Dear Editor,
There is something arresting about the absurdity with which Muammar Ghaddafi has recently responded to the events in his country.
He has attributed the uprising to the machinations of Al Qaeda and the manipulation of drugged youth. It was almost a mockery of some of his principal critics in the Western capitals, who had used the ‘Islamic terrorism’ argument to justify their support of the very dictatorships the Arab peoples are in the process of evicting. Not the least of whom is a suddenly righteous USA, whose former President George Bush and an entire establishment, in defiance, we now know, of reliable intelligence analysis, used the same Al Qaeda excuse to get at Saddam in Iraq and to back Mubarak, Zinedine Ben Ali, Saleh in Yemen, etc.
France and Britain claimed, in the so recent past, that they needed the vigilance of the corrupt torturers in place around the Mediterranean for their own security, and have been using the Islamophobia released in the society to support planned changes in immigration laws and as justification for an ancient racist xenophobia that they have stuck on their shields.
With an agility that would do any politician proud, the usual foreign partners of the Arab dictators, have, like certain generals and ministers in the countries now in revolt, hopped on the train of history and are siding with the ‘rebels.’ A strange colonialist psychology manifests itself as we witness these one-time collaborators in the European chancelleries suddenly transformed into donneurs de leçons – givers of lessons. Urging the despots out of office, impatient for regime change, threatening sanctions. Posturing. The virulence with which the ex-dictators are condemned and consigned to the courts of public opinion and the glee with which the Swiss bankers declare their intention of “seizing accounts” in order to benefit by the financial interest, reveal and do not at all mask the craven and greedy servility which the arms exporters and oil importers of the West sustained these very regimes of friends when they judged it politic and to their benefit. The high principles that they now parade on the front pages of the newspapers were, understandably, with a wink and a nudge kicked under the table with the multi-million dollar bribes their companies paid when times were good. In other words, the spectacle is both instructive and bathed in the red light of its own ridicule.
For many of us Muslims in Guyana and the Caribbean, the revolt in Libya is lived as an event that touches us personally. The former Libyan chargé d’affaires in Guyana, Ahmed Ehwas, was almost single-handedly responsible for the renewal of Islam here at the end of the seventies.
All of the brothers in the Guyana Islamic Trust and the CIOG will remember the work he did in extending the foundations laid by the Indian Muslim immigrants in the century and a half preceding. He was captured by Gaddafi and killed while leading an effort at armed revolt at the start of the 1980s. We heard the Libyans said he was American funded. I even read this in the international press. But the brother of one of the men killed with him, a Sanusi, who was my business partner in the US Virgin Islands a decade later, assured me that this could not have been the case and that Gaddafi was a corrupt libertine much worse than King Idris, the Sanusi he deposed.
The sort of swan song of the dictators in the days preceding their disappearance from the scene, follows a strange script. First there is the defiance and declaration of a willingness to make concessions in order to finish their ‘term,’ served up with a reminder of their status as heroes of an earlier revolution or builders of infrastructure, etc. Then there is, in a second speech, the threat of pitiless reprisals accompanied by orders for the folk to get back into their homes. In the meantime the wise locals and worldwide begin to desert the camp of the fading dictatorship. Then, finally, as the counter attacks begin and international condemnation mounts, perhaps a willingness to yield to popular demands and change the idea of having the son inherit the seat. To end in the whimper of a quiet retreat, or exile, as the street celebrations begin.
So far, none of the ex-despots has been killed. Arabs generally do not kill, they depose. Jeune Afrique, the French language magazine part-funded by a Mediterranean dictator here and there, did a piece after Saddam was hanged, on the fate of the two dozen ex-rulers of the Arab world. The two or three deaths were the exceptions rather than the rule. I was in an Arab country when Saddam was hanged. We followed the news on satellite TV. People were shocked and outraged. They felt humiliated, even as they knew Saddam deserved it. It was not in their mores, and anti-American sentiment only grew. So, unsurprisingly, no one is really interested any more in how Mubarak is spending his days or whether Ben Ali will live or die. Their final fate may be a scornful indifference and a permanent reminder of their irrelevance that contrasts with the kowtowing they got from all, in East as in West, in an earlier incarnation. But we are not sure how this will all end at this historical juncture.
It is clear that ‘Western-style democracy’ will not replace the autocracies that preceded the changes. Arabs societies are inherently consultative and democratic. Everyone has access to the chosen leaders at every level in the chain of command in the normal state of things. And decision-making is commonly sensitive to the rights of all parties involved. But one woman one vote is not a requirement. Simply because, in many cases, the family or the clan votes as a single entity. Ram does not vote PPP and Sita PNC. Such behaviour is considered dysfunctional. Even single women vote as Pa has decided or the eldest son. Whether this skews the results may be discussed, but such deliberation is not a priority. What people want is for everyone to get a fair share, for the nation to be so organised that the immediate material and social needs are satisfied, for a minimal respect for certain values, for an efficient administration.
I have been to Egypt several times. Mubarak had it coming. The Rai was feared, not loved. The political science flying back and forth as a new regional and hence world order is being constructed, has to be careful of the pre-judgements it brings to the table. Already some are pulling out from their book-bags, the fear of a Muslim Brotherhood that is strong in Egypt. Mubarak was seen by his former friends as a rampart against it, even as Gaddafi now seeks to cast himself as a weapon against Al Qaeda. During the 1990s, the now suddenly righteous West, happily kept in place a corrupt and bloody dictatorship in oil-rich Algeria. The justification was that the Islamic Front had won the elections and, in the interest of security and the usual runnings, needed to have its lights put out. The old military dictatorships had the full backing of the West as they just ignored the election results and carried on. This is the limit of the current posturing about supporting democracy in the Arab world. Have times changed and the climate with it? Chávez is democratically elected. The old elite and their compradores in Venezuela must regard with disbelief and scepticism the clamour from certain quarters who would, with utter cynicism applaud if the democratic will of the Venezuelan people is frustrated by a coup whose organisers they would be willing to pay.
Gaddafi, whose Lockerbie bombings killed fewer innocent people than some military operations we witness, was, in the end, a sort of ‘friend.’ Those friends are now positioning themselves to continue business as usual with his inheritors. Nothing more.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
