02 March 2011 By Osman Mirghani In his Green Book, where he discusses his theory of
the Third World, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi says: "The
natural person has freedom to express himself even if,
when he is mad, he behaves irrationally to express his
madness". However, when the Libyans came out in
complete sanity to demonstrate, vent their opinions
regarding the regime, and demand change, as their
neighboring countries to the east and west had
previously done, Colonel Gaddafi did not remember his
hypothesis. Nor did he respond by telling the
protestors "I have heard you", unlike the former
Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who told
his people "I understand you". Gaddafi's regime resorted to weapon of suppression,
which it has used many times before with great
success, and responded to its people with a warning
written in Libyan blood, threatening a sea of
casualties. This worn-out regime used unprecedented
violence to suppress the popular protests, countering
the demonstrators with machine guns, artillery fire
and aerial bombardments, leaving hundreds dead and
thousands wounded over the past few days. Indeed,
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has threatened even more
killings, when he came out yesterday and delivered a
tense speech (which was poorly edited as some sections
appear truncated), threatening that Libya could become
another Fallujah. He called for the protestors to be
killed, whom he described as rats and mercenaries. He
pointed out that the Americans could not protest such
state actions, because they "flattened the ground" in
Fallujah when they were in pursuit of al-Zarqawi.
Gaddafi also pointed out what China has done in the
past to its protestors and the Russian incident when
state authorities bombarded the parliament whilst MPs
were staging a protest. The Colonel believed that misguided youths were
responsible for what was happening in his country,
having been provided with drugs, money and alcohol,
thus prompting them to attack the headquarters of the
army and the police. In his speech, Gaddafi paved the
away for further massacres, particularly in Benghazi,
where he launched a scathing attack on the population
there, saying "who are you?" Indeed, he seemed to be
calling for the division of the country, telling the
tribes to mobilize, and calling for each region to
take their share of the oil. He said he would not
leave Libya or step down, because he has no position
to step down from. Colonel Gaddafi, who often touted the theory of
popular revolution and the age of the masses, has
fallen on his own sword. All his theories fell with
him, when he angrily condemned the Tunisians for
rebelling against the regime of Ben Ali, and said that
if he were Tunisian, he would have allowed President
Ben Ali to stay in power for life. When the revolution
moved to Egypt, he was also concerned by this and
stood against it. Since that point, it seems Gaddafi
has been preparing to quell any popular uprising, as
evidenced today by the African mercenaries fighting
against the demonstrators, with live bullets. We did
not see the Libyan police confront the protestors with
water cannons, but rather with a barrage of bullets
from the onset, in a clear policy of intimidation. The
outcome was what we heard in the testimonies of
Libyans who spoke from inside the country via
telephone, to satellite channels abroad. Horrific
photographs were taken, to accompany appalling stories
about the regime's use of extreme violence to confront
the demonstrators, and about young people being killed
by sniper bullets or artillery shells, at the hands of
those loyal to the regime. Even the funeral
processions for the victims of such repression were
not spared from sniper fire and the mercenaries, who
had been recruited by the regime against the people.
The massacres that are occurring in Libya against
the populace are appalling by any standards. The
regime is stagnant, having suppressed the Libyans for
more than 41 years, during which it used all methods
to stay in power, from assassinating dissidents
abroad, to eliminating rebel forces internally, and
executing those who dared show their opposition to
Gaddafi's regime, or demand an end to it. The regime
seems determined to cling onto power until its last
breath or until the last man or woman is standing, in
the words of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. The appeals of the
Libyans, who are being massacred by the regime, have
been met with a semi-official silence throughout the
Arab world, and a number of hesitant or inconsistent
Western stances, particularly from Washington. There
is a flaw in the Arab system, where our governments
are standing by idly, whilst people are being
slaughtered in this barbaric fashion. It is worth
noting that such scenes will only incense people
further, and increase feelings of anger lurking below
the surface, just as the recent events have exposed
the international community and its double standards.
The West has lectured us for years about spreading
democracy in the Arab world, and has used this as a
justification for its foreign interventions. Yet when
a spark ignites genuine revolutions calling for
change, with young voices demanding freedom and
democracy, Western attitudes seem hesitant and
confused. They do not know whether to support these
youth revolutions and popular uprisings. There is another theme that many have observed
during these events, namely that each regime which has
encountered a popular uprising has opted to repeat the
same broken record, as if all those in power read from
the same book. The Libyan regime resorted to cutting
off the internet and mobile phone services, and
attacked satellite channels. It claimed that a foreign
network had been trained to strike at Libya's
stability. This is what we heard during the
revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, as if their own
people were mere puppets, who would never rise up
against their deplorable living conditions, unless
prompted to do so by a movement with a foreign agenda.
Ironically, the Libyan regime said these words whilst
it sought the assistance of African mercenaries,
publishing advertisements for more recruits, in order
to suppress its people. This is a tactic used by
bullies to intimidate people, and it is happening
again in a more aggressive fashion, after what we saw
in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. The repression in Libya is beyond anything we've
seen so far in the other countries affected by this
hurricane. Those who know the situation in Libya, and
its composition, are warning of a genuine bloodbath,
before the regime finally accedes to the storm, in one
way or another, sooner or later. The regime will not
last, even though Gaddafi has ruled for 41 years. The
repression will not guarantee the survival of the
regime, even though it has succeeded for some time in
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