[News] The Bang That Ends Qaddafi's Revolution?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/
February 22, 2011


The Bang That Ends Qaddafi's Revolution?


The Libyan Labyrinth

By VIJAY PRASHAD

In 1969, Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi (age 27) surprised the aged King 
Idris, then in Turkey for medical treatment. Inspired by the Free 
Officers in Egypt, Qaddafi and his fellow Colonels force-marched the 
fragile Libyan State and even more fragile Libyan society into 
socialism. Libya's main product was its oil, and by the time Idris 
was deposed the country exported three million barrels of oil per 
day. Scandalously, it received the lowest rent per barrel in the 
world. Idris feasted on the rents, and the people suffered 
immeasurably. It is the reason why there was barely any opposition to 
Qaddafi's coup.

Qaddafi's regime pushed forward a series of radical developments to 
transform Libyan society. Libya had the misfortune of being a distant 
outpost of both the Ottoman Empire and the Italian colonial 
adventures. It wanted for the most  basic social development. Over 
the first decade of the Qaddafi regime, the state took charge of the 
oil fields and raised their rents. That money was then diverted 
toward social welfare, mainly an increase in housing and health care. 
Over the second decade (1978-1988), the regime constrained private 
enterprise and encouraged workers to take over control of about two 
hundred firms. Redistribution of land on the Jefara plain west of 
Tripoli was the rural cognate. The State stepped in to manage all 
macro-economic functions, at the same time as the Central Bank 
redistributed wealth by putting a ceiling on bank account holdings.

A nationalist in the Nasser vein, Qaddafi nonetheless was not keen on 
secularism. His Green Book dismissed capitalism and communism in 
favor of a "Third Universal Theory," to return the Arab world to the 
fundamentals of Islam in both politics and economics. Expulsion of 
the Italian residents in Libya followed as much from this Islamic 
injunction as from nationalism, and so too Qaddafi's fellowship with 
Islamic revolution from Chad to the Philippines (the instrument for 
his ambitions was the 1972 created al-Failaka al-Islamiya, the 
Islamic Legion). The Islamic militant in Qaddafi was only brought to 
heel when he himself was threatened by an assassination attempt in 
1993 and with the rise of militancy in nearby Algeria. Qaddafi's 
political Islamism was hastily converted into paranoia about al-Qaeda 
in the Maghreb.

After 9/11, Qaddafi hastily offered his support to the U. S. In 
October 2002, Foreign Minister Mohammed Abderrahman Chalgam admitted 
that his government closely consulted with the U. S. on 
counterterrorism, and a few months later, Qaddafi's heir apparent 
Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi warmly spoke of Libya's support for the Bush 
war on terror. If you went to Qaddafi's website at this time, you'd 
have read this remarkable statement from the old Colonel, "The 
phenomenon of terrorism is not a matter of concern to the U. S. 
alone. It is the concern of the whole world. The U. S. cannot combat 
it alone. It is logical, reasonable or productive to entrust the task 
to the U. S. alone." It needed Qaddafi, who was in sheer terror of 
groups such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. It must have 
chilled Qaddafi to find that Ibn Sheikh al-Libi's funeral service in 
May 2009 was attended by thousands in his town of Ajdabia (al-Libi 
was arrested in Pakistan in 2001, and he died in U. S. custody. Libya 
colluded with the U. S. in this and in other cases of Libyan fighters 
arrested during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).

The Eastern Question.

Ajdabia, al-Libi's hometown, is in the eastern part of Libya, the 
historical wilayat of Cyrenaica (another town here is Benghazi, which 
was the flashpoint of the unrest in 2011). Eastern Libya is proud of 
its long tradition of resistance against foreign authority. Its 
tribes led the resistance against the Ottomans and then against the 
Italian occupation. The hero of the fight against the Italians was 
Omar al-Mukhtar, whose face adorns the Libyan ten dinar bill and 
whose struggle was made immortal for the worldwide audience by 
Anthony Quinn in the 1981 film (financed by Qaddafi's government), 
The Lion of the Desert. It is also from the eastern provinces that 
the Sanussi order of Islam emerged, out of which comes King Idris. 
The Sanussi order continues to command the loyalty of a third of the 
Libyan population. Some of them still hold Qaddafi responsible for 
the removal of their king.

Qaddafi's new regime purportedly attempted to overthrow the supremacy 
of the tribes. In fact, it strengthened his own tribe, the Qadhadhfa, 
and personal friends of Qaddafi. The Sa'adi confederation of the East 
was left out of the new dispensation. The returns of the oil rent and 
the social wage pledged by the new revolutionary regime offered only 
parsimonious help to the impoverished East.

Revolution Within the Revolution.

Neglect of the East festered, but by the 1980s, Qaddafi's regime 
turned as well on the rest of the country. Unimaginative use of the 
oil surplus led to economic stagnation. Qaddafi earned a reprieve 
when the United States in the Reagan years bombed his compound, 
killing his daughter Hanna (15 months old). The Libyan people rallied 
around him and his regime. Anti-Americanism, easy enough with Reagan 
at the helm in Washington, provided cover for what Qaddafi called the 
"revolution within the revolution." This was the Libyan phrase to 
describe the entry of neo-liberalism, or what Qaddafi called "popular 
capitalism." In 1987, anemic import-substitution policies came to a 
close and "reforms" in agriculture and industry flooded out of IMF 
manuals. By September 1988, the government abolished the import and 
export quotas, allowing retail trade in the new souqs to flourish in 
the cities.

UN sanctions in 1992 threw the "reforms" into turmoil, and it allowed 
the old Qaddafi to emerge out of the sarcophagus that he had become. 
Cracks in the ruling elite at times slowed and at time speeded up the 
"reforms." The main face of the neo-liberal agenda was Shokri Ghanem, 
who would be removed as Prime Minister of the cabinet in 2006 for the 
more important role as head of the National Oil Corporation. Ghanem 
aggressively pushed for foreign investment into the oil sector, and 
hastened to implement the Exploration and Production Sharing 
Agreements with companies that ranged from Occidental Petroleum to 
China National Petroleum. Britain's Tony Blair and France's Sarkozy 
went to kiss Ghanem's ring and pledge finance for oil concessions. It 
is the reason why the British government freed the alleged Lockerbie 
bomber and that Berlusconi bowed down before Omar al-Mukhtar's son in 
2008 and handed over $5 billion as an apology for Italian 
colonialism. In his characteristic bluntness, Berlusconi said that he 
apologized so that Italy would get "less illegal immigrants and more oil."

Alongside Ghanem is Qaddafi's son, Saif, who wrote a dissertation at 
the London School of Economics in September 2007 on "The Role of 
Civil Society in the Democratization of Global Decision Making: from 
"soft" power to collective decision making" (the work was advised 
remarkably by David Held). Saif argued for the need to give NGOs 
voting rights at the level of international decision making, where 
otherwise the United States and its Atlantic allies hold sway. The 
"essential nature" of NGOs, he argued, is to be "independent critics 
and advocates of the marginal and vulnerable." To allow NGOs to 
temper the ambitions of the North is far more "realistic," Saif 
argued, than to hope to transform international relations. That kind 
of realism led to his faith in the "reforms" and in his recent call 
for the harshest armed violence against the protests in Tripoli and 
Benghazi. "Civil Society," in the language of neo-liberalism, is 
restricted to the work of establishment NGOs that are loath to revise 
settled power equations. The ragged on the streets are not part of 
the "civil society"; they are Unreason afoot.

The Basic People's Congress complained about the "reforms" in 
September 2000. They did not appreciate the privatization of the 
state-owned enterprises and the creation of free trade enclaves. 
Their periodical, al-Zahf al-Akhdar, fulminated against foreign firms 
and the tourism sector. A section within them was also angry at 
Qaddafi's political concessions to scale back the UN sanction and to 
earn favor in European capitals (Libya's end to its nuclear program 
was part of these concessions). The Congress tried to hold the tempo 
of "reform" down. Their actions irritated the IMF, whose 2006 report 
concluded, "Progress in developing a market economy has been slow and 
discontinuous."

The old republican Qaddafi's tribal loyalties began at home. His son 
Muatassim was active in the creation of an Export Free Trade Zone 
near Zuwara. Muatassim, whom the Serbian Ambassador to Tripoli called 
"a bloody man" and "not terribly bright," has long been angry at his 
brother Saif, whom many consider to have been scheduled as Qaddafi's 
successor. Saif, meanwhile, has tried to hasten the pace of reforms 
via his super-committee of the Economic and Development Board. The 
brothers have long fought with each other, but on the substance of 
neo-liberalism, they appear on the same side. It is just that each 
wants credit for the "reforms" over the other.

Uprisings in the east combined with the neo-liberal efforts from 
Tripoli have alienated large sections of the population against the 
Gaddafi regime. Little of the luster of 1969 remains with the old 
man. He is a caricature of the aged revolutionary. We are far from 
the "revolutionary instigator" whose watchword was "the masses take 
command of their destiny and their wealth." The game will be up when 
the military tilts its support (that two Colonels in their Mirages 
have sought refuge in Malta rather than fire on the crowds in Tripoli 
is an early indication of one direction, but on the other are those 
other pilots who did open fire on the crowd). The issue is not yet settled.

The masses have come out. Old rivalries and new grievances are 
united. Some of them are for reactionary tribal purposes, and others 
seek liberation from "reforms." Some cavil that a country of 6 
million with such oil wealth does not look like the Emirates, and 
others simply want to have some more control of their lives. But most 
want release from the hidden corridors of the Libyan labyrinth.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian 
History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, 
Hartford, CT His most recent book, 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565847857/counterpunchmaga>The 
Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the 
Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions 
are just out. He can be reached at: 
<mailto:vijay.prashad at trincoll.edu>vijay.prashad at trincoll.edu




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