Let me avoid misunderstandings: I do not in any way condone (or ever did) the clearly manifested anti-democratic nature of the late Col. Gaddafi's regime and sincerely hope that the Libyan people will finally be able to build a fair, free and just civil society in as short a timeframe as is logistically feasible. However, I argue for the case that if a number of past events had been managed differently, a peaceful transition without any bloodshed at all and most likely without any foreign intervention, too, could have become reality. Key to this by now obsolete scenario might very well have been one of Col. Gaddafi's own sons, Dr. Saif al-Islam.
Facts first! Earlier this week a report was published in Britain about Libya and the links to one of the country's leading universities, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), titled “An inquiry into the LSE's links with Libya and lessons to be learned.”
In this report, which at times resembles more of a John Le Carré than a supposedly “boring” official document, its author Lord Woolf argues that “the links became extensive. The antonym ‘Libyan School of Economics' followed one witness to this inquiry to a conference in the United States. The extent of the links, at least as perceived, was such that the LSE had effectively tied part of its reputation to that of Libya, and more particularly, to Saif Gaddafi.” The report details as well lectures delivered by Saif Gaddafi at the LSE and by his late father Col. Gaddafi (by video link), respectively.
The British public now speculates about whether there was perhaps a “Libya-gate” involving, for example, its Foreign and Commonwealth Office, British business, the LSE and Libya. Leaving these understandable yet perhaps misleading hypothetical assumptions aside, Dr. Gaddafi is not the first world leader who obtained most if not all of his academic as well as intellectual training at the LSE. The LSE is a school for life much more than simply a university. Was there no one to better integrate Dr. Gaddafi into “the system?” On a more guessing game note, could he ever have convinced his late father that change is unavoidable long before the Arab Spring -- that is, telling his father and the fellow Gaddafi clan that it is much better to ultimately be remembered as reformers and not as a country's last dictators?
Or was Dr. Gaddafi perhaps never really interested in achieving all of this? And if he was, did his father listen or discredit Dr. Gaddafi's advice? Or should Dr. Gaddafi perhaps have waited -- why not in London -- and returned home when the time has come in order to take over power?
Sadly, in the final months before his capture he resembled more his father, with his last comments made by him asking for taking up arms and not for surrendering, and he will now be duly charged with whatever crimes against humanity he had tolerated or actively supported.
In this context last Wednesday the Guardian's Timothy Garton Ash argued that Dr. Gaddafi's doctoral thesis elaborates that “The international order … has a responsibility to protect the basic rights of those citizens who live under non-liberal governments (such as, the reader cannot resist adding, his dad's).”
Allow me to add another quote from the Woolf Inquiry, where in a later paragraph Lord Woolf writes that “many hoped that Saif would prove to be a reformer and an instrument of constructive change in Libya. He was being courted as such by foreign governments and businesses, keen to see change in Libya.”
We should all ask ourselves who failed in this regard. Dr. Gaddafi's case is sad and tragic at the same time not only with regard to his personal fate but that of the country, too, as perhaps, just perhaps a democratic Libya could have emerged much sooner than it eventually will.
