Wild Wild West of Libya
BEHIND THE HEADLINES By BUNN NAGARA
In the heat of battle, vengeance is once more mistaken or substituted for justice.
Technically, Gaddafi was treated much the same way he had treated his enemies
SHOUTS of jubilation were punctuated by celebratory gunfire.
It was the Wild Wild West Asia and North Africa show in real time. Whoops of triumphalism rang out through Sirte, then all of Libya, at a tyrant’s death.
More than anything else, confusion reigned over the death of Col Muammar Gaddafi.
United States President Barack Obama indicated the US role made it all possible. Nato intimated it was the chief sponsor of the military effort.
France claimed credit for this biggest kill of their air campaign. French warplanes had strafed a convoy whisking the fallen strongman from Sirte.
The National Transitional Council (NTC) claimed credit for locating and killing Gaddafi. It said a comrade had shot Gaddafi dead with a 9mm pistol.
Then confusion deepened when they seemed to distance themselves from the killing. The certainty of Gaddafi’s death was matched only by the fuzziness of how he had died.
He was said to have been shot in both legs, then just one, and also in the abdomen or back. He was then shot in the arm and in the head and, in between, he was beaten.
Throughout this messy melee, thoughtful considerations became obscured as vulgar festivities and gloating hung over his murder.
The rabble loosely identified with the NTC were full of it. For them there would be no trial, no sentencing, no execution, not even a kangaroo court.
Some foreign leaders felt similarly even if they used different words. It went with the kind of mentality that would bomb and strafe civilian populations in Libya.
Technically, Gaddafi was treated much the same way he had treated his enemies.
There was therefore a sense of equivalence and much vengefulness, but justice would be something else.
Mob violence
If he had been tried in a court of law, he might well have been sentenced to death. But there he would have been subjected to due process, placed at the mercy of judicial institutions that a new Libya is supposed to build.
Instead, he was subjected to mob violence and an extra-judicial killing.
By treating him the way he had treated his enemies, the rag-tag militants showed they were no better and no nearer their supposed ideals of democracy and constitutionalism.
Both sides indulged in political violence and routine summary killing.
Beyond the shade of their sentiment, and the tenor of their rhetoric to distinguish them, was only the duration of their bloodfests.
Gaddafi was not only a wanted man in Libya by Libyan jurists, he was a wanted figure by the International Criminal Court.
Dispatching him with a bullet helped him evade both.
NTC officials were first keen to claim credit for his capture and defeat. But they failed to bring him to justice nationally and internationally.
Libyans, particularly those vehemently opposed to Gaddafi, missed an excellent opportunity to defeat what he had stood for.
By subjecting him to due judicial process, they could have shown everyone that a once-mighty tyrant could be humbled and humiliated by the strength of their own country’s judicial and democratic institutions.
If the Western powers that had hastily hounded Gaddafi had helped Libyans subordinate him to a trial, they too would have scored better by demonstrating the power of democracy over dictatorship.
But all that was not to be, once the political process was subjected to the baser instincts and appetites of the trophy hunter’s self-gratification.
There was the argument that Gaddafi refused to quit like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, as if to justify his killing.
By staying on Gaddafi made things tougher for the NTC, but that would not affect the course or demands of justice.
Adding to the confusion was US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited Libya on Tuesday, saying she hoped Gaddafi would soon be captured or killed.
Then she added: “Revenge attacks and vigilantism have no place in the new Libya.”
That was some 48 hours before Gaddafi was attacked and killed by Libyan vigilantes. Sifting through Clinton’s “wow” factor when she first learned of his killing, it is unclear what her stand is.
Legitimate government
Through this hazy surrealism, it seemed only natural for the leading punters to contradict themselves.
Countries like the US that were among the first to recognise the NTC as Libya’s legitimate government saw a “new era” for Libya only upon Gaddafi’s death.
The same shallow sentiment rang through the streets of Sirte and the corridors of the United Nations in New York.
The fact is that Gaddafi’s regime had fallen months ago, on Aug 21 when Tripoli fell. Since then he was never able to mount a return, nor could any of his sons have succeeded him.
The new Libya had sprouted two months before. The fall of Sirte defended by dwindling loyalists was irrelevant because it was only symbolic, the city being Gaddafi’s birthplace and his final bastion after Bani Walid.
For the French President and the British and Turkish Prime Ministers, then Clinton, to confidently visit Tripoli showed that Gaddafi and his forces had long been defeated.
In confusing Gaddafi’s regime with Gaddafi the man, they also confused actual triumph with mere triumphalism.
On the day Clinton was in Tripoli, Amnesty International released a report detailing how the US, Britain and France were among the Western countries that supplied arms to Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad and others in troubled countries since 2005.
What better way to boost their arms industry than to supply weapons to both sides, then use them on Libya as well? Such was the irony that among Gaddafi’s “golden guns” retrieved by the Sirte mob was reportedly a gilded Browning .45 automatic.
The gun used to kill him might have been a Western weapon as well. The same goes for many of the other guns dangerously circulating around the country.
Commentary by: Colonel Lim
They are not telling us about Gaddafi
HOW MUCH OF THIS IS TRUE?
The international media, influenced by the Americans, has successfully painted Gaddafi as a hard-core dictator, tyrant or whatever you want to call him. However, the media as usual has also failed to show the kind, giving Gaddafi we never heard of. Gaddafi unlike most dictators has managed to show his humane side, the very side we dream of seeing in other dictators. I consider Libyans lucky to a certain extent and one wonders with the new democratic rule they cry for will it improve or worsen life for them. Yes, Gaddafi has spent millions of Libya`s money on personal ventures but is the average Libyan poor? We know others who take a country and destroy it until you feel like there is no hope of restoring this country… looting some prefer to call it. Did Gaddafi loot Libya in any way?
Now let us get to the unknown facts about the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi:
1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0% interest by law.
3. Home considered a human right in Libya – Gaddafi vowed that his parents would not get a house until everyone in Libya had a home. Gaddafi’s father has died while him, his wife and his mother are still living in a tent.
4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 Dinar (US$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0% interest by law.
3. Home considered a human right in Libya – Gaddafi vowed that his parents would not get a house until everyone in Libya had a home. Gaddafi’s father has died while him, his wife and his mother are still living in a tent.
4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 Dinar (US$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
Traditional wedding in Tripoli, Libya
5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans are literate. Today the figure is 83%.
6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kick-start their farms – all for free.
7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US$2,300/mth accommodation and car allowance.
8. In Libyan, if a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidized 50% of the price.
9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – now frozen globally.
Great Man-Made River project in Libya… $27 billion
6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kick-start their farms – all for free.
7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US$2,300/mth accommodation and car allowance.
8. In Libyan, if a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidized 50% of the price.
9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – now frozen globally.
Great Man-Made River project in Libya… $27 billion
11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found.
12. A portion of Libyan oil sale is, credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
13. A mother who gave birth to a child receive US$5,000
14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $ 0.15
15. 25% of Libyans have a university degree
16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
Which other dictators have done so much good for his people?
Best Regards, Col.Lim
12. A portion of Libyan oil sale is, credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
13. A mother who gave birth to a child receive US$5,000
14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $ 0.15
15. 25% of Libyans have a university degree
16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
Which other dictators have done so much good for his people?
Best Regards, Col.Lim
I have to agree with you Colonel, as that was my reading in between the lines when I heard about him in London decades’ ago. He is humorous too.
In an interview decades ago by BBC ( ?) asking him for his opinion on Ronald Reagan who call him a terrorist, Colonel Gaddafi replied “ whatever he calls me, I am a Colonel.
Whatever he says about himself, he is an actor !”
The minority govt could not have overthrown him without NATO’s military might ( a combinations of the Great might of the US, Britain, France ..etc. to bully a 3rd world country ) especially the bombings.
You wonder why they don’t want to bomb Burma’s dictator, NO OIL ? Hypocrites championing human rights where they have monetary interest !
