Muammar Gaddafi: Method In His 'Madness'

Gaddafi has lost touch with his people, but though his actions may seem bizarre, there is a kind of logic to his behaviour

By Brian Whitaker

This commentary was published in The Guardian on 23/02/2011

To Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, the uprising is just a 'flare-up of tribal rivalries'. Photograph: Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters

 

"People of Libya!" the broadcast began, "In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your incessant demands for change and regeneration ... your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all. At a single blow your gallant army has toppled these idols and has destroyed their images ... From this day forward, Libya is a free, self-governing republic."

It was 1 September 1969, and the young army captain seated at the microphone to announce the coup was Muammar Gaddafi – then only 27 and a fervent admirer of the Nasserist revolution in neighbouring Egypt. Yesterday, he was again broadcasting to the nation and this time the tables were turned. It is no longer the "decadent regime" of King Idris under attack, but that of Gaddafi himself.

In the four decades since he came to power, Gaddafi's behaviour has shocked and amused the world in roughly equal measures – from his bizarre sense of fashion to his appearance on Monday leaning out of something resembling a popemobile and holding a white umbrella. As a Jordanian psychiatrist once told me while we watched Gaddafi's televised performance at an Arab summit: "I meet people like him every day in my hospital."

But mad as they may seem, his actions usually have some kind of logic, even if it's a logic that others, not attuned to the Gaddafi way of thinking, fail to recognise. When he drove through Africa throwing money out of his car window, he was making a serious point: foreign aid is often misused or ends up in the wrong hands, so why not just let ordinary people pick it up off the street?

It was the same on Monday with the popemobile episode. In answer to claims that he had fled the country, he posed for the cameras outside a building that every Libyan would recognise – his former home in Tripoli (the one the Americans bombed in 1986, killing his daughter).

He was back at the bombed-out house on Tuesday, suitably dressed in khaki and declaring himself "a fighter". It was an angry, defiant speech – and mercifully short by Gaddafi's standards, lasting only an hour or so. It was also, in a strangely malevolent way, an honest speech. Gaddafi let rip, talking of "honour" and expressing all the feelings that Ben Ali and Mubarak would probably like to have expressed in their last presidential broadcasts, if only they hadn't been wearing a suit and tie and trying to look dignified.

Gaddafi, of course, doesn't see himself in the Mubarak/Ben Ali mould. He doesn't see the uprising as a mass rebellion against his leadership but as a flare-up of old tribal rivalries – a reactionary movement bent on destroying the revolutionary spirit of the world's first and only people's jamahiriya.

These rivalries are a constant undercurrent of Gaddafi's rule but have usually been played out in the mosques and football stadiums rather than on the streets. Just over 10 years ago, for example, shortly after Gaddafi's football-mad son, Saadi, became captain of the Tripoli team, the city of Benghazi – long regarded as a centre of opposition to the regime – suffered a series of humiliating defeats on the pitch.

In one match, in the summer of 2000, Benghazi was leading 1-0 at half-time, but in the second half the referee dutifully awarded two penalties to Tripoli along with an offside goal. The Benghazi players walked off in protest but Saadi's guards ordered them back and the match ended with a 3-1 victory to Tripoli.

Shortly afterwards, Benghazi played al-Baydah (the home town of Saadi's mother). Following another suspect penalty, Benghazi fans invaded the pitch and the game was abandoned. Arriving back in Benghazi, the fans set fire to the local headquarters of the Libyan Football Federation (chaired, of course, by Saadi) and the authorities retaliated by dissolving the Benghazi club and demolishing its premises.

Given the history, it's not surprising if Gaddafi sees the current insubordination as more of the same (though on a much more serious scale) and, moving on from bogus penalties, is determined to suppress it with whatever force may be necessary to preserve the "historic march" of his revolution.

One of the key points in Tuesday's speech, emphasised by its symbolic setting, was that his regime had withstood bombing "by 170 aircraft under the leadership of nuclear countries like America, Britain and Nato" – implying that where they failed local rebels cannot succeed.

He also explained why – unlike Ben Ali and Mubarak – he cannot resign. Technically, this is correct since Libya has no president. Gaddafi constantly asserts that he is just an ordinary Libyan citizen (though of course very little happens without his approval). His title, "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution", is not a public office but a description of his historical role. Thus, it can never be taken away from him or bestowed on anyone else.

But Gaddafi does have one very important thing in common with Ben Ali and Mubarak. By continuing to bask in the glories of 1969, he has lost touch with his people. Most Libyans alive today have no recollection of King Idris or the revolution that overthrew him. For them, it's part of Libya's past. But not part of its future.