Forty years ago a young Libyan colonel, fresh from military training in Britain and inspired by Nasser’s nationalist revolution in Egypt, staged a military coup. His aim was to throw out the elderly king, expel Italian residents, seize control of Libya’s oil industry, give notice to British and US troops to quit their bases and turn Libya into a bastion of revolutionary socialism.
Today an ageing Muammar Gaddafi celebrates the longest rule of any African leader, with an extravagant festival that promises to be one of the most spectacular, and tasteless, of any staged on the continent. No expense has been spared to burnish the cult of a leader who once made much of his simple tastes, Beduin roots and puritan devotion to the Libyan masses.
Some Libyans may take pride in this splashy return to the global spotlight. Most will not dare question the cult, the policies or the Government of Colonel Gaddafi, or point to the glaring absence of world leaders in Tripoli. The Libyan leader, however, can easily afford this self-glorification. His rule is unchallenged — indeed, so secure that he holds no formal title but runs his country like the head of a large tribe. His capricious schemes for greening the desert, indulging fellow African leaders and pursuing the wasteful policies of his own “little green book” are all affordable: Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa, a still small population and enough money to provide a relatively high standard of living. And his volte-face in surrendering weapons of mass destructions, dropping his support for terrorism and forging pragmatic new relations with the West has ended the world’s ostracism.
Few Western leaders, however, are eager to embrace Colonel Gaddafi. There may be satisfaction that, after more than two decades when he funded many of the world’s nastier terrorist groups in the name of revolutionary socialism, the maverick colonel has turned his back on the IRA, Palestinian fighters and Muslim separatists in distant parts of Asia. He seems finally to have understood that such a policy brought not only ridicule from much of the Arab world that he claimed to champion but had also left him on the wrong side of history: a pariah in the West and robbed of his former patrons in the Soviet Union.
It took courage for him to change course. He was helped, no doubt, by the example of what happened to Saddam Hussein. Colonel Gaddafi also found a need to make common cause with the West on terrorism. He remains almost the last Arab leader to believe in old-fashioned secular nationalism. But Islamic militants seeking to exploit domestic opposition now pose a threat to his regime, as well as to some solid achievements such as female education and emancipation.
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Colonel Gaddafi has long lost interest in the Arab world, has insulted many of its leaders and is now looking to the West for some protection against Islamist extremists. He complains that the West has not rewarded him for his recent co-operation. What he fails to understand is that, as long as he refuses all reform, democracy or basic political rights to his long-suffering people, Libya will never emerge as a regional power.
Libya’s rehabilitation is welcome, but the process has barely begun. To cease supporting terrorism and building nuclear weapons is not the finish line, but the starting point for building meaningful relations with the rest of the world. As the British people and the families of Lockerbie victims continue to struggle with the decision to release Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the concern is that Libya could have been welcomed back into the fold without such a brazen compromise of justice. Without a commitment to the rule of law, democracy and personal freedoms, the man whose face is festooned all over Tripoli will never be celebrated by the West.