This week Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi
of Libya is a happy man. It began with the first of September, the
thirty-ninth anniversary of his revolution. He kicked off the
celebrations by inviting a host of African tribal kings to bestow
upon him the title of “King of Kings” and present him with a golden
crown and scepter. Shamelessly, the Libyan peacock forgot about his
revolutionary drivel, he silly ideology with its State of the Masses
and revolutionary committees, as well as forty years of Libyan pain
and suffering and paraded like a clown wearing the crown on his
head. It certainly didn’t suit him and confirmed the calamity that
everyone in Libya already knew that they were under the dictatorship
of an arrogant and vain buffoon who has no qualms about selling
Libya and Libyans to the lowest bidder.
Indeed, following that show of
vanity he signed a multi-billion dollar agreement with the Prime
Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi that gave Italy preferential
access to the Libyan market, oil, and construction projects. In
return Italy apologized for occupying Libya in 1912 and agreed to
compensate Libya for the thirty four years of colonial occupation
with a five billion dollar coastal highway that links Egypt with
Tunisia to be built by Italian companies. But perhaps the icing on
the cake was Berlusconi’s guarantee to protect the Qadhafi regime
against domestic and foreign adversaries.
I personally found the whole
affair very offensive because Qadhafi bargained away the rights of
1.8 million victims for a coastal highway. He seems to have
forgotten that he is still paying the final installment on the $3
billion compensation for murdering 300 souls aboard Pan Am 103 over
Scotland in addition to the $500 million for his victims aboard UTA
over Niger. Is Libyan life cheaper than American, British, French,
or any other human life?
Italian colonialism was a
catastrophe for Libyans. Long before they emerged in Northern
Europe, the fascists erected three concentration camps and herded
all the inhabitants of the eastern province of Cyrenaica in them.
More than fifty percent of the population in the province perished
within a five-year period. There are no exact figures because
Italian Fascism wasn’t as precise a bookkeeper as its German
counterpart, but a census after the war estimated the victims to be
upward of 1.5 million people.
Worse yet the survivors were
in no position to govern themselves. At the close of World War II
illiteracy rate in Libya was 99%. The Fascists denied Libyan
children education beyond second grade. Infant mortality rate, which
is usually measured in one per thousand, was forty five percent.
Additionally, I have a personal gripe with the regime bargaining on
my behalf. The combined number of years my family members spent in
Fascist jails and camps exceed a hundred years let alone those who
died in captivity. My father spent over twenty-five years in Italian
prisons, house arrests and exile. Males, females and children of my
family who were not incarcerated in Libya were horded aboard a ship
and held in a camp on the island of Sicily.
Many Cyrenaicans lost all
their loved ones to torture, hanging, or simple starvation in a
concentration camp. And for this buffoon to bargain away their
Rights is criminal. Berlusconi is a businessman and doesn’t care
about apologies or the five billion dollars for after all these will
go to Italian companies over a ten-year period. With a masterstroke
he was able in five minutes to extract from the vain dictator
concessions that thousands of Libyans gave up their lives opposing.
Extracting compensation from
Qadhafi has emerged as the only foreign policy success of the Bush
administration and Condi Rice in the first high ranking visit by an
American government official since 1953 came calling on Qadhafi to
ensure that he pays the remaining Pan Am compensation sum. She spent
four hours with him and then went back to Tunisia. But before she
left she got an ear full and a lecture from the Libyan dictator
about staying out of Africa and not lecturing him on his abysmal
human rights policies. At this stage the US has few tools in its bag
short of reversing full diplomatic recognition and Qadhafi knows
that. Most probably he will not release the funds until the next US
president is chosen. Mr. Bush has served his purpose and can now be
discarded. Outliving seven presidents has given Qadhafi a good idea
of how to deal with American Administrations.
The losers in all this are of
course Libyans who will now have to endure more years of lunacy,
repression, and desperate need under the filthy boots of a vain
madman whose ego is continually stroked by his Western protectors.
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