Colonel Gaddafi claims the rebels are members of Al Qaeda, who have been administered hallucinogens by the CIA. Or possibly, they are CIA agents, who have mainlined drugs supplied by Al Qaeda. It may even be that the CIA and Al Qaeda have got together to drug random persons, who have rebelled under the influence.
He may be a little hazy as to the exact profile of the rebels. But he is quite certain that hallucinogens are involved. His opinion deserves to be taken seriously since everything he’s ever said or done, suggests deep, intimate acquaintance with that class of drugs.
Or maybe he’s just barking mad. Dictators do get that way. But few demonstrate their insanity with the panache Gaddafi does. He started small by abolishing all Libyan army ranks above that of Colonel. There were other minor eccentricities like an insistence on sleeping in a tent and the donning of multi-coloured robes embossed with maps and faces.
The pace stepped up when he “raised the stature of women” by creating an all-female praetorian guard of 400-odd “official virgins”. In between protecting him from assassination, they used to demonstrate formation flying in hot-air balloons. There are the statutory weird monuments like a golden fist crushing an US fighter plane. And, he topped Napoleon by riding a camel through Paris.
Impressive as this may seem, other dictators have gone toe-to-toe in terms of lifestyle. It is in the realms of the literary that Gaddafi leaves most other strongmen trailing in the dust. Great leaders are expected to record their thoughts for posterity and most produce banal platitudes.
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Gaddafi’s magnum opus, The Green Book (TGB) is matched only by the Ruhnama of the late Turkmenbashi, Saparmurat Niyazov, in terms of mystical, messianic brilliance. Arabic is known for its literary tradition of poetical allusion and the use of paradox to illustrate philosophical truth.
Gaddafi sets new standards for both. Who else would have had the revelation that “If not for electricity, we would be condemned to watch TV in the dark”? or laid down the law by telling children that “Obeying your parents is more important than doing what your parents say”?
In case you didn’t already know, TGB proves the Colonel’s heart is in the right place when it comes to feminism. TGB makes a passionate plea on behalf of the female gender: “Women, like men, are human beings. This is an incontestable truth. According to gynaecologists, women, unlike men, menstruate each month. Since men cannot be impregnated, they do not experience the ailments women do.”
In another paradox, he refused to implement universal education (Libya has a high literacy rate of 82 per cent) because “mandatory education is a coercive education that suppresses freedom. To impose specific teaching materials is a dictatorial act.” However, Libyan schoolchildren were punished severely, if they bunked their mandatory weekly TGB catechism class.
Amidst all these gems, my favourite quote is the one that explains his rather unusual views on democracy. “Representation of the people is a falsehood. The mere existence of parliaments underlines the absence of the people, for democracy can only exist with the presence of the people and not in the presence of representatives of the people.” Quite.
Finally the Colonel is cool about free speech: “All individuals have a natural right to self-expression by any means, even if such means were insane and meant to prove a person’s insanity.” He has obviously lived his life by consistent, rigid adherence to that precept. Now that his subjects have internalised TGB to such effect, he feels he is likely to “stay in Libya till I die or until the end of the time Allah allows me to live!”