How Qaddafi Lost Libya
Posted by Andrew Solomon
The New Yorker
It seemed unlikely that Libya, sandwiched between regime collapse in Tunisia and regime collapse in Egypt, could be untouched by the movement. Qaddafi has had dominion over an increasingly malcontent country, and the citizens have been increasingly disgusted by the gap between his rhetoric of direct democracy and his autocratic grip on power. When I wrote about Qaddafi for The New Yorker, in 2006, the question was whether a much-advertised reform process was really underway. The ostensible champion of reform was Qaddafi’s son Seif-al-Islam. Seif usually talks a good game, but he does so with minimal regard for the truth. I was amazed, at a meeting with Seif and some senior American diplomats, in 2008, to hear him describe as imminent the exact same plans he’d so described to me in 2005, without the slightest embarrassment that nothing he had promised then had even inched forward. The regime has always wanted credit for its beneficent decrees, without accepting blame for its failure even to try to turn them into results. Libyans are aware that this represents a higher degree of hypocrisy than is common in most of the rest of the world. For a long time, they did not much love Qaddafi, but they did not hate him, either; he was in many ways irrelevant to their lives, which chugged along according to a tribal logic that had been in place long before the regime came to power. Libyans are leery of democracy; they like a strong ruler who can keep tribal rivalries from erupting. But they do not particularly like their current strong ruler.
The Qaddafi regime has made several strategic errors since my article was published in 2006. The most obvious has been the retreat from Seif’s plans for reform. It was in Qaddafi’s interests to sustain the fierce battle between hardliners and moderates, to present his moderate spokesman to the West (hence the meeting between Seif and diplomats), and to keep his hardliner face visible to his own people. Within the government, each side had moments of believing itself in favor, but the best guarantee of Qaddafi’s continued hegemony was to keep them constantly embattled. When this became unsustainable, however, in 2008, he quashed the reformers, and Seif was generally seen as having fallen from grace. Even though most Libyans had been cynical about the reform process—which was predicated on economic reform rather than on the introduction of real democracy—it had kept hope on the horizon, had allowed them to indulge the idea that Qaddafi was really interested in what was best for the population rather than for himself and his family. To give hardliners more power, as Qaddafi did in 2008, was catastrophic.
That Seif was chosen to go on Libyan television last night to warn of “civil war” and to promise a conference on constitutional reforms is very telling. Qaddafi would not have chosen him as spokesman if he didn’t recognize the hunger for reform, and if he didn’t know that quashing Seif’s ambitions had fed the fire now consuming Tripoli. Monday morning, Qaddafi announced that Seif would be forming a committee to investigate what is happening. But Seif’s too-little-too-late performance—which Al Jazeera described as “desperate,” and which some commentators have said was aimed at his friends in the West rather than at the Libyan people—has almost certainly not helped his cause.
(More here.)
The New Yorker
It seemed unlikely that Libya, sandwiched between regime collapse in Tunisia and regime collapse in Egypt, could be untouched by the movement. Qaddafi has had dominion over an increasingly malcontent country, and the citizens have been increasingly disgusted by the gap between his rhetoric of direct democracy and his autocratic grip on power. When I wrote about Qaddafi for The New Yorker, in 2006, the question was whether a much-advertised reform process was really underway. The ostensible champion of reform was Qaddafi’s son Seif-al-Islam. Seif usually talks a good game, but he does so with minimal regard for the truth. I was amazed, at a meeting with Seif and some senior American diplomats, in 2008, to hear him describe as imminent the exact same plans he’d so described to me in 2005, without the slightest embarrassment that nothing he had promised then had even inched forward. The regime has always wanted credit for its beneficent decrees, without accepting blame for its failure even to try to turn them into results. Libyans are aware that this represents a higher degree of hypocrisy than is common in most of the rest of the world. For a long time, they did not much love Qaddafi, but they did not hate him, either; he was in many ways irrelevant to their lives, which chugged along according to a tribal logic that had been in place long before the regime came to power. Libyans are leery of democracy; they like a strong ruler who can keep tribal rivalries from erupting. But they do not particularly like their current strong ruler.
The Qaddafi regime has made several strategic errors since my article was published in 2006. The most obvious has been the retreat from Seif’s plans for reform. It was in Qaddafi’s interests to sustain the fierce battle between hardliners and moderates, to present his moderate spokesman to the West (hence the meeting between Seif and diplomats), and to keep his hardliner face visible to his own people. Within the government, each side had moments of believing itself in favor, but the best guarantee of Qaddafi’s continued hegemony was to keep them constantly embattled. When this became unsustainable, however, in 2008, he quashed the reformers, and Seif was generally seen as having fallen from grace. Even though most Libyans had been cynical about the reform process—which was predicated on economic reform rather than on the introduction of real democracy—it had kept hope on the horizon, had allowed them to indulge the idea that Qaddafi was really interested in what was best for the population rather than for himself and his family. To give hardliners more power, as Qaddafi did in 2008, was catastrophic.
That Seif was chosen to go on Libyan television last night to warn of “civil war” and to promise a conference on constitutional reforms is very telling. Qaddafi would not have chosen him as spokesman if he didn’t recognize the hunger for reform, and if he didn’t know that quashing Seif’s ambitions had fed the fire now consuming Tripoli. Monday morning, Qaddafi announced that Seif would be forming a committee to investigate what is happening. But Seif’s too-little-too-late performance—which Al Jazeera described as “desperate,” and which some commentators have said was aimed at his friends in the West rather than at the Libyan people—has almost certainly not helped his cause.
(More here.)
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