GADAFFI
The Desert MysticBy George Tremlett |
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Gadaffi: The Desert Mystic was published 18 years ago, yet remains highly informative today. As Western nations have resolved once more to address the problems posed by this enigmatic leader, whose idiosyncratic character over and under achieves in the most improbable ways, he threatens again to prove far more resilient than anyone anticipated.
Even a final successful termination attempt seems likely only to produce a martyr, who may prove even more powerful in death than life.
Intriguingly, and somehow appropriately and symbolically, this book was written by an author whose interest was sparked when he was resident on the Italian island of Sicily in 1985 and 1986, as a condition for interviewing the widow, Caitlin, of the fabled Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.
An American air force build up on Sicily for an as yet unannounced attack on Libya aroused Tremlett’s curiosity. This led him to undertake the challenging task of exploring the reality behind the mostly hostile and negative myths generated around the personality of Muammar Gadaffi.
In 2011, with 42 years at the head of his nation, Gadaffi has achieved a record of longevity in power usually rivalled only by those of royal lineage. Thanks to oil wealth and Gadaffi’s insistence, the people of Libya led all of Africa in enjoying educational, social and medical services until NATO’s “humanitarian intervention.”
Any successor will find it difficult to match Gadaffi’s simple dedication to ideals he formed as a young Bedouin determined to lift his people into the modern world.
Tremlett’s remarks in his concluding pages show that Gadaffi’s achievements are qualified by striking anomalies, such as leaving dead animals to rot on urban roadsides and neglecting many basic services and forms of urban order.
Clearly, also, Gadaffi has failed in developing those international relationships and alliances of convenience that might come to his aid at times of crisis, when the Western furies seek him out once more.
Tremlett’s subtitle, The Desert Mystic, seems to capture the secret of Gadaffi’s longevity, a mystical affinity with the desert that has until very modern times defined the simplicity, strength and vulnerability of the Libyan people.
The first paragraph of the book’s Preface catalogues the accusations against Gadaffi – including fostering terrorism, giving money and weapons to hijackers, funding rebels in Central America, Africa and the Philippines, using hit men against Libyan dissidents abroad. The second paragraph continues:
“On a broader political level, each time Libya’s oil wealth is used to buy banks, mines, hotels or petroleum companies, Gadaffi is charged with plotting to disrupt the economies of European nations. When Libya builds a chemical plant as part of its long-term policy of becoming wholly self-sufficient, there is an immediate Western response. Nations already stockpiling their own weapons of mass destruction profess dismay that Gadaffi should want to make his own, i.e., be a threat to world peace and they never are. Little evidence is ever produced to back these charges against Gadaffi. The mere mention of his name is enough to get Western politicians reaching for their guns or talking about airstrikes.”
Although written in 1993, long before Gadaffi reached a sort of modus vivendi with the West, these words capture perfectly the mentality that seized the moment in 2011, swept away a functioning working relationship and capitalised on the rhetoric of revolution in the Arab world. Unsurprisingly, the “humanitarian intervention” that has brought only destruction to the Libyan people is already proving expensive in economic and political terms.
Tremlett’s book is neither an apology for nor a critique of Gadaffi. He details the difficulties and frustrations he encountered in seeking to gain material for it and in his attempts to meet the leader. Much of it is simply an account of these setbacks that nevertheless give the reader a feel for an essentially benign, if often wrong-footed, government and its people.
He details Gadaffi’s falling out with Sadat and others in a way that makes one wonder who could deal surely and confidently over time with a man whose ideals frequently seem poorly tempered to manage the imperfections of the real world.
Yet in recounting the history of Gadaffi’s successful coup at the age of 27 and his subsequent survival against all odds, Tremlett makes it hard for the reader not to develop a respect for this leader who almost invites comparison with the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong. Both sought to lead their people with their writings as much as with their political resolve in the face of inevitable rivals. Both men are open to criticism in areas of practical decision-making.
Gadaffi’s Green Book captures much of the fundamental contradiction between Bedouin traditions and Libya’s modern aspirations. Gadaffi’s great dilemma has been the management of substantial wealth and influence without the depth of complex strategic wisdom that could be mined from Chinese history and culture. He has, of course, also been without the muscle of a vast population shaped by the wit of that history and culture.
The five sections of Chronology in the book – covering the periods 1837-1951, 1952-1969, 1969-1977, 1978-1986 and 1986-1992 – detail simple historical facts but are invaluable for informing those who, like most outside Libya, lack any reliable historical or political knowledge. Above all, they show how most mainstream media and academia in the West do little more than circulate shallow propaganda. While this may be standard practice concerning distant, troublesome lands in most communities in most times, Tremlett’s work does give cause for reflection, even 18 years after its publication.
It is difficult to see how the NATO intervention and the bombing and destruction of Libyan lives is going to advantage the already bankrupt economies of the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy.
Sadly, it is easy to question whether dreams of past imperial glory have not seduced some poorly equipped leaders into one more military adventure. This may have mistakenly discounted the spirit, culture and resolve of people who are not easily understood in terms of the West’s imposed “universal values.”
– Reviewed by Reg Little in New Dawn 128
