Arab awakening arrives in Libya

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside] Journal Pioneer

By any measure, the North African state of Libya is one of the more bizarre countries in the world.

For the past 42 years, it has been governed by the mercurial and eccentric Moammar Gadhafi. The longest-serving ruler in the Middle East, Qaddafi has until now ruled this oil-rich desert state with little in the way of opposition.

However, the revolts sweeping the Arab world – including those in his neighbours Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia – have now caught up to him. His absolute authority is under assault.

Formally under the rule of Ottoman Turkey, Libya entered the twentieth century ridden with tribal conflicts and lacking strong central authority.

It comprised three separate entities, Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east, and Fezzan in the southwest.

It was easily conquered by the Italians in 1912, but they lost their colony following their defeat in Second World War, when Libya was granted its independence under King Idris I.

A pro-western monarch, he was overthrown in a coup led by Colonel Gadhafi in 1969.

Libya has no formal constitution, its political system being based on the philosophy expounded in Gadhafi’s “Green Book,” published in 1975, which rejects parliamentary democracy and political parties.

In 1977, Gadhafi, now known as the “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution,” proclaimed Libya a Jamahiriya, a state with a “government by the masses” exercising their authority through local popular councils and communes.

Its official name is the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

In reality, though, the leader is the state. His cult of personality overshadows all other institutions, both civilian and military. 

He is, in the words of Ervand Abrahamian, a professor of history at the City University of New York, “elevated into a demigod towering above the people and embodying their historical roots, future destiny, and revolutionary martyrs.” 

The erratic Gadhafi, a proponent of pan-Arabism, has also at various times attempted to federate with Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, but these ventures failed to get off the ground.

Gadhafi has certainly displayed staying power until now.

In April 1986, the United States bombed targets in the country, following Libyan complicity in an attack on a West Berlin discotheque frequented by American military personnel. The air strike killed 45 Libyan soldiers and government officials, and 15 civilians.

For most of the 1990s, Libya endured U.S. and UN-imposed economic sanctions after two Libyans were accused of planting the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, killing a total of 270 people. But UN sanctions were lifted in September 2003 after Libya accepted responsibility.

In December 2003, Libya announced it had agreed to end its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and to renounce terrorism. In turn, the United States removed most commercial sanctions in April 2004 and rescinded Libya’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in June 2006.

Critics charge that, despite the façade of direct democracy in Libya, Gadhafi has practised the same kind of political repression found elsewhere in the region.

For example, Libya’s Law 71 bans political activity opposed to the principles of the 1969 revolution. These opponents have been proven correct, since he is now showing an iron fist to the demonstrators.

Benghazi, Cyrenaica’s main city, which has occasionally witnessed anti-regime activity in the past, is the centre of opposition to the regime, though there have been outbreaks of violence in Tripoli and other cities. Hundreds of people have been killed.

It remains to be seen whether the “great leader and guide” will go the way of other murderous autocrats in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, we should not forget the shameful visit of then Prime Minister Paul Martin to Libya in December 2004 on behalf of Canadian firms seeking “trade and business opportunities.”

The visit “proves that between Libya and Canada there is closer collaboration in all kinds of directions,” Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew told Reuters at the time.

Martin paid homage to the Colonel in the latter’s tent in Tripoli, calling Gadhafi “a philosophical man with a sense of history.’’

Since we Canadians are a polite lot who dislike embarrassing people, we won’t ask Martin if he still believes that.