The unfolding events in North Africa and the Middle East have had special impact at my house. My stepchildren were raised in Libya, living there until they were reunited with their mother after 15 years of enforced separation. In the past decade, first one, then the other have come to live with us. Although they have always had American citizenship because their mother is American, they faced many of the same problems as immigrants who have no family in the United States: homesickness, culture shock, and having to confront the fact that the education they received in Libya was sadly deficient.
In political discussions, they have never hidden their deep disgust for "That Man," their code for Muammar al-Gaddafi, the self-described "Brother Leader" who has ruled Libya with bribery, subterfuge, domestic terror and murder since coming to power in 1969. Libya has the largest reservoirs of oil on the African continent even though two-thirds of the country remains unexplored. Thus, the details of Gaddafi's ostentatious personal spending and plundering of the nation's considerable wealth for the personal benefit of his family and cronies while a huge percentage of the population lives below the poverty line have been grist for many hours of eye-rolling and head-shaking.
In Libya, of course, they could only speak such criticisms in whispers to the most trusted friends, and even then only carefully. Gaddafi's secret police and his ideological storm-troopers, the Greens, named after the "Green Book," his highly derivative and frequently self-contradictory treatise on political, social and economic matters, have created an understandable paranoia throughout the country: "Is this person I'm being open with going to turn me in?" Libyans have spent years in prison for minor outspokenness. Political prisoners have been disappeared and, in at least one instance, at Abu Salim Prison in 1996, murdered en masse.
My stepchildren assumed, as did many Libyans, that the only reprieve from Gaddafi's erratically iron-fisted rule would come with his death. And then, perhaps, one of his seven sons would step into his shoes. The most likely candidates, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the suave would-be reformer, and Moatessem, the tight-lipped, cold-eyed former lieutenant-colonel of the army who is now national security adviser to the regime.
A little over a year ago, my step-daughter joined an on-line community of Libyans, exiles, expatriates and Libyans still living in the country. She focused on the most visible opposition tolerated by the regime: the Families of the Victims of Abu Salim Prison, where 1200 inmates were mass-executed 15 years ago. You can read about it at Proud of Another Young Activist. Her hopes were high. In 10 years, she said, perhaps some reform could be brought about. Never in her wildest dreams did she - nor my stepson, now living in England - think that the increasingly violent Libyan uprising we've witnessed since Tuesday would offer the possibility that Gaddafi might be quickly toppled from his perch.
Still just a possibility, of course. Gaddafi is no Zine El Abidine Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak. Many view him as a clown. And certainly his love of costumes, his all-female bodyguard contingent, his megalomaniacal projects such as the Great Man-made River sucking fossil water out of the desert, and his pan-Arab, pan-African antics give credence to that view. But the clownishness is accompanied by ruthlessness and a merciless opportunism.
Although he had nothing to do with them, the September 11 attacks on the United States offered him a new opportunity to buff his image with his long-time nemesis. He surrendered uranium centrifuges acquired via Pakistan, cooperated with Washington against al Qaeda - an easy thing for him to do given his hatred for the Saudis - opened the country again to foreign oil companies, and moved to privatize many government enterprises. Thus did he become America's friend without having to do squat about improving his grim human rights record.
My stepchildren's extended family still lives in Libya - mostly in Tripoli, but some in Benghazi, 450 miles away. Since the revolt in Benghazi was triggered Tuesday by the arrest of Fatih Tarbel, the spokesman for the Families of the Victims of Abu Salim, we have been in regular contact with them and other Libyans in and out of the protest movement for several days. Only now - with elements of the Libyan army reportedly defecting, Libya's ambassador to the Arab League resigning, Benghazi reportedly completely liberated by dissidents, and Al Jazeera finally reporting extensively on a resistance that was only visible on social media just two days ago - do I feel comfortable speaking about some details of discussions we have had via cellphone and Facebook.
Here are two of countless examples:
On Friday, we feared for several hours that my stepdaughter's brother, 15 years old, had been shot in a protest march in Tripoli. It turned out that he was completely OK. He had been in a small protest but far away from the alleged shooting, a clash that we could never confirm. In Tripoli, where opposition has not been highly evident previously, three people informed us by cellphone an hour ago (1 p.m. Pacific time) that more people are now coming out in large numbers. The 17 February Libya web site is posting reports from various social media sources that protesters are being met with live ammunition.
A few hours ago, a young friend in Benghazi told my stepdaughter by phone from in front of the court there, where thousands of protesters remain encamped, that "African" mercenaries hired by the government to attack protesters are being landed at the airport and smuggled into the city by ambulance. But recently they have been stopped by Benghazi residents inspecting all cars coming on the airport road toward the city. With every report we hear firsthand from these contacts we seek as much reliability as possible by asking "Did you see this yourself?" or "How do you know this?" There are, of course, as always in a war zone, many rumors. A statement starting out as completely factual can be exaggerated or utterly transformed after it passes among half-a-dozen people excited by the rapid course of events.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera is reporting that Sheikh Faraj al-Zawy of the Zawayyi clan has threatened the government (and told the U.S. and EU that if they do not stop the massacres, they will cut off the oil from one area). A large clan in the center of Libya, Werfallah, has today chosen to join the resistance.
One could argue that this uprising might not have occurred had the government not arrested Tarbel on Tuesday. That brought 2000 into the streets of Benghazi, and they were met with force. Once the government had killed a few dozen protesters, tens of thousands turned out for their funerals, and the government escalated by killing some of the mourners. Since then, Tarbel has crossed the red line from merely calling for justice over the massacre at Abu Salim Prison in 1996 (as he had done for more than a year at a weekly demonstration) to calling for Gaddafi to step down immediately. When he said that Friday in a speech on the court steps in Benghazi, the crowd roared approval.
If the killings continue, I expect it may go as Bahrain has done, from Tarbel's "Down with the regime" to "Death to the regime."
What's happening in Libya is far more amazing than what's happened in Tunisia and Egypt. Although public political opposition in those countries was constrained prior to the uprisings - some of it banned outright - it nevertheless existed. In Libya, it did not. As noted, Gaddafi was utterly ruthless, and despite his recent efforts at economic liberalization, a high level of political oppression continued with no apparent end in sight.
Gaddafi has no place to flee. Clearly, he can't go to Saudi Arabia, where his head would probably be axed from his body the same hour he arrived. The consequences of his having no exit means the outcome in Libya is likely to be far bloodier than in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen or Bahrain. Some reports say it may already have been.
But the latest news out of Libya, changing hour by hour, indicates that what many would have laughed you out of the room for suggesting a month ago may actually be only days or weeks away: an end to the world's longest-lasting Arab dictatorship.
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Please check out these diaries:
Libya Machine-Gunning Protesters Now, Boycott Shell/BP+ by Ralph Lopez
ACTION for Libya - Walk Like an Egyptian & Move Your Country by conchita.
UPDATE: The photo below is one reaction to the speech tonight by Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam.