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A blog entry from one of my friends from KC who lives in Libya now

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TraceOneInfinite:
http://agreeablelife.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/libya-as-i-see-it/

Libya As I See It

A Parable Of Hurt, Hate, Revenge, And, Most Of All, Greed - Understandably Personal

I've had this for a while but wasn't able to post it earlier since I had no web access. The only place I found in town with public internet access is crowded, musty, and it took me over an hour to sign in and make this post. You're welcome!

    "Fortune is changeful, but mankind are steadfast in their ways. So long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out."

    "There is great valor in the limbs whilst it fails in the head."

Students of human conflict would acknowledge that a victory fueled entirely by vengeance is, in essence, void of both honor and glory. It earns the conqueror as much denigration as it does sympathy for the defeated. And although I wish for very few things more than seeing Libya excepting itself from this acknowledgement, I fear it cannot, and I will share with you the sources of my worry as I untangle my conflicting emotions and my distorted thoughts on what is happening in this unique country.

As I write this from Sabha, a town dominated by Gaddafi loyalists and tribesmen in the Libyan South, I struggle to filter out real news from rumors on Google Realtime, which has made itself my preferred source of updates on the rapid changes in Libya. I still am uncertain whether my ability to read and understand Arabic is a useful aide in fetching credible news on cyberspace, or is simply exposing me to hearsay of googlian proportions.

Following the "news", I am overcome by a sense of doubt in my own integrity and character. I feel as though I reacted with an inconsistency that defied morality when I listened to Saif Al-Islam Al-Gaddafi as he promised a brighter future for Libya. During the past few years, and in several local and international media appearances, Junior Gaddafi seemed both sincere and capable in his design for change, but more important was the fact that most Libyans living in Libya believed the son's leadership would be an agreeable way to improve the disposition of the Libyan government toward its citizens without aggravating his iconic father.

By 1981, the year I was born on a river-bank in the American Midwest, Muammar Al-Gaddafi had been in power for strong 12 years, during which many of Libya's sons and daughters were wrongfully detained, tortured, killed, lost their rightful life-possessions, or any combination of the above in the name of the "People's Revolution". This sort of transgression, to which Saif referred last year in LSE when he spoke of the reality of the human rights scene in Libya, was sufficient to acclimatize my parents, along with most Libyans, to the idea that if they valued their lives and the lives of their loved ones in Libya, they had better keep their heads down and mouths shut. And aside from my dad's occasional sarcastic remarks as he watched Libyan TV in early 1990s, they did get along rather well.

But I did not. I grew up resenting the inability to dissent. I loathed, as I still do, oppression in all its forms, and I was not the least bit shy of sharing my angry sentiments with others. Motivated in part by juvenile idealism, but mostly irritated by the pre-Islamic, pan-Arabist, uber-traditionalism of the Libyan South, I liberally articulated my ideas in the form of biting monthly articles and shorts that were hand-written on white poster paper and hung on a wall facing the principal's office—an ambitious magazine to which my frustratingly stoic friend, Malik, and I were Editors-in-Chief as well as sole contributors; and because of those monthly eruptions of public rebellion during my freshman and sophomore years of High School, the principal, who was a Mharbi of the Magrahi sect, and thus a cousin of both Abdullah Assanusi and Abdulbaset Almagrahi, advised my widowed mother that her 90lb, 15 year old son was a "dangerous threat to the social structure, and to the religious and political systems of the Great Jamahirya," hence, warranting my banishment from school. My claim to virtue was further demoralized by being concurrently guilty of planning, bankrolling and DJ-ing a less noble, but far more exciting underground coed new-year party to which the principal's attractive cousin was unanimously voted a guest of neighborly admiration (she was in the class next door, and I had to come up with a democratic way to get her in without offending her less attractive classmates. I failed. They were offended.)

Not long after that incident, which elevated me to rock star-status among my Sabhawi peers, and only few months after my 18th birthday, I shocked my family and friends with my sudden departure (more like escape) to a land that was, to most Libyans, as obscure as a distanced planet, earning me, quite possibly, the distinction of being the only person in the English-speaking world who is eligible to write an instructional manual on how a trifling Libyan teenager from 1990s' Sabha could independently get out of an embargoed state, apply for a US passport abroad, and fly half way around the globe to start a new life in a new, freer world. When my Air France plane landed in JFK, I knew I left my Libyan identity behind in a hopeless Libya, one to which I thought I shall not return so long as Mr. Gaddafi remained at its helm.

But a decade later, and more than 7000 miles away in Palo Alto, California, I heard and saw an older, sensible Gaddafi on Larry King Live confessing to his past mistakes and speaking of a new Libya. He seemed wiser, or at least it was obvious that he no longer deemed himself infallible. The same Supreme Ruler who once regarded the United States as The Devil Incarnate was on international TV, exchanging niceties with one of America's most vivid cultural icons.

I spent long hours in the succeeding months studying the changes that had occurred in Libya since I left, but mostly since 2005 with Saif leading the voice of progress through his Libya of Tomorrow initiative. The closer I looked, the more I was persuaded that the old man was, indeed, voluntarily or otherwise, losing vigor as his sons, primarily Saif and Mohammed, infused new energy into the country's institutions.

By 2010, my conversion had been completed, and I had become a zealous believer in the "Libya of Tomorrow."And there I stood in Tripoli, the economic and political heart of a nation recovering from its past wounds, humbly giving what I could to build a rosier future founded on reconcilement between Gaddafi and his numerous adversaries, including thousands of middle age, wealthy businessmen and influential academics who escaped his iron fist to Europe and the US.

There had always been, in all nations, a lethargic group whose main role consists in blaming other, more productive strata of society for its misfortune. Libya was no exception. But excluding that group, Libyans, from janitors and gatekeepers to university professors and government bureaucrats, seemed to recognize that the country is experiencing unmatched progress, and everyone, for the first time in nearly three decades, exhibited a tacit sense of eager optimism. For once, my crystal ball was right, I thought. And despite few personal challenges I confronted upon my arrival to Tripoli, including the complete absence of Sushi joints, fresh blueberries, and any kind of positive retail experience, I began to like Libya, or precisely, I became an ardent believer in its potential even more than those who never lived outside of it.
In retrospect, however, my naiveté was simply establishing its dominance over my crystal ball forecast yet once again: the stakes were too high, and Utopia was merely a work of fiction. No self-respecting businessman or politician would forego more than $50 billion per annum in oil revenue, with the very real potential to double that, and over 1000 miles of Mediterranean coastal line facing Europe for the sake of domestic peace and prosperity.

As recent events unfolded, it turned out that émigré Libyan businessmen and aspiring diplomats have plenty of professional self-respect. And if they had ever been somewhat coy of burning the entire population of Libya to gain control over its natural and strategic resources, then the plausible opportunity of February the 17th to get back at Gaddafi for past personal injuries subdued any hesitancy they may have had about throwing in the pit of war the whole of the country. I say this because the intrusive and sinister involvement of these Libyan outsiders was evident since the beginning. This upheaval we are experiencing today in Libya was never the intrinsic, magnanimous public revolt we were made to believe. And, now, it is disintegrating into long, dispersed, Kalashnikov wars that can rapidly consume the Libyan people.

I have previously located Libya's core problems, not in its leadership, but in the inherently fatalistic culture of its people, as well as their aversion to virtually all forms of fruitful self-exertion. I still uphold the truthfulness of this notion. Although I do not know in what way my priorities would differ had I been a victim of the torture, abuse and wrongful imprisonment from which many Libyans had suffered. Nor do I claim omniscience to my perception. After all, the Libyan conflict has exposed the inadequacy of my deduction powers on more than one occasion. Moreover, some readers may allege that I have less of a license to speak for my fellow Libyans owing to my having the option of running away from all this to quieter nights in Suburbia, where I can spend my weekends shopping for seven-fold Italian ties in posh department stores and CrossFitting with bubbly college girls. But, in spite of my past attempts to snub my Libyan identity, I still am Libyan enough to have a right to hope that I am wrong in my cynicism. I hope that the great men whose job is to convene in great rooms with other great men to broadcast equally great condemnations are not intentionally refraining from implementing even small, minor, albeit practical steps to remedy this situation and to help the Libyan people restore peace and stability to their country, as opposed to fortifying the personal accounts of Libyan expatriated elite in the occident. I hope the news I have been getting from both sides is inaccurate. I hope there is no war. I hope that young boys are not really dying, and that young women are not really being deprived of their fathers, brothers and husbands.

These are some of the hopes of Libyans today. And though we may hope and wish as we please, all our hopes cannot mend a shattered spine and all our wishes cannot divert a single bullet from its decreed destination. This is when a prayer and a powerful gun could be of use.

Triple OG Rapsodie:
cool story

awol22222:

Bananas:
Can you provide us with a tldr version bri-guy?

Sami:
Essentially the guy in the article was saying how the Libyan rebels are fake and Qaddafi's a victim even though Qaddafi kicked him out of Libya for publishing some newspaper.

Of course it includes thinly-veiled Libertarian poor-bashing reference as well

"There had always been, in all nations, a lethargic group whose main role consists in blaming other, more productive strata of society for its misfortune."

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