Kate Adie: The Gaddafi I knew | World news | The Guardian

• Kate Adie
• The Guardian, Wednesday 2 March 2011
• Article history

Colonel Gaddafi speaking in 1977. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

I feel obliged to dip into books which have been given to me as a present. "In need freedom is latent . . ." Late at night in Tripoli in 1984 I found Colonel Gaddafi's Green Book hard going. He'd signed the book that morning, in revolutionary green ink of course, a curious V-shape, as if an inky fly had slid down the page and staggered back up. He'd also given me a Qur'an and wished me Happy Christmas.

Nothing was ever straightforward dealing with Gaddafi.

There was little to do in revolutionary Libya in the evenings. Television was dreary, full of the Leader's speeches and only occasionally enlivened by pirated foreign programmes, including the nation's favourite: Monty Python's Flying Circus. Libyans watched it, not laughing but nodding. They said: "That's our country they're showing." It was an oil-rich country with broken pavements and an atmosphere that discouraged taking a walk in the dark. No obvious threat, no armed men prowling the street, just hotel employees and anonymous regime officials twitching with an unexpressed fear that "things might happen . . ." So I read on: "No democracy without popular congresses, and committees everywhere."

In frequent visits since, I've noticed that the Colonel's slogans plastered on the walls of public buildings have faded somewhat, but he still looms large, even when cornered. And when the possibility of freedom emerged in the city of Benghazi a few days ago, a bright-eyed young man was shouting joyfully, "We're forming a committee." This is the new Libya, which needs a government – and old habits die hard.

The young man had grown up with the obligatory sign in his school saying "Committees everywhere". And before this latest revolution, it felt like a threat, as if a committee was a species of lurking animal that might pop into view at any moment, trailing paperclips and agendas and demanding that You at The Back Pay Attention or Else. No one needed reminding that the nation was ruled through fear.

Committees were the Colonel's pet instruments of government, theoretically. In the Green Book, he set out his arguments, or rather decisions, about how a nation should be run. It begins somewhat discouragingly with a chapter entitled The Solution of The Problem of Democracy.

The Book has handy diagrams involving People's Committees, Basic Popular Congresses, People's Congresses and Municipal Congresses, with lots of arrows, all in revolutionary green. In the 80s, I made repeated attempts to find out if this system actually functioned.

Admittedly, Libyan television frequently carried footage of circles of traditionally white-clad elderly men in the desert sitting and talking animatedly. In the cities, eager young men pounded fists and yelled slogans in similar gatherings. However, the minimum of viewing confirmed that the same two meetings appeared most evenings. I put the suggestion that I should sit in on one of these sessions to the ubiquitous Ministry of Information minders assigned to all foreign journalists. There was blank incomprehension.

"What for?" asked one, in his curious Libyan-Welsh accent acquired on a course in Newport.

I replied I'd like to see his country's form of democracy in action. There was a long discussion. Had I stepped into a sensitive area? Easily done, as the precise size of the population, of the military forces, of the police force and of Gaddafi's family were all out of bounds.

Some discussion followed, and an unwilling minder went off to find transport. Hours later, we were still touring the suburbs of Tripoli trying to find a Committee. Eventually we arrived at a scruffy bit of wasteland on which a marquee sagged. I congratulated the minders, who rolled their eyes. "Is there a problem?" I inquired. Forcefully, a Welsh-sounding voice hissed: "Booooring."

He was dead right. A score of men, several snoring in the morning heat, were inside the marquee. Careful questioning produced no agenda, no evidence of discussion, but an animated realisation that having been there for several hours, it was time for tea again.

"Do they ever discuss politics?"

The minders looked horrified and confided that such matters were absolutely off-limits.

Perhaps in the first flush of revolution there had been some elements of participation and debate, but they had long-since withered. Occasionally, when the international press descended for a major event, someone stage-managed a noisy forum and stuck up a notice saying People's Congress. Much shouting and sloganeering would fill the air. Actual debate was absent. The regime was intolerant of any dissent, retribution was frightening and people disappeared. It was not unknown for human limbs to be found in skips awaiting rubbish collection.

So how did the nation function?

There were ministries – just about. Some able men managed to push various policies into practice, but were frequently thwarted by capricious and instant legislation. One afternoon the Colonel addressed a deliriously enthusiastic meeting and suddenly announced that all imported luxury cars were to be got rid of. Fifteen minutes later, a bodyguard sidled up to him to mention that several vehicles in his own motorcade were on fire outside. The order was rescinded on the spot.

Appointments were made without relevance to merit. A nervous civil service never questioned the coming and goings. At the Interior Ministry I asked the man in the biggest office (with a broken fax machine and no working telephone) if he were the minister.

"Maybe," he replied, adding that he had been last year, then someone else had been appointed while he was still in post, but had subsequently . . . er . . . left town . . . "So, maybe I'm the minister," he added helpfully.

The Transport Ministry – like many in other countries – was inured to grandiose schemes. One consequence was the construction of 34 fly-overs to deal with Tripoli's chaotic traffic. They were quite elegant, designed in Europe and built without the usual chunks of concrete missing in many Libyan building works. Unfortunately, no one commissioned any roads to join them together, so for many years they decorated the landscape like giant public sculptures.

The Justice Ministry struggled in a country where summary justice, secret police and the personal clout of Gaddafi's henchmen meant so much more than the mere judicial process.

Katie Adie reporting from Tripoli after the Americans bombed the city in 1986. Photograph: Frank Zabci/Rex Features

I witnessed this during the trial of a young English oil-worker who had been picked up by young "Revolutionary Guards" during a nasty period of radical outrages against the ordinary population and unfortunate foreigners in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We, the British press, had been assured by the Colonel that we would see justice being done. We might have, had the ministry minders managed to find out the date, the time and the place of the hearing. Realising they hadn't delivered what was expected, they went into complete panic-mode. An hour later, I and my TV crew hurtled into a courtroom, empty save for a lone figure on a bench. It was Malcolm, the defendant. "You're too late. I've been convicted."

I turned on the senior minder to deliver my views – and he scooted out the back door of the court like a rabbit from a fox. A short while later, the door opened and three men in the Italianate robes of Libyan judges walked in quickly and sat down. A small swarm of lawyers and officials cantered behind them.

"Set up the camera," said the panting minder.

"We've missed the trial," I pointed out.

"No, no – we're going to do it all again – for you."

The only thing that slightly surprised me was that the verdict remained the same.

Farce mingled with fear. That is how the country ran. At the very heart of the mysterious administration was a clutch of men loyal to – but still very scared of – the Colonel himself.

There are few times when any of us experience total fear. To tremble with fear is a cliche. However, on two occasions I noticed officials in his presence start to shake. I wondered if they were ill, then realised that they were unable to control their fear, sweating and twitching and trying to edge out of his direct gaze. I once asked one of his inner circle – we were not in Libya – why his close colleagues behaved that way. He thought and then said that the Colonel's rages were occasionally so terrible that many thought he might kill. "It's terrible," he said. "But what can we do? He has the power. There are no alternatives in this kind of world. I'd rather not talk about it."

The outside world mostly saw the circus, the oddities, the bizarre behaviour. "Flaky," chuckled President Reagan.

Gaddafi called himself Colonel occasionally and refused to acknowledge the phrase President, preferring the term Leader. He was costumed theatrically – admiral, desert Bedouin, Italian lounge-lizard. He occasionally used the trappings of conventional power – long motorcades – or the occasional white horse. However, he was just as likely to turn up driving a battered small Peugeot with the bumpers missing. I know, because he nearly ran me over one morning trying to park the wreck very inexpertly outside my hotel.

He had a troupe of women all usually referred to as his bodyguards – and indeed, one or two seemed as if they might be quite useful in a tight corner. However, there was always one, perhaps two, quiet, physically compact Berbers unobtrusively just a few yards away: amiably ruthless men, who smiled when I pointed to the women, and remarked that it was useful that the foreign press concentrated on the women . . .

Gaddafi grew notorious for weird behaviour – pitching tents in cities, spouting seven-hour speeches and making absurd claims. However, ignorance drove this as much as instability.

What actually went on in his innermost circle was virtually impossible to learn with any certainty. As his sons grew up, appeared in public, travelled abroad, partied and disgraced themselves with the behaviour of wilful rich brutes, there was no public mention of the succession. It became harder to pin all gestures from the country on the Colonel himself: his second son, Saif al Islam, ex-LSE, shrewd and calculating but much more sophisticated than his father, seemed to be acquiring his own powerbase. He spoke for the regime, travelled and negotiated. However, the Colonel has not retired – and there is no doubt that within the family circle, his word is law.

In the past few years I've raised the subject of what would happen in the future with those who see the Leader regularly: a smooth succession? A violent family quarrel? It has always occasioned shrugs and a nervous silence. It was not to be talked about. Even the recent feverish development, the lucrative oil contracts, the business opportunities being snapped up by foreigners and entrepreneurial Libyans had not sharpened the outline of the future.

True, more foreign travel and the advent of the satellite dish with its Arab news have widened the experience of many of the young. But they have had to contend with a complete lack of available reliable information within their own borders. Factual news is an unknown element in Libyan newsrooms. Ordinary folk have relied much more on gossip and what they hear from family and neighbours – leading to a mind-set ill-equipped to deal with the chaotic implosion of a society. Some of the wilder stories of the past week are the consequence of believing anything other than the official – and rubbish – version of events.

And when the Middle East rebellions started, there was little reaction from the family who have had the power of life and death for more than 40 years, who retain a chilling, arrogant confidence.

Even when Benghazi – always a truculent city for Gaddafi – made its bid for freedom, there was merely the usual public stream of ludicrous accusations and dotty excuses.

However, this time in the Bab el Azzizya barracks they're watching 24-hour Arabic TV – and they must be seeing joyful young people across their nation, unafraid, talking about the hitherto unthinkable – about the future. And, ironically, mentioning committees.

So, down with "committees everywhere", and up with really democratic gatherings, with people speaking up without fear.

via guardian.co.uk