Gaddafi's downbeat doomsayer

Gamal Nkrumah

The Libyan leader has plenty of ground to make up. The Libyan armed opposition forces are
bracing themselves for a long and bloody confrontation with the well-armed forces of Muammar
Gaddafi. The Libyan leader is licking his wounds and aims for a restoration of some semblance
of dominion over his war-battered land. His supporters both at home and abroad believe that
Gaddafi should be well up to the task.

The ragtag army of rebels enjoys especially high morale. They concede that their fight with
Gaddafi's forces is an unequal contest, but in the east of the country and certain parts of the west,
the armed opposition forces claim that they are fighting on their home ground. The same cannot
be said of the central stretch of desert territory surrounding the Gulf of Sirte. The untrained
volunteers fighting Gaddafi's heavily armed forces are marching unabated towards the west,
Tripolitania, the heartland of the pro-Gaddafi forces.

Already, they have captured key oil terminals in the east such as Ajdabiya, south of Benghazi,
the rebel stronghold, and are moving cautiously towards Ras Lanouf on the eastern approaches
of Sirte, Gaddafi's own hometown and administrative capital with perhaps one of Libya's largest
arms depots. Still, an explosion at an arms depot in Benghazi, parts of which are reported to
resemble a ghost town after dark, do not augur well as far as firm rebel control of Libya's second
city is concerned.

No optimism dilutes Gaddafi's Green Book's description of the alternatives that await
complacent policymakers. Gaddafi is determined to re-instill fear and terror into the hearts of his
opponents. Whether this strategy is working is another question altogether. Simply re-enforcing
the status quo will not do now.

The Libyan popular uprising against Gaddafi has a strong ethical component. There is no canon
of sacred books in rebel-held areas but the Quran. Gaddafi's infamous Green Book is trashed and
derided as absolute rubbish. But not everyone in the Arab world or the West for that matter is
particularly enamoured by the Islamist new order in the "liberated zones" held by Libya's rebels.
This reads like a timely warning to Libya. And this is where the initiative of Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez comes into play. The Political Council of the Bolivarian Alliance for the
Peoples of the Americas (ALBA), an acronym which also means "dawn" in Spanish, under the
leadership of Chavez has initiated the formation of an International Humanitarian Commission
for Peace and Integrity of Libya.

One of its main goals is the promotion of interaction and dialogue between the central
government and opposition forces. The Libyan rebels have so far insisted that neither Chavez nor
ALBA has approached them. One of the goals of the Chavez initiative is to deter foreign military
intervention and to find a solution to the Libyan crisis that is peaceful.

Even so, the government offensive against armed opposition forces is fast gaining ground and
Gaddafi's henchmen have recaptured cities of consequential strategic and symbolic importance.
While Libya and its oil fields are smoldering, ALBA, Chavez and the Libyan armed opposition
forces are agreed on one thing, and that is that no foreign troops are welcome on Libyan soil.

There is little Gaddafi can do to emulate his fellow South American anti-imperialist loudmouth
whose dramatic overture comes at a most opportune moment. United Nations Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon has named former Jordanian foreign minister Abdelilah Al-Khatib as UN special
envoy to Libya. The UN secretary-general warned against the Libyan "government's
disproportionate use of force and indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets". The West, and
especially the United States, has been caught unawares. There is no consensus in Washington as
to how to deal with the Libyan crisis other than demanding that Gaddafi step down forthwith.
Though there is much talk of a no-fly-zone imposed by Western nations, and a US contingent of
2,000 marines is just a few miles off "the shores of Tripoli", or rather Libya's oil terminals.

Unsurprisingly, this stands in sharp contrast to Chavez's determination to resolve the Libyan
crisis by peaceful and diplomatic means.

American politicians have lined up to attack and discredit the administration of US President
Barack Obama's inaction. Railing about the failure of US presidents is a satisfying ritual for
American politicians and a rather boring pastime.

What matters to the Libyan people is that US policies towards Libya make them safer. Should
things take a turn for the worse in Libya, the Libyan people do not trust the West, and the US in
particular, to be there to help. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are pressing for a UN-
sponsored no- fly-zone. There was no love lost between Gaddafi and the oil- rich GCC countries
though their rulers are themselves facing growing unrest, especially in Bahrain and Oman.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa joined the anti-Gaddafi chorus with a strongly
worded statement Monday night saying that if Gaddafi wants to make peace with his people, he
should desist from the use of excessive violence. Gaddafi's army ruthlessly uses Russian-made
Sukhoi and MIG warplanes as well as French Mirages to bombard strategic rebel-held positions
across the sprawling desert country. Which perhaps explains why the Russians, in particular, are
vehemently opposed to the notion of imposing a no-fly zone on Libya.

The Obama administration is not above criticism. And neither is Chavez, who has in the past had
to contend with his own domestic opponents. The difference between Gaddafi and Chavez is that
the latter is democratically elected and has not repressed his people. However, tempers in Libya
and abroad in Africa and the Third World at large are flaring over the demands of the Libyan
anti-Gaddafi forces for a Western- imposed no-fly-zone. The latest in on the act are the leftist
leaders of South America with Chavez at the helm.

What then can Chavez do to persuade Gaddafi and his cronies that he values Gaddafi's
Jamahiriya as highly as his radical anti-imperialist predecessors in the Third World did? Gaddafi
markets himself as the champion of secularism, earning the sympathy of non-Muslim Third
World leftist leaders like Chavez. What is clear is that the anti-Gaddafi armed opposition forces,
if they are to command the support of non-Muslim nations, should stop using religion for
political ends. Many of their leaders have spouted militant Islamist rhetoric.

Moreover, the Libyan uprising has emerged as the spark for the biggest single outbreak of racial
violence in North Africa. The sight, as the New York-based Human Rights Watch and London-
based Amnesty International have rightly forewarned, of Libyan anti-Gaddafi forces wielding
weapons and shouting racist slogans and lashing out against innocent Black Africans in Libya is
alarming. The Gaddafi regime itself must share the blame for the fact that Libya now faces such
a sizeable core of virulently racist anti-Black Africans. Gaddafi's foes are flirting with
chauvinism and xenophobia directed primarily against Black Africans.

Permitting such chauvinist racism rather visibly and quite audibly to roam freely in "liberated"
areas is hazardous.

The anti-Gaddafi forces should cease using the backlash against Black Africans seen as
politically sympathetic to Gaddafi and used as pawns and mercenaries in the Libyan political
arena for unfortunately Libyan tribal society has a strong propensity for blatant racism. There is
also the risk of losing control of xenophobia as a dubious means of political consolidation. The
parading of Black Africans as soldiers of fortune on Pan-Arab satellite television channels was a
warning signal that racial war may be close.

Be that as it may, Libya's business climate is fast worsening, as investors' mood is nervous. The
big issue, to be sure, is uncertainty. The Libyan leader and his lackeys are suffering from a
liquidity crisis of unprecedented proportions. The crisis in public finances was triggered by the
spectacular advance of the armed opposition forces and their control of key eastern cities in
Cyrenaica including several oil terminals on the Mediterranean.

The personal financial reckoning of the Gaddafi clan has also been embarrassingly and
precariously acute.

Libya is still on paper a pivotal petroleum exporter. Potential investors may, however, lose
interest in Libya if nothing happens soon. Ironically, the easy oil-fuelled boom decades have
brought a destructive legacy. Gaddafi and his henchmen must be kicking themselves for
throwing the oil bonanza away and rightly so.

It is not crystal clear either whether the armed opposition to Gaddafi's rule centred in Cyrenaica
is confident of stopping the rot in the Jamahiriya.

Aberration or not, the rebels pin their hopes on oil to underpin Libya's post-Gaddafi economy.
Indeed, the official pro-Gaddafi state television proudly announced that the Libyan government
has removed custom duties on essential and basic commodities and eliminated taxes in
celebration of the victories on the battlefields against "the terrorist gangsters". However,
mopping up after the bubble that burst with the popular uprising against Gaddafi will take some
time. Funding, in spite of Libya's considerable oil wealth, will arguably be the more difficult
challenge in the months to come.

No sector of the Libyan economy has been unscathed by the armed opposition to the Gaddafi
regime. He espoused socialism, some will call it state capitalism, and Gaddafi's state influence
extends far beyond the issue of ownership and direct management control. In the short-term, the
Libyan economy is in an unenviable mess.

With Libya's economy in freefall, xenophobia is a most perilous genie to let out of the bottle. It is
against this bloody backdrop that Libya's Foreign Minister Musa Kusa, one of Gaddafi's most
loyal men, has been negotiating with the UN and the African Union to ease Libya's political
impasse. As one of the Gaddafi regime's best communicators, Kusa has been pushed in recent
weeks to make the case for his beleaguered leader.

Chavez, Moussa and Kusa are all brainstorming for a face- saving endgame for Gaddafi. In this
context Chavez's call for peace is also long overdue.

*Published in the Cairo-based ALAHRAM WEEKLY for 10 - 16 March