Qaddafi: the Self-Delusional Dictator: Chiding Qaddaffi For His Insane Overtures
01 March 2011By Saeed Qureshi
Even if Libyan strongman Moammar Qaddafi can manage to
hold on for some time more, his fate is nevertheless
sealed. He will have to quit power. It is patently a
self-delusional display to claim that the Libyan
people loved him. Nothing can be far from truth.
A wise person all the more a ruler, who ruled his
country by fear and force and with an iron fist,
should have seen the irreversible changing trends on
the planet earth, particularly the inescapable truth
that the time for dictatorships was over. Henceforth,
no strong military chief or group of officers or the
kings or queens would be able to rule their respective
countries by suppressing their people or by claiming
the divine rights of the kings.
The world has entered into an era of popular
dispensations, the civil societies, the fundamental
rights, the social justice, liberty and equality. It
is a new environment in the making that would ensure
pursuit of happiness, freedom of religions, and in
which the regimes coming to power through collective
will of the people expressed through their franchise.
A dictatorship survives as long as it can subdue the
people by coercive means. There are no cushions or
provisions for the dissention in a dictatorship run by
one man or a family. The relationship between the
ruler and the ruled in authoritarians regimes is
always that of fear and oppression let loose by the
former over the latter.
However, in democracies and the representative
governments, there is always a way-out to change the
government if it loses the trust of the people and
cannot deliver on its pledges or cannot serve the
country in a befitting manner.
Presently, Libya despite being one of the leading oil
rich countries, with a wonderful landscape and with an
enticing past, is completely isolated much against the
will and intention of its own people as well as that
of the world community. The United States and United
Nations' Security Council have imposed a wide range of
terse sanction on Libya. The foreign diplomatic
embassies in Tripoli are being closed down and the
staff being recalled.
The foreign labor force and others categories of
foreigners are leaving every day. Even the Libyan
diplomats serving abroad are disowning their own
government and chiding Qaddaffi for his insane
overtures. It appears that the whole country has been
thrown into a state of siege. The Libyan people are
yearning and endeavoring against the long night of
dictatorship and moronic rule of an eccentric
individual who isolated his country from the rest of
the civilized world all these four decades he has been
in power.
The assets and accounts of Qaddaffi and his family
members have been frozen wherever these are being
maintained. Col Qaddafi's megalomaniac mentality does
not seem to allow him to be rational and sane enough
to see that he is one man against the whole world. His
unwarranted audacity and stubbornness is going to
bring more miseries not only to his fiendish family
but also to the great people of Libya wanting a change
for a decent way of live and to throw off the yoke of
dictatorship.
Qaddafi should know that he has lost the charisma, the
father figure status, the revolutionary laurel and a
competent leader by virtue of his colossal wrong
doings both externally and internally. He has been
whimsical, diabolic ruthless, a practitioner of
medieval tribal form of rule. He has remained
impervious to the dissent, debate and political
opposition. The culture of pluralistic political
culture has been entirely nonexistent in Libya for
almost forty years: a period in which the world have
moved towards becoming a global village thanks to the
widespread communications channels and ubiquitous
media outlets.
His country needed drastic reforms in all domains be
it socio-economic, political, or foreign relations. He
had plenty of time to upgrade the quality of life of
his backward, impoverished and socially marooned
people. He very cunningly kept blocking the tentacles
of modern trends and advancements in educations,
health, communications, transportation, and openness
in order to keep his people at subhuman level.
Those who lived in Libya for many years for economic
reasons paint a gory picture of that country which
has, by the choice of its own leaders, remained a
pariah since the Second World War. After the abolition
of monarchy in Libya in September 1969 and take over
by a coterie of young army officers led by Col
Qaddaffi then a brash, boiling revolutionary leader, a
true disciple of Col Gamal Abdul Nasser, the people of
Libya expected a total overhaul and a barrage of
reforms to bring their country in the comity of
nations as a modern state.
His people expected that henceforth, Libyan oil would
be spent on the welfare of its own people, the economy
would spur, the industries would be established, the
democratic norms would take roots, and the prosperity
and liberalism would flourish along with the freedom
of faith.
But instead they got a ruthless and merciless ruler
who was missionary for the old order and a champion of
the medievalism and tribal culture thus negating his
society the fruits of abundant oil and a robust
economy and an unhindered interaction with the rest of
the world.
He has wasted his time, energies and the wealth of his
nation on dangerous, frivolous pursuits and wasteful
plans leaving the people in the gird of time that
appears to not have moved even a moment for four
decades. On the contrary, the society has turned
obscurantist and retrogressive and degenerated.
He fell back upon the oppression and the cruel methods
for silencing the people, to crush their will and
ambitions for socio-economic justice, for equality,
for popular government based on universal suffrage.
Instead of bringing a true people friendly revolution,
he plunged his amazing country into the dark ages as
if the time was static and the word was still passing
through medievalism.
Even his vision and understanding seems to be stunted
as he has failed to perceive or learn lessons from the
gubernatorial historic changes, the toppling of the
strong political pillars like Hosni Mubarak and Zainul
Abideen in the Middle East. If he were intelligent,
perceptive and discerning, he should have watched with
lot of concern and discreetness what is happening
elsewhere in the Middle East.
Did he expect that he could alone quell the uprising
because as he and his son says, "Libya is different
from other countries", now caught in the throws and
gridlock of the revolutions, blowing away like a
whirlwind one totalitarian state after another, from
Yemen in South to the Egypt in North Africa, Bahrain
on the Persian Gulf and his neighbor Algeria on the
Mediterranean.
There is no exception and no escape from this
avalanche. It is impossible for any Hercules or King
or military commander to stem or stop it. Anyone who
resists would be carried away by the force of the
tenacious storm. The redeeming feature of the present
popular uprising in the middle-east is that the word
at large is on the side of the oppressed people now
facing the bullets of the tottering regimes and their
tyrants catching at straws to remain in the saddle of
power.
The role of the United State, the United Kingdom, the
West and the United Nations would be written in golden
words as all these powerful global brokers, forces and
catalysts are supporting the distressed and enslaved
nations. If this show of international solidarity
continues which by all indications it would, the
Middle East would, sooner than later, shape up as a
civil abode, where human rights would prevail and the
people will be able to choose their governments. There
will be a free press, a powerful and independent
judiciary, respect and dignity for citizens and social
openness.
(The writer is a Dallas-based freelance journalist
and a former diplomat writing mostly on International
Affairs with specific focus on Pakistan and the United
States)
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