Jamahiriya: An alternative view

The celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Libyan 'revolution' of 1969, in effect a coup d'etat by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and some of his associates and relatives, brings to mind a conversation I had just after that event with a friend of mine, then and now, a senior Algerian diplomat. The Algerian government had been surprised and bemused as any other about the emergence of this bizarre, radical and eccentric regime in a fellow North African state. The then Algerian president, Houari Boumedienne, had asked my friend to visit Tripoli and assess the new leadership there. When he returned to London, I asked him how he had found the Libyan leaders - at that time Colonel Gaddafi and his close associate Major Abdessalam Jalloud, a relative of the colonel's who was subsequently stripped of power. The answer of the Algerian diplomat, in elegant French, was unforgettable: Ils ont un niveau intellectuel plutôt modeste. In more Anglo-Saxon terms, he thought they were pretty stupid.

In the ensuing four decades or so, little - indeed nothing - has occurred to alter that judgement. One of the most costly aspects of the Libyan revolution, one that comes from Gaddafi himself, is administrative chaos. I recall that on my visit in 2002 to Libya officials and academics - those who did not treat us to lengthy disquisitions on The Green Book - would, in an embarrassed and reserved sort of way, say that their country had 'management problems', an indirect reference to Gaddafi's style. With many of the elite educated in the West, and with access to Italian television, people were evidently fed up, but resigned. During that visit, I got an insight into the chaotic management system prevailing in that country. It was announced that on a particular Sunday there would be a meeting of ministers, in effect a Cabinet meeting. However, since Libya officially has no capital, no one knew where this would be and so senior officials and their advisers were driving around the desert from one place to another trying to find out where they were supposed to meet.

Since the international rehabilitation of Libya after 9/11, it has become common to argue that Libya is changing, is 'not the country it was a decade ago' and so forth. Libya has certainly changed its foreign and defence policies - many countries do, even Stalin's Russia or Kim Jong-il's North Korea. Some small changes in the human-rights situation have also occurred, but arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and disappearances still take place. In addition, and as every Libyan is aware, for all the rhetoric about 'revolution' and the 'state of the masses', this leadership has squandered the country's wealth on foolish projects at home and costly adventures abroad. With a per-capita oil output roughly equal to that of Saudi Arabia, Libya has none of the urban and transport development, and none of the educational and health facilities, that, at least, that country and other oil-producers in the Gulf can boast. Tripoli, the unofficial capital, retains the impressive white buildings and squares of Italian colonial rule, but these are in a state of extreme dilapidation - Tripoli is the Arab equivalent of Havana.

As someone who has lived and worked in Yemen, I can testify to the damage wrought by Libya in that part of the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Libya incited a war between North and South Yemen in 1972, then promised large-scale aid to the leftwing regime in South Yemen in the 1980s, only to cut off this aid abruptly when there was a disagreement over events in Ethiopia.

On Palestine, Libya has been a destructive influence - neither helping the Palestinians to organise themselves effectively so as to negotiate from a position of strength nor promoting a reasonable peace. Libya may be marginal to the Arab-Israeli question, but it has at the same time continued to voice extreme anti-Israeli views. On the eve of the 40th anniversary celebrations this month, Gaddafi told a meeting of African leaders that Israel was responsible for all of their continent's conflicts and problems. The official Libyan position is that divided Israel should be replaced with a unified state called 'Israteen'. As innovative as this may sound, it is just another way of trying to eliminate the state of Israel.

Today, few, if any, in the Arab world show any respect towards Gaddafi's regime. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but may have to do with Iran displacing Libya as the patron of radicals in Lebanon, Tripoli has also long championed chauvinist anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite rhetoric. During my 2002 visit, I endured a long rant from the then Libyan ambassador to Tehran, denouncing Shiites as, in effect, accomplices of Western imperialism.

Libya is certainly not the most brutal regime in the world. But the Jamahiriya (Gaddafi's own term, meaning 'state of the masses') remains a grotesque entity. It is not unlike the early modern European states - a protection racket run by a group of people, their relatives and friends, who have wrested control of a state, its economy and its people by force. In 40 years no attempt has been made to secure popular legitimation. Libya cannot even point to the achievements that some of the other Arab oil-producers have made, namely that they have promoted education, social services and employment. The outside world may be compelled, by considerations of security, energy and investment, to deal with this state. There is no reason, however, to indulge its fantasies or the fictions that are constantly promoted, within the country and abroad, about its political and social character.

Fred Halliday is emeritus professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics.