@ EpaulnetPaul Erickson
Gaddafi: rewriting history
The Libyan spring and summer saga is not over yet. Contrary to expectations, a number of loyalists of the Gaddafi regime are still resisting the liberation forces, although these have brought matters near to conclusion by freeing most of Tripoli and hounding Muammar Gaddafi and his family out of their lair in a huge fortified compound.
Sadly, more blood will run. But there can be no doubt that the 42-year old Gaddafi iron rule has ended. The rebels have won and are writing a fresh page in their country’s turbulent history.
It remains to be seen what will result out of the successful uprising. The Libyan people are made up of diverse elements, such that it would be foolhardy to predict what may be in store. The only hard point of departure is that, whatever tomorrow might bring, the Gaddafi regime will not return, though its remains might yet be involved in guerrilla warfare for an unforeseeable time to come.
At this juncture of history, with the third and bloodiest regime-change in North Africa, some will be looking back and wondering about an amalgam of factors. Two main ones are the following:
How was it possible for people power, repressed for decades, to break loose and topple three tyrants in a short space of time?
In Tunisia and Egypt, the people, driven by the vigour and new dynamics of the younger generation, did it without foreign assistance. In Libya it was another matter.
Without the intervention of Nato, sanctioned by the United Nations – but, if truth be told, going quite beyond its remit – the revolution would not have come about. The uprising might have eventually wrenched the east of Libya from Gaddafi’s control, but it would have taken far longer and with much more bloodshed. The Libyan west would have been an even harder task.
The crucial factor was the hundreds of sorties flown by Nato planes to take out with grim determination the multiple weaponry which Gaddafi had amassed in his long years of absolute rule.
The second main factor that strikes me in this evolving picture is how was it was possible for the Gaddafi regime to last for long. It survived through the debilitating Lockerbie sanctions. It went on to flourish after the sanctions were lifted.
The reason that happened was because the democratic West, to promote and protect its own interests, not only allowed it, but helped in its happening. Gaddafi’s arsenal was not manufactured in Libya. He received much of it from the Communist bloc and beyond. But he also bought, cash down, other deadly supplies from the West. Money talks more persuasively than the sirens of mythology.
It is disgusting how all that was forgotten over the past six months of the Libyan revolution. Those who had frequented Gaddafi’s political whore-house and sampled its delights, and embraced him and praised him for them, were gripped by total amnesia. They did not repent their sins. It was as if they had never happened.
A prime example of that is taking place in Malta. So far it had been whispered. In mid-week it was given flesh by Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil.
He is a main contender to take up the baton when Lawrence Gonzi calls it a day as leader of the Nationalist Party, which is likely to happen not too long after the 2013 general election, whatever the result. He is intelligent and popular, but a bit lightweight in some regards. Evidently, he is bent on correcting that.
He came out with an astonishing attack on the Labour Party over its long-standing friendship with Gaddafi. There can be no doubt such friendship existed right from the day Gaddafi and other colonels removed King Idris in 1969. It expanded when Dom Mintoff’s Labour won the 1971 election. But once more there are two factors that cannot be forgotten.
The first is that when Gaddafi threw his military weight around against Malta over oil prospecting, Mintoff did not delay in standing up to him in Malta’s interest. After that relations were repaired and the friendship resumed. It grew when Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici succeeded Mintoff, especially when he warned Gaddafi of an American rocket attack on him.
The second factor was that, even at that time, when the Nationalists were in opposition, they strove mightily to build good and friendly relations with Gaddafi, in the same manner that they courted the leaders of Communist China. They succeeded, and boasted of the fact.
When the Nationalists took over the government in May 1987, they bent over backwards to cement and improve those friendly relations.
They have been in office, bar a 22-month break from 1996 to 98, coming on to a quarter century. Their cosiness with the Gaddafi regime was as continuous and linear as could be. The last prime minister to visit Gaddafi before the Libyan uprising began was Lawrence Gonzi.
I am not aware that Gonzi went to Tripoli to tell Gaddafi to take note of the incipient Arab spring, to change his authoritarian ways or to leave office. He went to discuss business.
In terms of seasoned politics, it was as right for the Nationalist government to maintain good relations with Gaddafi as it was for the Labour government. Libya is a geo-political reality. No government can change it. Nor can any government ignore it. Much less be at political odds with its leaders, however reprehensible they were or might be.
The Nationalists know all that. To try to re-write history at this stage would be not merely foolishly opportunistic, but also pathetic and dishonest.
