Kampala, Uganda- Greek tragedy is something I admittedly have minimal knowledge of, however the one recurrent theme I have picked up in my spasmodic interaction with this form of literature is this, our paths to greatness can be undone by the interaction between external circumstances and our character flaws.
In the days, weeks and months leading up to the death of Muammar Gadaffi of Libya I can’t help but wonder if his life and times would not have made a great Greek tragedy novel. The protagonist, full of noble intentions who through a great deal of blood, sweat and tears undertakes Sisyphean labor until he is undone by a character flaw. His path to greatness is blocked by a character flaw and therein is the tragedy.
Like the Persian King Xerxes whose invasion of Greece was ultimately undone by his hubris, Gadaffi may have ultimately been undone by a messianic hubris that did not allow him to see that the ideas he espoused were less relevant in the world today. A hubris that did not allow him to see that he had become politically isolated, his key allies being Sub Saharan African countries with limited political clout on the international scene. A hubris that did not allow him to see that he had become the very thing he loathed, a man in command of a pseudo monarchy not unlike the one he overthrew.
Like a modern day Okwonkwo the main protagonist in timeless classic Things Fall Apart, mercilessly driven by the demons of his past to the highest station in life, only to be held hostage by them. In the end coming undone by the same resolve that had served him so well in his rise to the top.
In the days leading up to and the days after the death of Gadaffi, the media has been inundated with literally hundreds of analyses all assigning the blame for the fall of Gadaffi to a single cause, oil. I believe without looking critically at the facts with respect to Gadaffi’s life and death the political class may lull themselves into a false sense of safety believing of they have no ‘strategic’ minerals, then they can run their countries as they see fit without fear of ‘imperialism’.
The Sad Bizarre End of a Revolutionary.
I make no bones about the fact that I think Gadaffi’s revolutionary credentials are suspect at best; I also disagree with the anti-imperialist argument because it has very little resonance with my generation, I/we do not see the west and the ideas it espouses, key idea being a liberal, representative and accountable government as inherently hostile.
My second bone of contention with anti-imperialism is it completely relieves the leadership of any responsibility. All our problems, all our failings can be and are blamed on external factors that we have no control over. No one asked Mobutu to sell out his country; he did it because it was the best way for him to keep power.
The last words on the life and times of Gadaffi have not been written but what if find most telling is this, in life he deposed a monarchy, a system built not on merit but on blood connections. Throughout his rule, the paths to the highest echelons of power were determined not by merit, but by blood and tribal affiliations to the ‘great leader’. His revolution can be seen as nothing more than a replacement of the Idriss monarchy with the Gadaffi monarchy. For the Libyan people, the rider changed, but they still remained donkeys to the vagaries of a single individual.
At the end of his life this ‘great revolutionary’, and ‘anti-imperialist’ he was defended not by his ‘national army’ but by a Special Forces unit. Special in the sense that it was tasked with protecting the regime rather than the state, in this role it cannibalized and starved the wider army of valuable resources.
This unit was led by his son, staffed and manned by mercenaries and men from his tribe. The city in which he died was not the most cosmopolitan city in Libya, no, it was his birth place, choke full of fighters loyal not to the idea of Libya, but to him as a fellow kinsman.
The Irrelevance of the Oil argument.
Libya is blessed with forty billion barrels of oil, virtually all of it found in the desert making it easy and cheap to extract. Libyan oil is light sweet, low in sulphur, high in valuable distillates, and because of this Gadaffi was ousted because the west wanted access to his oil, yes his oil.
Let’s look at the facts; Libya’s national oil company has a whole host of relationships with western oil companies. The EPSA’s negotiated by the national oil company grant access to these resources in some cases till 2047 so the issue of access to these resources is not supported by the evidence. http://www.eni.com/en_IT/eni-world/libya/eni-business/eni-business.shtml http://www.suncor.com/en/about/3986.aspxl.
While it is true that the terms imposed under these EPSA’s are some of the toughest across the Middle East, virtually all the companies accepted lower oil lifts for extended access to this oil. The lower lift matched against much longer access to the oil fields. Considering Libya’s field were practically virginal due to minimal exploitation, the terms negotiated under ESPA IV were reasonable. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/libya-wikileaks/8294570/FRENCH-TOTAL-LED-CONSORTIUMS-ACCEPT-LOWER-PRODUCTION-SHARES-IN-LIBYA.html
Looking at this from another perspective, Oil contributes 95% of Libya’s export revenue; it also contributes 25% of the GDP and 80% of government revenue. With thirty percent youth unemployment, a heavy subsidy burden, a political system dependent upon patronage, Libya is a classic rentier state, completely dependent on oil; any designs which would affect this position would be political suicide.
Oil is a double edged weapon; it is in the interests if those who have it to do their very best to keep it affordable lest it be substituted. Adel al Jubeir former foreign policy advisor to the Saudi prince Abdullah and present Saudi Ambassador to the United States said of Saudi Arabia ‘We have almost thirty percent of the world’s oil. For us, the objective is to assure that oil remains and economically competitive source of energy. Oil prices that are too high reduce demand growth for oil and encourage the development of alternative sources of energy’. For oil rentier states the energy substitution effect would doom them to failure and political instability so anyone attempting to wield the oil weapon would have to have the dexterity of a bomb disposal expert lest it take him out too.
I come to Bury Gadaffi.
The manner of his death and the macabre display of his decomposing corpse are things I disagree with. Even though at a certain level I understand the desire to have a man who had so dominated life in Libya on display. I sympathize with those who called him father, grandfather, husband, uncle in the same breath my sympathies go out to all those who lost their lives as a result of his actions.
On a wider level Gadaffi’s death represents the end of an era, an era in which we as Africans live in pseudo monarchies dominated by the whims of a single individual. It represents the death of an era in which the political elite who run this continent can no longer sweep their failings under the rug that is imperialism and neocolonialism. For the elite, think long and hard about the lesson of Bouazzizi
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