Arab News Blog

The great divide between liberal Jewish Americans and the Israeli Right has lurked as an issue since the Likud Party first challenged Labor dominance in the late 1970s. It is now coming to a boiling point, even as Israel’s reputation in the world is sinking. As rightwing policies more visibly fail, the Likudniks are flailing around making fools of themselves by smearing critics of those policies as racists. (Anyone who knows how Likud supporters talk among themselves about Arabs and other outsiders can only be amused at their impudent hypocrisy in playing the race card.)

The mess that Mossad’s mercenaries (some of them possibly from the Fateh Palestinian faction also opposed to Hamas) made of a routine political assassination in Dubai of a Hamas agent funneling arms from Iran is a blow against Ithe image of daring, stone-cold competence cultivated by the Israeli security establishment. The killing went smoothly, but it transpires that the assassins had not only stolen the passport identities of British and Irish citizens, but those of several Israeli dual citizens originally from the UK, as well. Mossad thus made potential problems for those passport holders for the rest of their lives, since Interpol will be interested every time the numbers pop up at an airport check-in.

The incident has roiled diplomatic relations with Ireland and the UK. But it is also controversial in Israel (not the assassination but the bumbling clumsy identity theft against Israeli citizens). After all, branding an innocent Israeli an assassin is a sort of blood libel. Indeed, casual political assassination as a routine Israeli method of statecraft makes many Jews uncomfortable, as is visible in Steven Spielberg’s film, Munich.

But the harbingers of isolation are numerous. The Netanyahu government has largely defied President Obama’s requests for a halt to the colonization of the West Bank (a freeze on building new settlements in part of the West Bank, while existing settlements are expanded and Palestinians are thrown in the street in Jerusalem does not count).

The Israeli siege of the children of Gaza, some of whom are looking skinnier, is impossible to justify and provoked even a US congressman to urge a forceful breaking of the blockade. The Goldstone Report on Israeli war crimes (and which also acknowledges Hamas war crimes) for the United Nations is likely to attain an official status of a sort denied to previous such clear-eyed examinations of Israeli military action. (Israel’s leadership suffered not the least from dropping nearly a million cluster bombs on the civilian farms of southern Lebanon in the last 3 days of the 2006 Lebanon War, though this targeting of civilians was illegal and the US Congress had stipulated that the weapons could not be used that way).

The reactionary parties of Likud, Shas, and Yisrael Beitenu have nothing in common with the vast majority of Jewish Americans, who voted for Barack Obama and are generally more progressive than non-Jewish Americans. The establishment of a liberal Jewish lobby, J Street, which supports a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine side by side), is a manifestation of the increasing unease of progessive Jewish Americans with the policies and aggressive wars of rightwing Israeli governments. Jewish Americans have been key to the securing of many of our civil liberties in this country and a major voice for peace and for culture and the arts, and a thug like Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister surely makes many of them uneasy. It is no accident that the Likud government has snubbed a delegation of US Congress members to Israel who support J Street. The Netanyahu government is all about colonizing more of the West Bank and preventing the rise of a Palestinian state.

Then you have Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein supporting the movement to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza civilians, including children.

The Israeli occupation and colonization of the West Bank provoked former president Jimmy Carter to warn of an Apartheid situation. Although he was viciously attacked by the likes of Alan Dershowitz and subjected to the typical dirty tricks deployed by fanatical nationalists of all stripes, he has been vindicated by remarks of Israeli politician Ehud Barak, who just said the same thing Carter had.

The occupation is also provoking an increasing move to boycott Israel, especially firms and concerns based in the West Bank settlements or connected to the Lebanon and Gaza Wars. The second largest union of Canadian federal employees has joined such a boycott. During the Gaza War, Scandinavian grocery chains cancelled their orders for Israeli fruit, and the South African longshoremen declined to unload Israeli ships.

It is anxiety over the prospect that the current far-right Netanyahu government is becoming increasingly isolated from the world community, including the Obama administration in the US, and from a new generation of progressive Jewish Americans that explains the rash of scurrilous charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ being thrown around by the ‘Israel-can-do-no-wrong’ crowd in recent days.

You had Leon Wieseltier’s unsubstantiated and shameful attack on Andrew Sullivan, which Sullivan effectively refuted — as did Glenn Greenwald, Matthew Ygglesias, and a number of others. As Greenwald points out, the use of the ‘anti-Semitism’ charge against ordinary every day non-bigotted people who just don’t agree with some policy of Israel or of the American Enterprise Institute risks making the term meaningless and cheapening it, which can hardly be good for the Jews.

Meanwhile, the main strategy of the Israeli and Jewish-American Right to preserve Israeli capacity to continue the colonization and to act belligerently in the region had been the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That strategem has failed, as I argued in Salon. The Shiite fundamentalists who have taken over Baghdad are pro-Hizbullah and pro-Palestinian. (Hizbullah was in part set up by the Islamic Mission Party, Da’wa, of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and Da’wa supported Hamas in the recent Gaza War). Moreover, Baghdad has ceased helping contain Iran for the Sunni Arab world and the West, and is now a close ally of Tehran. The prospect of a well-armed, 250,000-man Iraqi army now being reconstituted, and riddled with agents of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, must be a matter of consternation for Israelis. Only Jordan separates them from Iraq, now an outpost of the Shiite religious parties allied with Khamenei. The Neoconservatives, such as Richard Perle, David Frum, Paul Wolfowitz, Irv Lewis Libby, Michael Rubin, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Larry Franklin and others thus not only shot themselves in the foot, but they shot Israel in the chest.

This Iraq strategy, which intended to stop the Rabin peace process and prevent the return of Gaza and the West Bank to the Palestinians for their state, was laid out by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and other Neoconservatives in a white paper for Bibi Netanyahu in 1996. Many of the authors were subsequently put in high office by Bush-Cheney and pushed for an American war on Iraq with dirty tricks and false propaganda in 2002-2003. They included Canadian gadfly journalist David Frum, who authored Bush’s 2002 ‘Axis of Evil’ speech in consultation with Perle. The mostly Jewish Neoconservatives were only one faction in the Bush-Cheney coalition that wanted regime change in Baghdad, which included the Christian Right, Big Oil, and the military-industrial complex. However influential, they were not ‘in control’ and most Jewish Americans opposed their ideas and policies.

Frum, a Canadian who only became naturalized as a US citizen in 2007, was important in the early years of the Bush presidency and crafted many of the falsehoods and propaganda points that got up the Iraq War. He bears a heavy responsibility for the unnecessary deaths of over 4000 US military personnel, for the deaths of some 600,000 Iraqis, and for the displacement of nearly 4 million Iraqis. In a just world, David Frum would be on trial for his role in severe violations of international law, as would Bush, Cheney, Perle, and the rest of those bald-faced liars and warmongers.

To cover his prevarications and failed policies, Frum joined Wieseltier in playing the anti-Semitism card at CNN this week, piling on Sullivan but also smearing yours truly. His exhibit A was a passage in which I complained about supporters of the Israeli Likud party attempting to enlist the US military to fight wars on behalf of that party’s platform. The column was mainly about Larry Franklin, a Catholic, who went to jail on espionage charges for passing classified Pentagon documents to AIPAC and the Israeli embassy.

Since supporters of the Likud government, Christian and Jewish, are even now attempting to foment a US war on Iran on behalf of rightwing objectives in Israel (Iran is no more a threat to the United States than Iraq had been), I rather stand by my condemnation of them.

As someone who travels to Israel, collaborates on research with Israeli colleagues, supports Israelis’ right to live normal and fulfilling lives in security, and recently stayed in a kubbutz, I am puzzled by Frum’s innuendo. I am critical of Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank, but then so are former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak; I think I probably haven’t said anything on the issue that clear-eyed Israelis haven’t already said themselves.

But I will complain about David Frum’s dual loyalties. I am very suspicious of a rightwing Stephen Harper-style Canadian becoming so influential in the United States. I like my Canadians in their normal, sane estate. I fear he may be influencing my country in directions that benefit rightwing Canadian politicians and war industries in Ottawa. Although Canada has also leant us treasures like William Shatner, Dan Akroyd and Paul Schaeffer, for which I’m grateful, the latter never became ensconced in the halls of power or encouraged anyone to fire a shot in anger off the set.

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Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Will Iraq's Oil Ever Flow? | TomDispatch

Sociologist Michael Schwartz, a sharp Iraq-watcher and author of a provocative book on the Iraq War, surveys the travails of Iraq’s oil industry since the 2003 Bush-Cheney invasion and points to the continued difficulties of the Iraq petroleum industry.

My own guess is that eventually the security situation will settle down enough to allow the foreign petroleum companies now signing bids to develop specific fields to press forward. It will be a long slow haul, but Iraqi petroleum will likely come online over time. When that expansion of production happens,it will have a big impact on Iraq. There will be massive internal migration of labor to the Basra and other oil-rich areas, mixing up Sunni Arabs and Kurds with regional labor migrants from e.g. Egypt, India and Pakistan.

The Neoconservative dreams that Iraq would rival or replace Saudi Arabia as swing producer, and that it would recognize and perhaps supply petroleum to Israel, however, are both unlikely developments. Moreover, as China, India and other Asian giants begin growing more rapidly and depending on automobiles, demand for petroleum could well grow so fast over the next twenty years that any new big fields’ production is just slurped up, with the world demanding more. That is, Rupert Murdoch’s notion that Iraq production could plunge prices down to $14 a barrel for the long term, helping industrialized economies, was always stupid, since it did not take account of rapidly growing demand from Asia.

The emergence of Iraq as a petroleum state (or rather a bigger, wealthier petroleum state) will also further upset the geopolitical balance in the Middle East. With a Shiite majority, it will offset Saudi Arabia in the Sunni-Shiite culture wars. It seems likely to have a big, well-trained and effective army, which cannot always be depended on to be allied with the interests of Washington. A military coup down the road cannot be ruled out (there are few democratic oil states, where petroleum supplies more than a third of the national income). And, it likely will be a friendly and supportive big brother to movements like Hizbullah in Lebanon. While it won’t always be on the same page as Iran, it will likely be an ally of and support for Tehran. One possibility is that a rich Iraq 20 or 25 years from now will be in a position to promote Twelver Shiism in the region, picking up some of the Alevis in Turkey, the Nusairis in Syria and the Zaidis in Yemen. With its possession of the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, with the enormously influential chief cleric of Najaf as among its more prominent residents, Iraq’s soft power among Afghan, Pakistani and Indian Shiites has the potential for being greater than that of Iran.

In the end, an oil-rich, Shiite-dominated Iraq is far more likely to be a victory for the Shiite revival kicked off in 1979 by Imam Ruhollah Khomeini than a triumph for Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Daniel Pipes and the other hard line warmongers who advocated for a revolution-by-invasion in Iraq.

But Schwartz is correct that all these developments are likely a decade or more off.

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Is it time to say “we told you so”?
Robert Dreyfuss in the Nation/ here

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Now Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not only questions the extent of the Holocaust but is also a “truther,” saying, absurdly, that the US and Israeli governments were behind the 9/11 attacks. The USG Open Source Center paraphrased and translated his speech on Wednesday in Ahvaz (Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) Wednesday, January 13):

The president said the enemies, after failing to dominate the region through sedition, have now turned to military action in the region. He said issues such as human rights were a pretext for the West to enter the Middle East. He said the West aimed to hold control of the energy resources of the region to save its economic failure.

He said: “Even the issue of 11 September is a suspicious development. Many of the researchers and opinion-holders are of the view that the issue of 11 September is an American-Zionist issue. It is an excuse for military presence in the Middle East.”
He added: “Using the excuse of 11 September, they started a war in Afghanistan, then Iraq then they occupied Pakistan and subsequently they fanned the flames of war in Yemen.”

In contrast, his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, had warmly commiserated with the United States after the September 11 attacks, pointing out that Iran had also seen terrorist violence directed against it (by the Saddam-backed Mojahedin-e Khalq, MEK– or People’s Holy Warriors). Iranians mounted candlelight vigils for the victims in September of 2001. Then in January of 2002, David Frum and Richard Perle convinced a clueless W. to put Iran in a so-called “axis of evil.” Bush and the Neocons undermined the reformist Khatami, and so are in part responsible for giving us Ahmadinejad.

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? Violence Flares Ahead of Algeria-Egypt Soccer Match – The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com | The NYT's blog The Lede has a nice post about the Algeria-Egypt, game, so I don't have to do it as I don't even like football.
? Daily News Egypt – Egypt Among States Attempting To Weaken Un Anti-Corruption Convention Enforcement Mechanism | Egypt and others against review mechanism for corruption convention.
? The Young Brotherhood in Search of a New Path | Khalil al-Anani.
? The Brotherhood vs. Al-Qaeda: A Moment Of Truth? | Jean-Pierre Filiu.
? The Saturday Profile – An Arms Dealer Returns, Now Selling an Image – Biography – NYTimes.com | Profile of arms dealer Adnan al-Khashoggi, who apparently has fallen on hard times. Still, I'd like to know why he met with Richard Perle in 2002.
? Blogging Imam Who Knew Fort Hood Gunman and 9/11 Hijacker Goes Silent – The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com | Can't believe this guy has not been arrested prior to leaving the US.
? ‘Going Muslim’ – Forbes.com | NYU professor "goes desi" after Texas massacre. Is this just Indian (I assume the professor is originally Indian or Sri Lankan) prejudice against Muslims? I wonder if the next time an Asian shoots people at a college we'll say, "going oriental"… Shame on you, Forbes.
? Palestine: Salvaging Fatah | ICG's new report on Palestine. [PDF]

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Libya has certainly been in the news lately. I’ve never visited the country and have worked on it very little, but from what I know about it (apart from my regular, and yes, facile jokes about Qadhafi) I’ve always found it profoundly tragic that a country can drift away like this for decades. We know so little about the horrors of the Qadhafi regime that we can’t even compare it to other in the region. In this respect, and perhaps more than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Libya appears to be the Middle East’s North Korea. Here are some links and thoughts on recent reading — this a long one, so the rest is after the jump.
Lockerbie

I was profoundly uninterested in the release of Abdel Basset al-Meghrahi, at least in the way it was mostly covered: as a supposed affront to justice and the relatives of the memory Lockerbie bombing’s victims. It’s not clear what prompted his release, although reports about al-Meghrahi’s serious illness appear to be true. What is evident is that it was part of a deal with the Libyans, and the timing seems awfully convenient in giving Qadhafi a trophy for his big bash. This is shame for British democracy (already damaged in the same way by Tony Blair’s decision to end the enquiry into the BAE / Yamama arms deal), and as the Economist noted, Gordon Brown is now paying the price although the Economist appears more concern with the damage to transatlantic relations.)

More to the point, it seems to me, is that the Lockerbie trial was not conducted was not satisfactorily conducted, and further investigations and testimonials suggest that the decision to point blame towards Libya was at least in part politically motivated (earlier suspects were Palestinian groups, Iran and Syria — which may have sidelined in the context of the strategic needs of the 1990 Gulf War.) Relatives of the victims and stellar investigative reporters such as the late Paul Foot have long established the holes of in the Lockerbie case, and they have never been addressed. I would encourage you to read this post at Lenin’s Tomb or purchase the special report by Paul Foot at Private Eye.

The Lybian government, incidentally, basically saw the $1.5 billion payment to the Lockerbie victims’ families (an outrageous sum for what remains a poor country — in comparison the families of the victims of the US-downed Iranian airliner of 1988 got $61.8 million). This point was made again by the odd op-ed by Seif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, the “soft side” of this terrible regime, in the IHT. The rather grotesque part of the article comes when Seif, trying to convince the West that Libya did not give al-Meghrahi a hero’s welcome, boasts of his country’s strict control of the press:

When I arrived at the airport with Mr. Megrahi, there was not a single government official present. State and foreign news media were also barred from the event. If you were watching Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network, at the time the plane landed, you would have heard its correspondent complain that he was not allowed by Libyan authorities to go to the airport to cover Mr. Megrahi’s arrival.

The biggest loss of al-Meghrahi’s release is that it forecloses the possibility of an appeal to the first trial, which many believed was coming. Libya may have carried out Lockerbie, but it has not been proven yet.

The new West-Libya relationship

Part of Libya’s rehabilitation over the last few years has been due to counter-terrorism priorities, but in the long term it was about oil and gas contracts and energy security for the EU and US. For several years now businessmen and brokers have been lining up with their briefcases in Qadhafi’s presidential palaces to cash in on the least developed hydrocarbon-rich area in the MENA region, one which further exploration could reveal to be even richer than it currently is. As the US Deparment of Energy notes:

Libya, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, followed by Nigeria and Algeria (see graph below). According to Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Libya had total proven oil reserves of 43.7 billion barrels as of January 2009, up from 41.5 billion barrels in 2008. About 80 percent of Libya’s proven oil reserves are located in the Sirte basin, which is responsible for 90 percent of the country’s oil output. Libya hopes to increase oil reserve estimates with incentives for additional exploration in both established oil producing areas as well as more remote parts of the country.

. . .

Expansion of natural gas production remains a high priority for Libya for two main reasons. Libya aims to use natural gas instead of oil domestically for power generation, freeing up more oil for export. Second, Libya has vast natural gas reserves and is looking to increase its natural gas exports, particularly to Europe. Libya’s proven natural gas reserves as of January 1, 2009 were estimated at 54.4 trillion cubic feet (Tcf ) by OGJ –but the Libyan government estimates have been cited as being more than twice that volume.

Of course, now that it is back in the international fold, Libya is starting to reimpose all sorts of things on oil and gas companies — but only if this was done with some common sense.

I suppose this all of this is to be expected in this economic and energy environment, but it is worth highlighting the gravy train Libya’s rehabilitation has created. David Manning, Tony Blair’s pointman in making the deal to bring in Libya from the cold several years ago, is now on the British Gas payroll using his contacts with the country. The UK has not hosted Qadhafi (yet – for now this would be too unpalatable to the public, as the brouhaha over al-Meghrahi showed), but others have rushed in. In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy received Qadhafi in Paris (suddenly less adamant about the primacy of human rights in international relations), while the clown Silvio Berlusconi has gone out of his way to appease the Guide, apologizing for Italy’s colonial-era crimes, building a 1700km coastal highway and more recently offering to send the Italian air force’s show planes for the celebrations. In the US, of course, high-level meetings Qadhafi is still beyond the pale, but Hillary Clinton recently met his fourth son (and possible heir), Muatassim, a few months ago. The encounter gave us this memorable picture:

Speaking of Muatassim, who has been named National Security Advisor, it’s not only governments that have had to do some shameful pandering. The London Review of Books’s blog recently linked to a Libyan opposition website, where you can find documents of a contract between Muatassim’s office and PR and lobby firms worth millions of dollar. The aim is groom Muatassim, teach him English, help him set up a National Security Council (which surely if set up by foreigners can’t be such a powerful organization)

They will also put together a book lauding Libya. The book alone will cost nearly $3 million dollars, and the people these documents say are involved in it should be ashamed. They include Lord Anthony Giddens (the sociologist behind the meaningless “Third Way” rhetoric of New Labour), Benjamin Barber (author of Jihad vs. McWorld and a longtime Libya apologist), Francis Fukuyama (he of “The End of History” and “Trust”). These and many more are listed in this document as people who visited Libya (including Nick Negroponte, Richard Perle, Bernard Lewis, David Frost etc… although a visit is of course different than writing a positive book.) I hope those allegedly involved in the book quickly distance themselves from it.

Mark Fuller, CEO of Monitor Group, is the asshole putting this together. He will also be in charge of wooing foreign dignitaries to Libya and generally boosting the country’s image. In this document he promises:

• We will identify the relevant American and international publications that target the specific audiences of interest identified in the network map.
• We will provide operational support for publication of positive articles on Libya in these publications. For example:
o Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Economist,
International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, Weekly Standard, National
Interest, Public Interest, Foreign Affairs etc.
• We will identify and encourage journalists, academics and contemporary thinkers who will have interest in publishing papers and articles on Libya.

Here’s another document outlining the goal of this project:

According to the proposal agreed on July 4 2006, the goal of the project was defined as follows:

“The project is a sustained, long term program to enhance international understanding and appreciation of Libya and the contribution it has made and may continue to make to its region and to the world. It will emphasize the emergence of the new Libya and its ongoing process of change.”

During the course of the project a second important goal was introduced by the client. This goal is to introduce Muammar Qadhafi as a thinker and intellectual, independent of his more widely- known and very public persona as the Leader of the Revolution in Libya.

Libya has a unique positioning in the world, driven in particular by its history of the last forty years as well as by the high profile of the Leader. Libya is in the midst of a transition from an era when stringent sanctions isolated the country. Part of the strategy for the transition towards enhanced national economic development and security involves simultaneously upgrading the world’s understanding of Libya, as well as Libya’s understanding of the world.

The italics are mine — this must be a tough client for Monitor.

Puzzlingly, one of the invoices (for $617,000) contains no details but is called “Project Armani” — could it be a reference to the above suit?

More seriously, the invoice for the lobby firm the Livingstone Group is basically a fully-fleshed policy document for engaging various US institutions, establishing a relationships with USAID, visa authorities, AFRICOM, etc. It is basically a subcontracting of Libyan foreign policy to a firm that is conveniently close to the US government – assuming Muatassim even has the clout to decide such policy. Not that it matters for Livingstone, which will still get the cash.

[Update: A rights activists who works on Libya just emailed me to say: "Livingstone Group just told me today that they've resigned from representing Libya.. i think this is pretty significant given the timing and may be an inidcator as to the mood in Washington."]

The celebrations

I liked this description from the FT:

The Libyan capital has been preparing for weeks. Buildings in the centre have been whitewashed, the streets have been decked with green flags. The unlined face of a much-younger Mr Gaddafi adorns billboards, against a background of pictures of the historical figures he most admires. These include Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela and Gamal Abdel Nasser.

If Libyans disagree with these descriptions, no one is making an outcry. This is not a country where dissidence is tolerated. Some people murmur privately that the leader is throwing millions at his party, while they make do with tiny salaries and poor services. They may complain they should be as prosperous as citizens of oil producers in the Gulf. But they know to keep quiet in public because as one of Mr Gaddafi’s more famous slogans goes: “Democracy is not popular expression.”

Intended to celebrate Libya from the dawn of history to modern times under Mr Gaddafi’s ”great revolution”, Tuesday’s party will feature horses, flame dancers, military bands and lasers. To top off the event, there will be a fireworks display launched from ships off the coast of Tripoli.

The climax will be a grand spectacle performed by hundreds of French dancers on a specially-erected open air stage in the shape of a massive tent—a symbol close to the heart of Mr Gaddafi who likes to underline his Bedouin origins.

Rather amusingly, the piece also mentions that there is still a dispute on whether the Italian show planes will blow the white, green and red smoke of the tricolore or omit the red to match the jamahiriyya’s flag.

But rather then go on about the celebrations, I think this picture will suffice:

Is that bit about the Libyan invasion of ancient Egypt? Because that ended badly for the Libyans, as history buffs will know.

Qadhafi at the UN

The apotheosis of Qadhadi’s gradual re-insertion into world affairs will surely be his speech at the UN later this month. The US and the UK will be gritting their teeth if he boasts about al-Maghrahi, but they should also be worried he raises this issue:

Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi is set to ask the United Nations to ‘abolish’ Switzerland and share the land among its neighbouring countries.
The eccentric dictator has filed a motion with the U.N. saying the Alpine state should be wiped off the map and split among France, Italy and Germany.
Gaddafi is set to present his bizarre plan when Libya takes over the year-long presidency of the U.N. general Assembly on September 15.
He first mentioned his idea at the G8 summit in Italy in July. ‘Switzerland is a world mafia and not a state,’ he said.
‘It is formed of an Italian community that should return to Italy, another German community that should return to Germany, and a third French community that should return to France.’

For more examples of Qadhafi madness, check out our Libya archives.

Libya beyond the headlines

It’s been interesting to see, alongside the sotto voce criticism of ordinary Libyans at their Guide’s latest folly, that the regime is rewarding more moneyed citizens with crass materialism:

Tripoli nights are hot and steamy at this time of year so shops offering effective air-conditioning and high-quality goods at knockdown prices are big crowd-pullers in the hours after the iftar meal that ends the daily Ramadan fast.

Marks & Spencer, on Girgash Road in the opulent west of the Libyan capital, heaves until four in the morning with women – in chadors or western dress – inspecting lingerie and swimwear watched by irritable husbands and children expecting presents for the Eid.

“Last chance to buy,” say the Arabic signs above neat fitting rooms in that familiar green and white trim. No returns are allowed during the sale.

The spanking new branch of BHS nearby is so busy that customers triple-park outside. Monsoon is doing well too. But there is more to this story than underpants or skirts at 60% off and the slightly weird transportation of the high streets of middle England to this sweltering north African city.

Well, it works everywhere else, so why not. But did Qadhafi really need to take all this time to get to this — the shallow reward of a M&S (and I love their cookies as much as anyone) and a fancy dance show?

The biggest crime disaster of a country like Libya is that, while not very developed in 1969, it has been run into the ground ever since by a madman. As the Economist a few weeks ago put it well, also running an appropriate double portrait as illustration:

Mr Qaddafi is reaping rewards for his reformed behaviour at home too. Tripoli, Libya’s capital, is sprouting fancy new hotels, as well as a new airport, to welcome an influx of would-be investors and tourists. Literacy is now nearly universal among schoolchildren. Life expectancy has gone up by 20 years, and infant mortality has fallen to less than a tenth of the level it was at the time of the revolution.

Yet such gains ought to be unremarkable for a country that exports nearly as much oil, per head, as Saudi Arabia: a total of $46 billion-worth last year, divided among just 6m people. In fact, Libya trails far behind other oil-rich states by many measures, and not just in the contrast between Tripoli’s garbage-strewn thoroughfares and the gleaming Miami-scapes of the Gulf. As any Libyan who recalls the days before Mr Qaddafi’s revolution can attest, this is a country where something has gone very wrong.

Things are not so bad as in the dark days of the 1980s, when the Great Leader experimented with ruinous social theories and had dissidents hunted and shot. Yet while Libya’s peculiar form of socialism still brings free education and health care, along with subsidised housing and transport, trade unions remain banned, along with nearly every kind of independent social organisation. Salaries are extremely low, thus keeping Libyans cash-poor even as billions stack up in foreign reserves, or in the pockets of a narrow band of regime insiders. A lack of jobs outside the government has led to youth unemployment of perhaps 30% or more (all statistics in Libya are as blurry as a Saharan sandstorm).

Such shortcomings reflect more than simple inefficiencies. Mr Qaddafi’s Libya is a country that has been systemically mismanaged for a generation, at virtually every level of government.

Rami Khouri riffed to the same tune, seeing Libya’s case as an echo of the wider Arab predicament:

Gadhafi’s Libya is everything we always dreaded we would become, as independent states, societies, governing systems and leaderships. It is hard to know where to start in listing the reasons that the 40th anniversary of Gadhafi’s rule is a hollow celebration. He and his small circle of ruling partners have managed, remarkably, to accomplish virtually every failure that can possibly be envisaged in the world of statehood and governance.

The biggest failure is probably to strangle the country from within, laying siege to his own people by driving away the best and brightest Libyans, and subjecting those who remain to a life of material mediocrity and political indignity. The core of the calamity in Libya – common to the entire Arab world – is the lack of freedom for the ordinary citizen. Libya is a special case, because it combines authoritarianism with eccentricity, waste of massive wealth, and Arab and international derision.

One could not agree more.

Also read:

? Brian Ulrich on the role Libya played in the 1970s changes in the oil business.
? Laila Lalami on Libya’s political prisoners.
? Ibn Kafka on the long history of murder and dire human rights situation of Libya.
? Bill Frelick of HRW on the rights situation and the treatment of sub-Saharan migrants.

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