Paralysed politics, continual conflict and fast fading hopes. So can Gaddafi get out of the jam, muses Gamal Nkrumah The cost of Libya's paralysis is fast rising. There is no more potent symbol of the relative decline of the authority of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi than his troops' inability to storm rebel strongholds near the Libyan capital Tripoli such as Misrata, the country's third largest city. Meanwhile, the rebels have been busy blowing up and busting one Gaddafi bastion after another. The West is backing the anti-Gaddafi forces militarily and the oil-rich Gulf Arab states are assisting the rebels financially and providing invaluable propaganda support through powerful Pan-Arab, Gulf-funded, media and television satellite channels such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. Representatives of anti-Gaddafi forces are meeting in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates this week. The participants ostensibly stand for a wide range of reforms and ideological orientations. They claim to hail from all parts of the country, from Tripolitania in the west as well as Cyrenaica in the east, the traditional hotbed of the anti-Gaddafi uprising. Abracadabra -- abruptly a credible alternative to Gaddafi has crystallised -- surprise, surprise, without any accountableness to the NATO bombers destroying Libyan cities. Gaddafi was once omnipotent as far as his Jamahiriya was concerned. Today his strategy for bolstering security is flawed, and that is an understatement. That metamorphosis has been completed by the tangible challenge that the National Transitional Council (NTC) headquartered in Benghazi poses. How often should a people give their leader the benefit of the doubt? Libyans have taken what Gaddafi has said at face value and many still do. Others do not feel particularly obliged to give the man a break. In the past couple of decades Gaddafi's privileged inner circle persuaded him to block change. Today, some of his most trusted aides have deserted him leaving him in something of a political limbo. Gaddafi has chosen personal loyalty over competence in his inner circle. He has proved inept in forging the dubious political deals with his Western adversaries. Worse, he has now exposed his regime as not having enough clout to impose its authority on huge swathes of his country's territory. Gaddafi's Libya risks continued gridlock and more violence. The risk instinct is understandable for a charismatic leader who has ruled a land with an iron fist for more than four decades. But the risk factor now is nothing short of Russian roulette. The Libyan leader is fighting back even now when the chips are down. It was, of course, already presumed in Western circles that Gaddafi was making ever-greater concessions in a bid to hold tenaciously to power. But the details of such concessions that have been laid bare, so starkly cast all parties, including Gaddafi and his Western business partners, in a bad light. When it comes down to it, the chaotic Libyan scenario might play well in Washington. The picture of Tripoli that emerges from the rubble is hardly more flattering than the one Gaddafi so carefully constructed over the decades. In Gaddafi's Jamahiriya, nearly all business activities and especially those that involved foreign partners were placed under the supervision of the regime. Privileged positions were naturally reserved for those loyal to the regime. Gaddafi paid little attention to technical proficiency and business acumen. Like in several other quasi-military dictatorships, state agencies, army operations and state- run corporations or parastatals had a virtual stranglehold over the Libyan economy. The Western powers were growing impatient with Gaddafi's grip on the Libyan economy. Socialist-leaning centralisation and the so- called state capitalist model were dangerously outdated, Western governments were losing confidence in Gaddafi's ability to run the country, and his people were turning into apathetic drones from lack of fulfilment, frustration and exasperation. The Libyan leader was increasingly being seen as incompetent, and worse, untrustworthy. Still, Gaddafi's worn out socialist ideals and his wayward Third Worldism gave him a decisive advantage and won him the sympathies of leftists from as far afield as China and Venezuela. No wonder he was caught by surprise -- spooked -- by the duplicity of his newfound Western friends and business partners, with only the camaraderie of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Chinese Communists proving to be a timely and much appreciated solace. "The military attacks on Libya are, following on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the third time that some countries have launched armed action against other sovereign countries," Beijing's People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, declared. "The blood-stained tempests that Iraq has undergone for eight years and the unspeakable suffering of its people are a mirror and warning," the People's Daily commenced. "Every time military means are used to address crises, that is a blow to the United Nations Charter and the rules of international relations." Western policymakers, however, were up to their old tricks. They showed their true colours during United Nations Security Council deliberations on Libya and singled out Libya for retribution even though other autocratic Arab regimes such as those of presidents Ali Abdullah Saleh and Bashar Al-Assad, of Yemen and Syria respectively, also responded brutally to popular protests. The West also turned a blind eye to the prompt violent response of the Bahrain authorities to popular protests. Not to mention the humanitarian catastrophe precipitated by the unsanctioned bombing of Libyan government forces and Gaddafi himself by France, Britain, the US and sundry allies. Sometimes the tried and tested old tricks are best, or so the Western policymakers believe. Their appeal lies in their utter simplicity. But in the case of Libya, Western leaders found much to their chagrin that the country's vain attempts at democratisation ended in farce -- the wealth of the Libyan people was wasted in the words of Said Al-Islam Gaddafi, heir apparent, on "this clown" referring to his father's support of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign. Sarkozy unabashedly stabbed Gaddafi in the back, being the first leader to recognise the NTC as official Libyan government. The NTC, a motley political alliance of dissident one-time Gaddafi aides, hangers-on and retainers and militant Islamists, Jihadist Salafis and Al-Qaeda sympathisers or just plain old go-getters thereby got the green light to topple the Gaddafi regime. Look at Libya rationally. Western opinion-makers and public figures are conceding the point. Any credibility the West retained in the collective psyche of developing countries, emerging economies and former colonies has been dealt a crippling blow. "The stigmatisating of every business leader, academic, politician and public servant who has had anything to do with Libya in the past seven years has been taken to ridiculous lengths in some quarters," wrote Peter Mandelson in the Financial Times Recently. Lord Mandelson, European Union trade commissioner 2004- 2008 and a former British business secretary admonished the Western political establishments in no uncertain terms. "When you reach out to repenters, you do not then turn on your heels and start treating them like pariahs... as a general policy, we were right to foment such contacts," Lord Mandelson concluded. "Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin," Gaddafi characteristically hit the nail on the head. Those now intent on wiping Gaddafi off the political map have some serious rethinking to do. Their gamble that they could pull off a quick change of regime, eerily like Bush's shock-and-awe in Iraq, has gone off the rails, and the wreckage is not just limited to Libya's cities. One thing is sure, Gaddafi is not going anytime soon whether or not Western powers maintain their resolve to remove Gaddafi from office.
