The crack of gunfire is no unfamiliar sound in Libya, where a brutal civil war has raged for eight months. But this week, guns are fired not in anger, but in joy over the death of Libya’s former dictator of 40 years, Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
Gadhafi’s regime could be considered one of the most brutal in Africa as he was involved in numerous terrorist attacks, including the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by U.S. servicemen@@http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1653848.stm@@ and the bombing of Pan Am flight 103,@@http://history1900s.about.com/od/1980s/a/flight103.htm@@ also known as the Lockerbie Bombing. His regime was equally brutal domestically, where dissenters routinely disappeared at the hands of the government.
All dictators have a certain degree of insanity. That’s just a prerequisite for the job. Hitler was fascinated with the occult,@@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_and_occultism@@ Kim Jong Il fashions himself as a God-King who claims to have shot 18 hole-in-ones on his first (ever) round of golf, etc. Gadhafi was equally mad in his own way. He had the best and worst fashion sense I have ever seen, employed a cadre of highly trained virgin beauties as his personal guard and kept a scrapbook (complete with love letters) devoted to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
A lot of buzz around campus concerned his death, and like any major news story, student-generated rumors abound. This can be attributed to the haze that surrounds the despot’s death.
In the last week, I’ve heard everything from “he was shot in the head with his own gold-plated pistol” to “he was driven around Sirte strapped ‘Death Proof’-style to the hood of a rebel truck.” While these are hilarious and popular scenarios, they can mostly be attributed to the same fervor that had students saying Osama Bin Laden was caught watching porn when he was shot by U.S. Navy SEALs.
Everyone loves the death of a monster, but most of these rumors are ill-founded. The official National Transitional Council report is that Gadhafi was taken out of the sewer, injured but alive, and was hit in the head by crossfire during an ambulance ride to the city of Misrata, Libya where the nearest hospital was located. Other unconfirmed video footage shows Gadhafi’s bloody body being trampled by NTC troops. No matter the case, I doubt many will be shedding tears over his death.
However, the manner of Gadhafi’s death matters a great deal after a war that was rife with abuses on both sides. According to UN reports, the NTC executed a number of captured Gadhafi soldiers in every city they invaded, and Gadhafi’s forces were widely accused of using rape as a weapon of war. While I don’t know the exact circumstances of his death, I have seen the “unconfirmed” video footage (available on Al-Jazeera for the sick-minded) that shows what happened afterward, and I must say, it is appalling. The NTC should know better than to parade its dead enemies around in the street if it has the aim of becoming a legitimate democracy in Africa. In situations like this, it is in the best interest of the revolution to take the moral high ground lest they run the risk of appearing to be nothing but more of the same.
Killing Gadhafi in the first place was a missed chance. Had they kept him alive, he could have stood trial for the various crimes he and his regime committed in front of the population he oppressed for decades. This technique worked in Egypt with the recently deposed Hosni Mubarak (see my previous publication), who was put in front of the public as a weakened and broken man so that Egyptians could move forward and show they stood above him by subjecting him to the rule of law. This can never be the case with Libya because the chance for Gadhafi and his family to stand trial in a democratic Libya has passed.
While the Libyans still have the ability to start anew with a people-run government in place, there will always be unnecessary bloodshed on their hands, profoundly affecting their legitimacy in the eyes of the international community and more importantly at home. The NTC, however, is taking measures after the fact I believe will help mend the situation in the eyes of the international community. They have performed a medical examination on Gadhafi’s body to try to clear up the circumstances of his death, although the results have yet to be released.
The bottom line? Libya has a chance to be one of a select few African countries to enjoy the inherent benefits of democracy and even more, they have the rare opportunity to be a democracy with a massive cash flow from the United States and European Union. They can use this opportunity to thrust Libya from ruin and turn it into a thriving nation with a dark past, or it can take the route often traveled in that part of the world and redefine what it is to be a banana republic.