Gilles Paris in Tripoli
WHEN the artificial “great river”, which is fed by fossil water extracted from the depths of the Libyan desert, was inaugurated earlier this month with all the lavish trappings of a Hollywood spectacular, it gushed out of the city’s antiquated conduits and flooded the streets.
While that was going on, Colonel Moammar Gadaffi, in a marathon speech of the kind he gives every year when commemorating the 1969 revolution, spelled out measures to avert an evil which, he said, was threatening to swamp Libyan society: money made from corruption and speculation.
Gadaffi hinted at what was to come in May, when he set up 80 “purge committees” to remodel Libya’s economy, then suffering from galloping inflation.
Since then, in Tripoli’s uppercrust districts, there have been widescale shutdowns of stores that used to overflow with exorbitantly priced Western goods – and which contrasted unflatteringly with state co-operatives that stocked only a few subsidised staples.
Following an advertising campaign encouraging Libyans to inform on each other, the news filtered out that several VIPs had been placed under house arrest in the suburbs of Tripoli.
Earlier this month, travellers arriving in Egypt from Libya revealed that there had been a swoop on more than 1 000 shopkeepers in Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, and that their stores had been closed.
In his commemoration speech, Gadaffi said he was delighted with the diligence of the purge committees. They consist chiefly of young soldiers, to whom he has virtually given carte blanche.
Shopkeepers are not the only section of the population that has suffered from Gadaffi’s change of policy.
According to the Arab daily, Al Sharq al Awsat, at least one colonel and several dozen senior civil servants have also run into trouble with the committees. The campaign has had repercussions in all parts of the economy, including the vital oil industry.
Western diplomats in Tripoli believe there are ulterior political motives behind the current drive on the economic front. Gadaffi has taken advantage of his crackdown on speculation, which he himself allowed to flourish after introducing a policy of economic openness in the early Nineties, to get rid of a few political figures who could eventually prove a threat to him.
But after 27 years, the wear and tear of being in power is beginning to show. This was evident from the lukewarm reception spectators gave the military parade organised in Tripoli for the anniversary of the revolution.
Another, more serious sign that the Gadaffi regime is running out of steam is the guerrilla movement that has established itself since March in the mountains near the town of Derna, east of Benghazi.
“The government never goes so far as to suggest it is running into difficulties,” notes an observer. “Yet it did precisely that in a recent communiqu announcing it had carried out land and air manoeuvres using `live ammunition’. This was an attempt to justify bombing raids in March and August that were unlikely to have gone unnoticed.”
Although he is facing more resistance than he is used to, Gadaffi still rules Libya with an iron fist. “There is no evidence to corroborate the claim by the flood of communiqus the government has sent to London-based Arab newspapers that disorders in Benghazi are the result of an Islamist upsurge,” says a diplomat. “Although such groups may exist, their effectiveness is probably limited and, more importantly, the Islamic opposition in Benghazi and the more tribally based opposition in Derna do not form a united front.”
Libya’s reasonable standard of living compared with that of neighbouring countries, thanks to oil revenues, and Gadaffi’s “modernised” yet anti-Western Islam have not been conducive to the emergence of fundamentalist groups.
Gadaffi has always shown great skill in manipulating the various forces at work in Libya – the army, the still well-structured tribes, and the institutions established after the 1969 revolution, and at 54 it lookes as though he still has plenty of mileage left.