A Difficult Dilemma

The people in the Muslim countries are often put in a strange moral dilemma. They are charmed by some ‘heroes’ and under their spell they start expecting miraculous results in getting freed from not only psychological, cultural and economic hegemony of Imperialists but also getting released from under the yoke of tyranny of despotic rules at home. There rise some ‘ charismatic leaders’ from among our ranks and with a little sleight of their hands make the things agreeable for the people and deceitfully overpower the country. They quell all those about whom they are distrustful of creating any resistance against their rule in future. Almost 42 years before on September 1, 1969 the same happened in Libya when Muammar Qaddafi, a colonel rank army officer, belonging to a Bedouin tribe Qadhadhfah of Sirte town, snatched the power in a bloodless coup against Kind Idrees. He abolished the constitution, put the monarchy to its end and declared the country a republic (Libyan Arab Republic).

Qaddafi was greatly influenced by Jamal Abdul Nasir’s philosophy of Arab Nationalism. Nasir himself, as a junior military officer, used to attend the meetings of Ikhwanul Muslimon to give the impression of being a committed religious person. Actually he was a slick man and soon after he, very cunningly, started making Ikhwans victims of his spite, crushing the Islamic movement and hanging almost whole of its first line of their leadership. At home Qaddafi did the same what Nasir had done to quell all those whom he thought distrustful and likely to challenge his authority and check his wrongdoings. He ran a state sponsored terrorism policy of assassinations and detentions. He used to preside over the executions of his opponents, particularly the Islamist elements. He was notorious to have links with the global terrorist groups. He did not hesitate to recruit the criminals to assassin his critics living out of Libya.

But to spellbound the outer world, particularly the Muslim masses in the Arab world, he used many deceitful tricks and spread many of the fictitious stories about his being a devout Muslim, committed to reviving the lost dignity of the Muslim Ummah. We used to hear he lived in a tent and when the ambassadors of different countries came to visit him, first of all he preached sermons from the Holy Quran.

‘King of the kings’(title given to him by some traditional African leaders) in Africa, and ‘Man of the Green Book’ Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, posed himself as a champion of Palestinian cause but his loud words never got translated into any fruitful and practical step to help them. In the land of Omer Mukhtar, the Lion of the Libyan Desert and one of the greatest guerrilla fighters of the 20th century who fought against Italian colonization of Libya, captured and hanged in 1931, Qaddafi ‘colonized’ his own people depriving them of freedom and human rights. In Libya, one of the biggest oil rich countries, during the 42 years autocratic rule of Qaddafi, the wealth remained limited mostly for nepotism. Qaddafi family, an elite class and different tribes bribed for buying their loyalties for the regime benefited from this wealth. He was ‘a fondled and undisciplined child’ in the lap of the Soviet Union before its fall. He did many mischievous things keeping the international community vexed and angry, mostly kept the policies on many issues adverse to the stances taken by the Muslim Ummah.

Just after the fall of Saddam Hussain, another ruler in the Middle East enjoying arbitrary authorities in Iraq, Qaddafi, turning his back to his ‘Green Book’ and giving up his radical theories, started to behave like a ‘disciplined and well mannered child’. He not only agreed to abandon developing the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but allowed the Americans to make away with everything in his nuclear plant, even removing scratch, not leaving the screws and nails used in the plant. Hence billions of dollars spent there, got wasted. Though Libya remained a debt free country but it made no tremendous progress that is seen in some tiny Gulf States having much less oil wealth than Libya. He also admitted his crimes and humiliatingly agreed to pay into compensation for the victims of Lockerbie bombing, American victims of UTA Flight 772 bombing.

Sword (weapon) was his means to come in power and same has proved to be the means to disgracefully remove him from power. After the waves of revolutions arose in the Arab world and the people of Tunisia and Egypt overthrew the ugly statues of despotic rule, Qaddafi must have read what was written for him on the wall but he made mistake to be able to change the direction of the winds of the ‘Arab Spring’. He was destined to meet his awful end. NATO war planes continued pouring bombs on his hideouts for a long time. If he had chosen to remain in power and defend himself and his country from NATO aggression, where was his Air Force, not having a single war plane flying in the air to retaliate the NATO attacks? If he did not develop the defense power of his country to face the foreign aggressions during his 42 years in power, then what for the oil wealth had been? Was it not only to defeat his people?

The people in Yemen and Syria too are out to oust their rulers from power, but because they have not as heavy oil resources as Libya has and secondly Israel thinks Bashar Al-Asad’s rule in its interest, so NATO forces are indifferent to the cries of the people who have their patience exhausted. But in Libya, due to its wealth of oil and other natural resources, there is a great charm for the Western countries, so NATO stepped forward to overthrow Qaddafi. And this has put many of us in a difficult dilemma, whether to show our pleasure on fall of one more crumbling pillar of dictatorship in the Muslim world or to express our sorrow on his ‘martyrdom’.? After all there is an old saying that the foe of our foe is our friend and the friend of our foe is our foe. The elements of Arab Spring in Libya who stood against Qaddafi have to practically answer this question whether they had been puppets of NATO countries or they really wanted to get rid of a cruel man who brought disgrace for them. If they defend their national interests and dignity, then we will be proud of them.