'Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt. Libya is different, if there is disturbance it will split into several states." These were the words of the son of Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, on Libyan state TV on Sunday.
He is right of course; Libya is not Egypt or Tunisia. It is a country of over 600,000 sq miles of land, populated by less than 7 million people. Since 1969 it has known just one leader – a man who has shown merciless cruelty to anyone who speaks out against him, the regime or the revolution he headed. It is a country built on the foundations of tribal unity and which, despite having the largest oil reserves in Africa, continues to allow two-thirds of its citizens to live below the poverty line. It is also a country that cannot boast of long ties with Europe and the west, having only in the last few years made amends with its neighbours across the Mediterranean after years of US- and UN-imposed sanctions.
After "coming in from the cold" in 2004, European ties with Libya developed rapidly. As it stands Libya is the third biggest supplier of oil to Europe, having recently surpassed Saudi Arabia. Its proximity to Europe, its unexplored terrain and its relative lack of foreign investment made Libya a gem worth cultivating to the oil-dependent economies of the west. The fact that its leader may publicly hang dissident students was of no great concern as long as his philosophy of intolerance extended to, and adequately suppressed, the supposed extreme "threat" of Islamism.
However, the events of the last few days have forced world leaders to re-examine their relationship with the crumbling regime. Accounts of unprovoked sniper attacks on peaceful demonstrators, the use of violent foreign mercenaries as a means of crowd control, live ammunition being shot into crowds of protesters, and the media blackout that tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent the world from finding out, has brought about new focus and attention to the plight of the Libyan people and to the reaction of their inhumane leader.
As he addressed the nation, Saif's feebly masked threats were received angrily by protesters in the streets. His claims that the celebrations of the people of Benghazi, Darnah and al-Bayda had been brought about by drunk and drugged youths led to furious chanting and jeering against Gaddafi and his son. His warnings of the possibility of separatism and civil war evoked slogans emphasising the unity of the Libyan people and their intention to support each other till they had achieved victory.
The strengthened protest that ensued in Tripoli yesterday is a case in point. Having remained relatively silent over the last few days, the people of the Libyan capital took to the streets in increasing numbers, their destination the presidential palace. They are, however, facing difficulties beyond those seen so far. Reports of the use of helicopters to bomb protesters as well as the forcing out of residents from city centre apartment blocks to make room for snipers are being confirmed by those on the ground.
Watching from my home in Manchester, I found Saif's referral to the thousands of expelled or self-exiled Libyans ridiculous and absurd. His claims that we, who apparently live comfortably in the west, wish to watch our brothers and sisters back home "kill each other" so that we can return and rule Libya ourselves demonstrates just how manipulative and scaremongering this regime is. Having lived in self-exile from my homeland for 30 years, due to the fear of retaliation for my public dissent, I wish nothing more than to return to see the faces of family members who have grown up, married and had children since I left them all those years ago. I yearn to visit the graves of my parents, both of whom passed away in the years I have been absent and whose funerals I was unable to attend. I want to meet my nephews and nieces, and even brothers and sisters in law, who as yet are little less than strangers to me.
The time of victory is near. The rumours that Gaddafi has left the country, that fighter jets have been moved from Benghazi to Malta, and the news that the justice minister had resigned – all of these are indicative of the shortly expected liberation of the people. The concern of who replaces Gaddafi is not foremost in the minds of Libyans. They have never been given access to political views which oppose the regime. For 40 years they have been unable to even utter this possibility in front of each other.
The coming months will define a period of political change and uncertainty unlike any other in the living history of the Libyan people. One thing that is certain though is that the lethargic and submissive attitude of the people is a thing of the past. No matter what the future holds for Libya, its people have lost the fear that has been instilled in them for so long. They are no longer afraid to die for the country they hold dear, and it is this that will ensure that never again will they allow themselves to be subject to the oppression and subjugation they have lived with under Gaddafi.
It is now the duty of the democracy-preaching west to exert pressure on Gaddafi to follow the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia and relinquish control of a country he has destroyed, imprisoned and oppressed over four decades. To believe the lies and heed the grievous "warnings" of Saif, would be to grossly neglect the deafening call for freedom coming from the Libyan people and to allow oneself to be deluded that the winds of change that have swept across Tunis and Cairo will not soon be blowing through the empty palaces of the Gaddafi family.
Brian Whitaker's best blogs and analysis from the Middle East
From Flight of the Silawa
Comments in chronological order (Total 209 comments)
21 February 2011 9:02PM
With you all the way long live free Libya.
21 February 2011 9:03PM
What's this?
I thought the Guardian loved dictators? Especially those of Islamic extraction!
21 February 2011 9:09PM
Hey Mr. Malek,
As you guys clean up Libya, could you all do us Americans a favor and finish off that Al Megrahi dude? Britain clearly wasn't up to the job.
21 February 2011 9:09PM
i'm normally against it but i do hope squatters are currently residing in saif al-islam's £10 million hampstead abode & availing themselves of all amenities.
good luck to the people of libya. you deserve better than that idiot family at the helm.
21 February 2011 9:17PM
Saif and his Dad's regime are not the only ones telling lies - Libyan protesters going on about how Gaddafi is using African mercenaries to rape Libyan women and kill protesters don't help either. The mainstream media seems to be reporting this without any caveats or validation either.
If you need support from all four corners of the world you need to protest in the manner in which the Egyptians and Tunisians did. No need to bring Arab racism into it!
see below for one of a few twitter messages in this article: - Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans! - Gaddafi is ordering african mercenaries to break into homes in #Benghazi to RAPE Libyan women in order to detract men protesters! #Libya #Febabout 18 hours ago via webkhalidAlotaibi
21 February 2011 9:18PM
As I said in a previous cif: if Gaddafi continues to use extreme force, then the citizens will have nothing to lose, and I believe they will fight him to the bitter end. It now appears that this is exactly what is happening - good luck Libyans!
The Libyans have nothing to lose; indeed, if they falter now, they will be cruelly dealt with by Gaddafi. I must confess, in all honesty, that I thought it would have been much harder to remove Gaddafi: this just shows how the will of the people can sometimes be underestimated. Nevertheless, he still has to be removed - let's see how long it takes. How about, er, two weeks? Place your bets ladies and gentlemen!
Oh! One question for you, Mr. Malek: Is there an alternative leader that the people can rally round?
21 February 2011 9:20PM
The Libyan people have been incredibly brave as they have faced up to the machine guns, tanks, and even aircraft of Gaddafi's thugs.
People across the world will be thinking of the Libyans tonight - and hoping that tomorrow will finally bring liberation from their despicable regime.
21 February 2011 9:21PM
Mr. Gaddafi, can I have your autograph on this international arrest warrant, please?
21 February 2011 9:21PM
Mr Malek, I think you have to concern yourself with what might follow, as with all the nations where uprising is or has happened, because it may not be a turn for the better, even if that sounds unlikely right now.
On the other hand, for you, I hope it is, since anyone who guns down his own people in such numbers is clearly well passed their sell by date.
PS I'm not convinced Libya's oil is all that significant in the scheme of things. As far as I am aware, neither Libya nor Saudi have an especially big share in Europe, the US is the big buyer of the latter so this comparision makes the oil issue sound bigger than it is. I think the rapprochment was more politically motivated, a possibly misguided attempt to bring a pariah state back into the international fold.
21 February 2011 9:21PM
Our governments certainly should be speaking up against Gaddafi. It should be as loud as possible, with sanctions designed to hit his regime as it tries to kill its own people or flee and take the money with it.
When he bombed a nightclub in Germany frequented by American soldiers, we bombed his home and tried to kill him, killing one of his daughters in the process. We then made him a pariah for decades, even more so after Lockerbie.
Certainly using tanks and fighter bombers on protesters killing hundreds in the first days and still ongoing is as bad. We can at least speak up.
Sure Libya has oil, but that did not stop us before. He got out of pariah status by giving up a nuclear program, and confessing and paying for Lockerbie. Now he has done it again, and back he should go. The guy is a loon, and can't be lived with.
It is pleasant to see that the Libyan people seem to be winning.
21 February 2011 9:23PM
Wish people in this country would do the same, fingers crossed 26th March brings us closer.
An end to dictatorships and sham democracies worldwide
21 February 2011 9:23PM
Gaddafi/Qadhafi/Gheddafi
I hope that newspaper style guides will soon be able to delete that name from their pages.
21 February 2011 9:24PM
Good luck to you, it will be hard but persevere.
Let us hope those in charge in Libya get the same as those who were in charge of Iraq.
21 February 2011 9:25PM
Thank you Mr Malek. A very moving article.
The real test now is not is not just for the Libyan people, it is equally for our Western leaders. I have not yet come across any comment from Mr Obama.
@NiiT there is nothing racist about the facts that Gaddafi might be using mercenaries from some African countries. He has shown himself more than capable of the most grotesque acts.
21 February 2011 9:26PM
Don't bellitle those in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya and the real struggle they face against dictatorship. They face guns, tanks, warplanes not a few plod with a riot baton.
21 February 2011 9:30PM
uninsulated
21 February 2011 9:03PM
"What's this?
"I thought the Guardian loved dictators? Especially those of Islamic extraction!"
No, don't like right wingers or despots of any extraction. Perhaps you are confused because they are not liked any better when Christian, Jewish, or atheist--in the US, UK, or Israel. It is people who leave comments such as shown in your list who make exceptions involving Islamic nut jobs, disliking only them, and cheering on all the rest.
21 February 2011 9:30PM
Good luck.
21 February 2011 9:30PM
Any chance we could have a word on the subject from one of the Labour grandees who were so assiduously currying favor with Gaddaffi prior to the Megrahi release? And lining their pockets in the process? You know, while they were pillorying the Scottish government in public? After all there were loads of them. Lord Mandelson for example. Or are Islington Towers still operating a news embargo on that story?
21 February 2011 9:31PM
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi looked like a man who believes he is about to be lynched; nervous, sweating and disconnected.
Let's hope he's right.
21 February 2011 9:31PM
Gaddafi you have no shame you horrid man. Since you came president you have done no change im from libya! and my family live there but i live in the u.k since you cut the phone calls so i cant call my family i have been worried sick! i hope you die! and i cant beleive your a muslim more like a devil your soul is devil your face looks like a devil in fact you are a devil!!. Cant you understand that people of libya want you out already?? and then you just send warplanes with weapons dropping from it!! ?/.. including BOMBS!! you are an ill man that should go to hospital you injured over 900 people and over 300 are dead because of you !! but dont worry your time will be up sooner or later once we get rid of you and your disgusting face! .......... I hope you die theen you'll know how it feels like when you have killed all those poor people that are from your country your religion your town you evil cruel demon ..!!!!!! and just you wait till the day of judgement when god punishes you!!!!!!!>..
21 February 2011 9:40PM
Measured and well expressed sentiments. I'd just take issue with your description of Ghadafi's 1969 action as a 'revolution'. It was a coup, a highjacking of the nascent Libyan economy for the benefit of a small faction. What is going on now is revolution, the work of popular will.
Whatever justifiable concerns you have about the potential for coming conflict and factionalism, the Libyan people have achieved this by unity, and will remember the power of common purpose. I believe they can overcome the difficulties that lie ahead, and wish them well for a new dawn.
21 February 2011 9:48PM
Another facet of Blair's squalid legacy becomes ashes.
21 February 2011 9:53PM
Past winners of the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights include:
1996 Louis Farrakhan (American anti-semite)
2004 Hugo Chavez
2010 Recep Erdogan
We will all be better off without him, not just Libya!.
21 February 2011 10:02PM
So, a brief history of upcoming events................
Hugh euphoria for the people of Libya for at least two weeks.
Saif al-Islam found to have illegally stolen vast amounts of cash from his people, subsequently confiscated by the Americans in operation 'ambush'.
Civil war averted due to lack of credible 'round' stones.
Saif Gaddafi's body found floating off Margate Pier, two Flemish speaking Israel's seen leaving B & B that same night.
Oil prices sky-rocket.
Oil prices hit all time high.
US sponsored elections announced for Friday(any), Hilary Clinton pays a visit and leaves the crowds ecstatic with her famously rousing speech about........
blah, blah, blah, democracy, blah, blah blah, America is your friend.
Free, democratic elections take place and the winner, a little known dissident Abdul Wa'nn'a'be who returns from asylum in New York, where he used to drive a cab. Israel approves as they lent his cousin money for a mortgage, at a very reasonable rate.
2 years pass and Gaddafi senior is sighted in the desert, south-east of Tripoli, prompting George Bush snr. to ask...''how many goddam holes are out there?''
5 years later, Libya is free at last with the poor remaining poor and the rich, richer.
20 years later, Fox news team goes back to Libya to see how things have progressed, and hear two middle-aged men tending goats proclaim...........
''remember those days with Gaddafi......? Those were the days!''
21 February 2011 10:12PM
If he has to keep removing people at this rate, soon Tony Blair will have no 'friends' left on FaceBook..!
21 February 2011 10:36PM
Gaddafi is murdering his own people.
21 February 2011 10:37PM
I can't see any going back now. The time of dictators is drawing to a close. Gaddafi must end it now and hand power over to the people for free and fair elections.
As others have said Good Luck
21 February 2011 10:39PM
The use of tanks and jets against protesters exposes the absurdity of the people who whinge about the "sham" democracies in the west. We should thank our lucky stars for being born in the first world. But, of course, that would deflate their all important world view.
21 February 2011 10:41PM
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21 February 2011 10:48PM
Western governments have no problem with Islamism per se, they only have a problem with Islamism because it tends towards being anti-Western. If Islamists were pro-Western, they could hang all the gays and stone all the women they wanted and there'd be nary a word of protest from Western governments.
The brutal and horrific actions of the Libyan regime, which now must surely be on its last legs, show what hideous individuals Gadaffi and his cronies are. The fact that Libya has had good relations with Britain since 2004 is only to our shame as a nation. As ever, our foreign policy operates in a moral vacuum.
As for the people now fighting and dying for their freedom on the streets of Tripoli and elsewhere, I hope that their profound and humbling bravery does not go unrewarded. Even if many of them do not live to see it, the generations of Libyans that follow them will grow up in a free society and those who have died will be remembered as martyrs for freedom. I only wish that many hundreds didn't have to die so that Gadaffi and his ilk could play their petty game of defiance until the bitter end.
21 February 2011 10:51PM
@uninsulated
Oh, will you give over. If you have nothing to contribute, then please go elsewhere.
21 February 2011 11:13PM
.
It seems that Tony Blair loves Gaddafi. On Newsnight tonight we were able to see him kissing and embracing the Lybian dictator with genuinel affection. It was also interesting to hear the Gordon Brown's government had sold him anti-riot equipment.
21 February 2011 11:17PM
@LinearBandKeramik
Oh, will you give over. If you have nothing to contribute, then please go elsewhere.
21 February 2011 11:19PM
Yes the article writer is right but our 'great' British government is not interested in DEMOCRACY.
We have three middle class right wing parties making tribal noise in a pretence of democracy.
They are three offices in a defacto one party state.
More people see it for what it is and hopefully the global DEMOCRACY movement will make itself known in Britain too.
So the British government is unlikely to help you.
You will have to go all the way.
No U-turns because a failed revolution is a tortured and slaughtered population.
Never surrender.
21 February 2011 11:23PM
As my suspension of disbelief regarding the spontaneity of the serial Arab revolution is now definitely out of the window, I'll just say that something totally weird is going on and that I hope no more people die.
21 February 2011 11:24PM
Chummie 21 February 2011 11:13PM
.
It seems that Tony Blair loves Gaddafi...
...and Margeret Thatcher loves Tony Blair.
That is the trouble with our defacto one party state.
The politicians are a bunch of luvvies in a clapped out theatre of fake democracy.
21 February 2011 11:25PM
U00010, AKA Citizen Smith,
You'll be the one on Tooting High Street with your fist in the air then comrade?
21 February 2011 11:45PM
I am not sure what the opinions of someone who is claiming to have lived 30 years in Manchester without ever going back to Libya have to do with this. I suppose it is hard to find someone with something to say, but this author can hardly know what Libyans want or are doing.
It is also interesting to see how much Blair Derrangement Syndrome there is out there. After all, Blair tried it George W Bush's way and invaded Iraq. We all agree that CiF collectively hated that idea. So he tried another tack with Libya - he tried engaging with the regime. He tried to bring them back from the Cold and into the mainstream. He tried to encourage change. And lo and behold, CiF hates him for that too. Perhaps he should have invaded instead.
Indeed we are all neo-cons now.
21 February 2011 11:46PM
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21 February 2011 11:48PM
Agreed with the other posters - the protesters have serious guts, considering the horrific response they're receiving.
Best of luck to you guys.
21 February 2011 11:48PM
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21 February 2011 11:50PM
Gosh - think the protests now ongoing might, just might support what he says?
Only to someone dishonest and stupid enough to try and force history to fit a preconceived notion.
Iraq was invaded under false pretences, and the post-war situation was handled exquisitely badly by the US and its allies. That's one of the main reasons Iraq collapsed into chaos.
In contrast, the West is staying out of Libya and other ME nations and letting the people handle their future by and for themselves.
A bit of a difference, I'd say.
21 February 2011 11:53PM
Yet the idea that walking on 'natural resources' is your path to great national wealth and a high standard of living has been planted into the heads of so many of the leading lights on the African continent. It is people who are the most important and valuable natural resource.
..the cussedeness, treachery -petroleum is a curse on the MiddleEast.
22 February 2011 12:00AM
All of us, really. Because we do an awful lot of sucking up to people we don't actually like very much over the stuff.
The sooner we can get an alternative, the better.
22 February 2011 12:16AM
uninsulated 21 February 2011 11:25PM
U00010, AKA Citizen Smith, You'll be the one on Tooting High Street with your fist in the air then comrade?
please dont insult me with that kind of thought terminating cliche. I'm far more radical than that.
22 February 2011 12:45AM
"It is now the duty of the democracy-preaching west to exert pressure on Gaddafi..."
Please forgive me but what influence does the west have?
22 February 2011 12:47AM
Cassiopeia9000
Have to agree.
22 February 2011 1:04AM
I gues this means President Reagan was right in the 1980s when he took on Gaddafi - can anyone remember what the NY Times and the Guardian said then?
22 February 2011 1:06AM
"But those who support democracy must back our fight for freedom"
In what way? Should they interfere with the internal affairs of Libya?
This is a bit like George Bush's "you're either with us or against us".
No. No. No. The people of Libya are the agents for change in their own country. Every Western country went through this. It's your responsibility.
22 February 2011 1:08AM
@mysmartypants
It wasn't the Libyans who shot down PanAm 103. You should know that d*gdammit.