Tripoli
They are one of the most surprising sights in the Arab world: The all-female squad of bodyguards, dressed in blue uniforms and armed with AK-47 and Berretta rifles, who surround Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi.
The Protectors of the VIP, as this squad of 40 elite female guards is known, is a reflection of Co. Gadhafi’s idiosyncratic mind, and a revolutionary enigma in a Muslim nation where women are still far from equal in daily life.
This weekend, Libya’s extremely secretive government allowed the Globe and Mail to make the first North American visit to the women’s police academy in Tripoli where most of these guards are trained.
Behind the cinder-block walls of the Spartan complex in downtown Tripoli is a rigid world where 100 hand-selected women sleep, eat and receive lessons in elite killing techniques, weapons handling and revolutionary theory.
The women, as young as 16, often come from distant cities for the chance to serve Col Gadhafi and earn a policewoman’s salary of $245 a month. They enter a world where the 1969 Libyan revolution seems fresh and all-encompassing, far removed from the liberalizing changes that are opening Libya’s closed society to the world.
Portraits of Col. Gadhafi cover the walls and the parade grounds. The Leader, as he is universally known, personally selects his Protectors from their ranks and from a neighbouring female military academy. The women here worship him – – some wept as they described their desire to become Protectors.
They sleep four to a room in aging barracks, and take lessons in Microsoft Office and martial arts in classrooms with blacked-out windows. When they graduate, they stand in a circle around Col Gadhafi and chant revolutionary slogans.
“I’ve wanted to be a policewoman since I was young,” said Asmahan Salemi, 18, who was pulled from the ranks of drilling officers to talk to a reporter. “It’s a great honour to become one of the protectors of the leader.”
Other Arab countries have actively resisted the sexual equality of the West. But Libya, which has been closed to the world during 12 years of international sanctions, has developed a strange form of feminism engineered personally by Col. Gadhafi.
“Our Leader has decided for the future that the woman should have her rights exactly the same as the man,” said Colonel Mohammed Jamal, manager of the police academy, during an interview in his office. “Our Leader sees into the future – – Maybe what happens here in Libya will happen in other Arab countries after 25 years or so.”
In The Green Book, Col. Gadhafi’s manifesto written in the 1970s to transform his 1969 military coup into a utopian society built on a distinctly Arab form of totalitarian socialism, the role of women is the subject of an enigmatic chapter.
“It follows as a self-evident fact that woman and man are equal as human beings,” the book says. “Discrimination between man and woman is a flagrant act of oppression without any justification.”
However, the book then declares that “As the man does not get pregnant, he is not subject to the feebleness which woman, being a female, suffers…. To demand equality between them in any dirty work, which stains her beauty and detracts from her femininity, is unjust and cruel.”
This is feminism, Libyan style: Hand-delivered by a charismatic male leader who demands total loyalty, it offers a form of isolated equality that cannot be questioned.
Government officials openly concede that female emancipation is intended to make women supportive of Col Gadhafi’s revolutionary government.
“The students here, because they are supplied with the freedom to be to be what they want to be by our leader Moammar Gadhafi, they feel they need to be faithful to our leader,” Col. Jamal said, as he played a video of the uniformed female graduates making a formation that resembled a cheerleading squad more than a police march. The officer at the top of the pyramid was holding a large picture of Col. Gadhafi.
Libyans are generally more tolerant of female independence than citizens of other Muslim nations. Most women wear loose and casual headscarves, and those who go uncovered receive occasional whistles from men but are otherwise not criticized. Some women shake hands with men, a rare practice for Arabs. And there are some female professionals in prominent positions.
But in day-to-day Libyan life, female behaviour is strictly limited. At a Friday lunch at the house of a middle-class Libyan, men are served lavish dishes while the wife and daughters, who do the cooking, are kept out of sight and are never introduced. Young men and women are mostly kept isolated from one another until they are married.
“It’s really rare for guys and girls to get any chance to hang out with each other – – there’s lots of talk about women being equal, but in reality this is a pretty strict Muslim country,” said high-school student Wahida, 17. She was wearing a North American-style tank top, normally forbidden, at an annual school bazaar that provides one of the few opportunities for young men and women to meet openly.
At the police academy, the women are proud of their independence (they too shake hands with men, before presenting visiting reporters with bouquets of flowers). They are trained that they are rare examples of emancipated Muslim women, and that the revolutionary theory does not contradict but rather reinforces the teachings of the Koran.
“Our Islam will not prevent the woman from playing her role in society – – it calls for respect of men for women,” Col. Jamal said.
Yet the military, revolutionary setting sometimes seemed at odds with the feminist message. When asked what percentage of the trainees want to join the VIP squad, Col. Jamal steps onto the parade ground and barks an order: “Those who wish to protect the Leader, raise your hand!”
Of the 50 women standing at attention, 49 raise their hands. The lone dissenter, 22-year-old Sahel Gafarla, explains that she would rather serve the revolution by working as a border guard near her home along the border of Libya and Tunisia.
The border-guard job, which will be performed by most of the trainees who do get chosen by the Leader, points to a more prosaic reason for all this female emancipation: In Muslim custom, it is unacceptable for a man to touch a woman other than his wife. So female officers must be employed to perform searches on women.
