Soon Gaddafi is going to be forgotten and Libya and its people will forge ahead experimenting with new governance. What direction they will undertake to solve immediate socio-economic issues is going to be a very difficult decision to make. Naturally, every Libyan national is aware that their energy revenues of the last 42 years that Gaddafi was in power, if managed adequately for the well being of the Libyan people, would have made Libya the most developed nation in the Arab, Moslem, and African world.
We are not going to dwell on why Gaddafi mismanaged the wealth of Libya. Nor are we going to discuss why his educated children did not advise him to manage the wealth of the country in a manner which would have improved the lives of the Libyan people, thus enabling Gaddafi to earn their respect. Instead, Gaddafi applied a “business as usual” approach.
Gaddafi was able to overthrow the Senussi leadership and take power. The “business as usual” approach which prevails in the world today is conflict-driven and fosters a culture of foolish self aggrandizement. The man created a conflict between his image of himself and his responsibility as a leader-manager, which Libya and its people needed badly. His hallucination led him to claim to be the King of African Kings. This made him the laughing stock of the world, but financing and arming conflicting groups in Africa, Asia and Europe leading to the death of many innocent human beings is no laughing matter, nor was the Lockerby tragedy.
Due to her intelligence, patience and diplomatic savoir faire, Miss Condoleezza Rice in a private dinner with the King of Kings of Africa convinced him to abandon his nuclear program, which would have saved him today. The North Korean nuclear program is definitely saving the leader of North Korea and so are the Iranian Mullahs saved by their nuclear program. My hat is off to Miss Rice. We all have read about the feeling Gaddafi expressed about Miss Rice, and we saw the press reports of pictures of Miss Rice gathered by Gaddafi in an album. Miss Condoleezza Rice capabilities were underestimated. The news about Gaddafi’s “crush” over Miss Rice makes everyone wonder.
The world is grateful to Miss Rice and is glad that Gaddafi abandoned his nuclear program. However, Gaddafi should have known better than to raise arms against his own people. Didn’t he see what happened to Mubarak in Egypt on his Eastern border and to Benali on his western border? Gaddafi, his children and his advisers should have known better. He should have dropped the old paradigm of conflictual thinking and adopted a “new wisdom” which eluded both Mubarak and Benali. He should have held a conference, inviting the participation of the Libya people’s representatives. He should have announced his retirement, given an exact audit of the Libyan financial situation, abandoned his interference in other countries’ internal affairs, and encouraged the Libyan people to create a new governance system under the new wisdom process and in his old age, go live in a tent with his women body guards in the midst of his tribe. If he had done that, everyone would have applauded him, and in spite of his follies, he would have been forgiven.
He asked the Algerian leadership for advice. What was their response: selling him arms and military transport while at the same time providing him with Western Sahara separatists Polisario mercenary troops. Everyone knows where the Algerian advice led Gaddafi. I hope that the Algerian leadership is intelligent enough not to think the unthinkable and try to invade Libya militarily and restore the dictator back to power. This could make Egypt intervene along with other countries bordering Libya, thereby occupying Libyan territory because of its oil and gas deposits. NATO will not stay “les Bras croises”.
Algeria’s leadership as it stands cannot be trusted. Morocco is living this experience with the Algerian leadership in its southern Sahara. Unable to invade the Moroccan Sahara, the Algerian leadership created a surrogate known as the Wester Sahara Separatist Group, Polisario, to do its dirty work and keep Morocco in check.
The best thing that could happen to the Libyan people is for Gaddafi and his family to leave Libya if they have not done so yet and leave the Libyan people to their own destiny.
But then, with all the butchering of Libyan people by the Gaddafi troops and the mercenaries including the Polisario, the Libyan people will not rest until he is captured and tried in a Libyan revolutionary court.
http://www.moroccoboard.com/viewpoint/120-mostafa-chtaini-/5403-algeria-and-post-gaddafi-libya
