Gaddafi, seen through the eyes of an African

I recall the first time I encountered Muammar Gaddafi. I cannot recall exactly when in the late 80s it was, but I know for sure that I was a pre-teen, still much in awe of the world outside and on the lookout for heroes. That first encounter was in print, in a copy of Reader’s Digest. I also cannot recall if he was on the cover or not, but I remember the title of the article about him vividly as if I am looking at it now, with the bold print that states “Gaddafi, son of a tailor!” looking up at me from the compact print size that is Reader’s Digest’s renown.  Though subsequent encounters were also via the media, new and old, I feel I know the man the west is wont to call “mad”

That particular copy of Readers Digest was old even then; a memento from my dad’s magazine collection days in the 70s, saved with several others in a large box that he made everyone understand is precious.

That article, unlike the present bile spewing ones that you will find in most western magazines, was written in a voice whose worship-like tone I still hear, more than twenty years on, and talked at length about the famed leader’s freedom fighter attributes – Guevara-like freedom fighting ideals and how much he was loved by his people.

With this first impression and later insights about what Gaddafi was doing in Libya, I grew up to admire the Brother Leader greatly. His eccentric streak aside, and judging by the fact on ground, no matter how devilish the western world paints Gaddafi, even they, grudgingly, admits that the man was first a patriot and improved the life of his people greatly.

I say this with all sense of decency and forthrightness, for Libyans, even the rebels -- when they stop to think about it -- will greatly admit that their erstwhile envious place in Africa and the world, was on account of the doggedness of the man Gaddafi. That he was a dictator is not a thing that anyone would argue about, but that he was the best of the lot in a region that until this year knew only that form of governance, should also not be in doubt.

It is with this sense of benevolence that much of Africa remembers Gaddafi. True, our opinion does not count for much in the world at present, but within our hearts and our words would the other side of Gaddafi’s story be saved – that story of a great man that looked out for his people and made them the envy of all of Africa.

A lot have been said about Gaddafi not having a choice in the face of enormous oil wealth but to give something, even if just a living wage to his subjects, but a clear truth should not be overshadowed by prevailing fact. Libya is not the only oil or resource rich country in Africa, but Libya is the only one where the citizens led a relative good life. It is common knowledge in Africa that Libyans were so well taken care of that economic migrants, from Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and elsewhere, did much of their manual labour and household chores.

A lot is also being said about Gaddafi’s subjugation of the Libyan people's freedom. People make a lot of noise about freedom, but forget that freedom is relative. Westerners, with their welfare systems and whatnot are prone to grandstand and expect the rest of the world to toe their democratic principles, but forget that their brand of democracy is not a one-size-fit-all and that their leaders have and are still supporting some of the world’s most repressive states. Do Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain and lately Egypt and Tunisia ring a bell?

Some others call him a sponsor of terrorism, but when we consider that Gaddafi backed the IRA, ANC, Liberian rebels who fought against Samuel Doe, and factions in the Sierra Lone conflict, all revolutionaries who like him fought against an establishment that was oppressing them one wy or the other. In this guise, Gaddafi is essentially the freedom fighter that old Reader’s Digest article made him out to be.

Gaddafi was killed on October 20 2011 in his hometown Sirte in the final hours of an 8 month, NATO inspired civil war. While many are questioning the sort of death a man that lived for his country died, I feel that that was the only exit option available to the Brother Leader who had a life or death bounty on his head.

While we may hear reverse statements from the western leaders, who were quick to celebrate the death of a man whose hand they clasped happily in the past, as more people frown at the manner of his death, their complicity in his death and the destruction of his country should not be forgotten.

As an emancipated African, I pride myself with the fact that much of Africa mourned the death of the great man and many wished a leader of his ilk would happen to their nation in their lifetime. While the western press and governments take pride in their ability to get away with murder and nation wrecking, Africans are wising-up to their antics and hopefully would not allow them the freehand to run shod around the continent for long.

Sleep well Lion of Tripoli, you did not live in vain, and Libyans, when the fog clears from their eyes will recall this and rue your death.

Beauty and the Warlord: Beyond Blood Diamonds

The recent upsurge of interest in the Charles Taylor trial, prompted by the appearance of a runway model, pointed towards one major – even if age old – fact, that the West has a very patronising view of Africa’s problems. 

Though Charles Taylor faces 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity at The Hague, and is the first African president ever to be tried by an international court, the court continues to ignore the fact that Charles Taylor is a product of the western influences that were the main beneficiaries of his activities in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The trial is proving to be more than just the usual example of the unwieldiness of international justice.  The Liberian civil war and eventually the larger regional war involving four neighbouring countries started on December 24, 1989 when Charles Taylor returned to Liberia, allegedly from Libya, at the head of the then notorious rebel faction, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).

Starting at a time when the west began shrugging of the need to render support to its cold war allies, the wars were mainly financed by commercial entities and transnational organized criminal networks, which provided weapons and a market for resources that sustained military campaigns conducted by both governments and rebel forces.

Exchanging weapons for timber, rubber and gold in Liberia and diamonds in Sierra Leone, these unscrupulous businesses gained from human conflict.  Though the suggestion is of shady groups running around in conflict areas, cutting deals with both sides, the truth is less savoury, for involved were major corporations and some of the world's largest mineral extraction, oil and financial institutions who operate a “see no evil policy”.

Taylor, who became president in 2 August 1997, following a peace deal that ended the Liberian civil war, was at the middle of it all. It was during his term of office that he was first accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity because of his involvement in the Sierra Leone Civil War.

After opposition to his government led to another civil war in Liberia in 1999, international pressure forced him to step down and he went into exile in Nigeria in 2003 from where he was extradited in 2006 at the request of newly elected Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to face trial in The Hague. Taylor is accused of war crimes stemming from his involvement in Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war. Prosecutors say he supported the rebel armies Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) by giving them weapons in exchange for rough diamonds, charges denied by Mr Taylor.

One question that resounds in the western media is the one that ponders what Charles Taylor, with his antecedents, was doing at a dinner hosted by a man of Nelson Mandela’s class.  They fail to understand the peculiarities that surround the person of Charles Taylor – When the dinner was held; Charles Taylor had just assumed the presidency of Liberia, a position that was one of the clauses that ended the decade old Liberian civil war.

Charles Taylor was at the party because of the existing unspoken rule that allows a leader like him free reign until he leaves office.  Charles Taylor was enjoying one of the perquisites that leadership of an African state bestows on even the worst leaders a state can throw-up.

Back in 2007, Charles Taylor was the known devil, one whose ascendance to power saved African governments – particularly Nigeria and other West African countries – money spent on peacekeeping missions.  Though his antecedents was known by all the players, they were willing to turn the blind eye, at least for the while, even if that means the escalation of the situation in Sierra Leone where Charles Taylor has more than a transient interest.

Before the recent upsurge, caused by the appearance of supermodel Naomi Campbell and Mia Farrow, others have testified against the warlord turned president.  People that had their limbs amputated, children who were turned into child soldiers or forced into sexual slavery by faction commanders and their fighters have all appeared before the tribunal, bearing tales that shocked as well as inspired.  Constant in their accounts was the story of the involvement of the aforementioned opportunistic businessmen, outsiders who sought profit in diamonds, timber, rubber or weapons on the back of the war.  However, the horrifying testimonies of the victims of Mr. Taylor’s alleged atrocities   attracted marginal coverage in the Western media, until Ms Campbell’s subpoena.

Ms Campbell agreed that she met Charles Taylor at a 1997 dinner in South Africa but stressed that before then she has never heard of him, or of blood diamonds, or of "a country called Liberia.”, a situation that is true of many westerners.

The hope of prosecutors that Naomi Campbell’s appearance would throw further light on Taylor’s deals in conflict diamonds appeared to have come to naught, because, aside from the assumption that the diamonds might have come from Mr Taylor, the testimonies heard could only place Ms Campbell and Mr Taylor at the same dinner party.  The testimonies of Mia Farrow and Carole White, no matter how much overblown by the western media, only further buttresses the fact that without documented evidence, the three year old case against Mr Charles Taylor might turn out to be a monumental waste of the $20 million so far spent.

About $100,000 is being spent on Mr. Taylor's defence each month, paid for by donations from western governments who effectively turned a blind eye while Taylor was committing the crimes he stands accused of today.

Human rights campaigners believe that Taylor’s trial would set an example for Africa and send a strong message to other tyrants and warlords that justice is waiting for them, but we hope that perhaps the tribunal would look beyond the diamonds and focus more on the atrocities.  Perhaps it would look at the fates of two Nigerian journalists, Krees Imodibie of The Guardian and Tayo Awotusin from Daily Champion who were executed by Taylor’s troops, in August 1991 and avail their families and other victims of both Liberian civil wars and the conflict in Siearra Leone some form of compensation.

Another truth, hidden under the institutionalised ignorance to African affairs, is the fact that most Africans do not understand what the term blood diamond means.  To the west, blood diamonds are those that are used to exchange for weapons that are used for conflicts.  To the average African diamonds are novelties that very few people, aside from miners who are too poor to keep them, have held in their hand or have the resources to buy.

Perhaps, it is time to put the real beneficiaries of Africa’s war, international jewellers, miners and the fashion industry, the sources of the dollars that fuelled the wars, on the stand.

Perchance, this time, the prosecutors would look deeper at the circumstances surrounding Taylor’s ‘escape’ from a US jail on 15 September 1985. Taylor’s former associate, now Liberian senator, Prince Yomi Johnson claimed before the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on 27 August 2008 that the escape was orchestrated by the United States to engineer the overthrow of the Doe regime, a claim that has been echoed by Mr Taylor in his testimony at his trial in The Hague. Still, any news of US involvement in the wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone would not come as any surprise, at least not in West Africa, where the belief of Taylor being a US lackey has always existed.

Perhaps the court would subpoena American televangelist Pat Robertson who is alleged to have had business dealings with Charles Taylor and reportedly got diamond mining rights from the Warlord.

Perhaps when all these loopholes have been plugged, Africans will start believing the words of the West and maybe, African leaders would have reasons to fear the consequences of their actions.

As for the Taylor case, it transcends the model’s diamonds gift and butchered limbs.

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