When I Met Qadhafi...
The Libyan leader may have seriously lost his way, but he’s not the one-dimensional, mad despot he’s been made out to be by the Western media.
Eamonn McCann, 16 Mar 2011
I suggested to Muamar Qadhafi that Libya wouldn’t be able for long to support a range of revolutionary movements around the world and simultaneously expect to trade in oil on world markets.
We were talking over kebabs in his tent in the desert near his home town of Sirte in 1987. A translator was the only other person present. There’s no precedent for what you are trying, I said, except, perhaps, and then only slightly, Russia in the years immediately following 1917. That had ended in tears and Stalin.
There was a pause, and then he asked whether I had any books on this subject. Matter of fact, more than a few. Would I send him some when I reached home? I did. I have no idea whether he received or read any of them. His subsequent trajectory suggests not, or that he found nothing in them that he thought useful or relevant.
I had first met Qadhafi the previous year along with a couple of other journalists while making a documentary for Channel 4. I’d asked him about the shooting dead of Metropolitan policewoman Yvonne Fletcher in 1984 from inside the Libyan embassy in St. James’ Park while policing an opposition demonstration. He flatly denied any involvement.
But he made no secret that he was supporting armed groups abroad which he perceived as national liberation movements, I persisted. He must know that that would enrage Western opinion. He launched into a history lesson.
Libya had been occupied for hundreds of years by the Ottoman Empire. Then came Italian and later German fascism, resisted by the national movement led by Omar Muktar, which had given Libyans their first sense of pride in themselves. Libya had lost more people per head than any other country on earth in the anti-fascist struggle. Then the British and Americans occupied the country. The second biggest U.S. base in the world, Wheelus Field – the biggest was in the Philippines – was just outside Tripoli when a group of young officers led by 29-year-old Qadhafi overthrew the tribal sheik, Idris, who had been appointed King by the British, when the U.N. recognised Libyan independence in 1951.
Page 1/3 <Previous 1 2 3 Next>
©Hot Press 2012. Why be a member? | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | About Us Jobs @ Hot Press