution or Qaddafi’s lynching we must not whitewash their crimes against their own people. Anti-imperialism, nationalization, better living standards or modernization, nothing justifies an oppressed, brutal, tyrannical regime. Human emancipation from oppression should the highest value. Anti-imperialism is but a derivative of this principle.

Email: mfsulehria@hotmail.com