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<font size=3><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/<br>
</a></font><font size=2 color="#990000">February 22, 2011<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>The Bang That
Ends Qaddafi's Revolution?<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">The
Libyan
Labyrinth</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By
VIJAY PRASHAD<br><br>
</font><font size=3>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
A nationalist in the Nasser vein, Qaddafi nonetheless was not keen on
secularism. His <i>Green Book</i> 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 <i>al-Failaka al-Islamiya</i>, 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.<br><br>
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).<br><br>
<b>The Eastern Question</b>.<br><br>
Ajdabia, al-Libi’s hometown, is in the eastern part of Libya, the
historical <i>wilayat</i> 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), <i>The Lion of the
Desert</i>. 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Revolution Within the Revolution</b>.<br><br>
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 <i>souqs</i> to flourish in the cities.<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
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 “<i>realistic</i>,” 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.<br><br>
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,
<i>al-Zahf al-Akhdar</i>, 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.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Vijay Prashad</b> 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,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565847857/counterpunchmaga">
The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World,</a> won the
Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are
just out. He can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu">vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu</a>
<br><br>
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