Pursuing Pan-African dialogue is not the same as indiscriminately butchering black Africans in the post-Gaddafi Libya, surmises Gamal Nkrumah There will be major lessons to learn when the full story of Muammar Gaddafi's obdurate exploitation of mercenaries from Sub-Saharan African countries is told. He knew exactly the story he wanted to tell. He was the champion of the underdog, the impoverished black man. The resultant wanton killings of black Africans in Libya emerge as a direct consequence of Gaddafi's cruel masquerade. The sad truth is that blacks fell in with bad company in Libya. Black-skinned Libyans and Africans from countries South of the Sahara are now metamorphosed into the object of hatred and loathing of ordinary off-white Libyans. The real history of this turbulent time, however, is the story of Gaddafi's love affair with Africa. His talent, energy and ability to seize the moment in a continent desperately seeking salvation and economic emancipation, defined Gaddafi's diplomatic successes in Africa. He was indispensable because of his boundless largesse and benefaction. Intellectually arrogant and alternating between indecision and impetuosity, Gaddafi feigned the august role of championing the African cause much to the consternation of his own olive-skinned people. The story of the rapid rise to power of the National Transitional Council (NTC), Gaddafi's fiercest adversaries, defines the spirit of this particular historical moment. The NTC collaborated closely with NATO and pretentiously assumed a powerful sense of popular legitimacy. Their hatred for darker-skinned immigrants whom they dubbed mercenaries was the necessary thread of their own legitimisation among their people. Most Africans from south of the Sahara came to Libya in search of employment opportunities and ended up with the most menial jobs, work that lighter skinned Libyans eschewed. But the real nightmare ensued when in the twilight of the Gaddafi regime, and in desperation, he and his sons used the African migrant workers as mercenaries and fetched fresh recruits from neighbouring African countries such as Chad, Mali, Niger and Sudan and even from nations further afield. The elite 32nd Brigade headed by the ruthless Khamis Gaddafi was most notorious for deploying black African mercenaries as cannon fodder. "African migrants have worked in Libya for many years, often carrying out the most unpleasant jobs, and this is no way to treat those who stayed put during the uprising," Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch explained. "It is dangerous to be dark-skinned in Tripoli," Whitson extrapolated further. "The NTC should stop arresting African migrants and black Libyans unless it has concrete evidence of criminal activities," Whitson warns. Human Rights Watch urged an immediate halt to the arbitrary arrests of black Africans in Libya by the new NTC authorities. Images of the incarceration and systematic torture of Sub-Saharan Africans in Libya hit the headlines and the television screens. International human rights groups including the London-based Amnesty International as well as Human Rights Watch called for the "need to prioritise setting up a justice system" that accords black Africans in Libya their due rights. This assumption always had an element of wishful thinking to it. Libyans, let alone NTC leaders, are loathe to pardon their protagonists especially if they are despised black Africans. Predictably, a pogrom was unleashed against the black soldiers of fortune. But the vindictive retribution extended to their innocent family members and the country's black- skinned population. The diffident NTC that confronted the African Union (AU), the brainchild of Gaddafi, is the NTC that Western leaders professed to admire and encourage usurping power by force of arms. The NTC is engaged in a not-so-subtle strategy to resuscitate Libya's traditional cultural ties with Islamic and Arab countries and cement economic and commercial links with Mediterranean Basin countries. The post-Gaddafi Libya is looking eastwards and westwards, northwards and anything but southwards. The AU's refusal to budge on the question of recognising the NTC as the government that is running Libya in the immediate aftermath of the ouster of Gaddafi is a vindication of the African determination to champion the cause of black people in contemporary Libya. The NTC's Liberation Army is indiscriminately butchering black African workers under the pretext that they are mercenaries in the payroll of Gaddafi. More than a million mainly manual workers from Sub-Saharan African countries sought employment opportunities in Libya during the last years of the Gaddafi era. African mercenaries recruited by Gaddafi are all-too- often unknown in their home countries. They are recruited privately. African guest workers in Libya have become victims of rough vigilante justice in post-Gaddafi Libya because they are suspected by the Liberation Army of being soldiers of fortune. Not all was easy and well, though. It is estimated that roughly a third of Libya's population could be considered black. Racial prejudice has become endemic. During visits to Libya in the past two decades I was always impressed by the preeminence of darker-skinned Libyans, many of whom held high profile positions in sharp distinction to the lowly social and economic status of blacks in other Arab countries. If anything, cold-shouldering Gaddafi's lighter-skinned adversaries by his henchmen, cynical courtiers and entourage has played into the NTC's hands. Amnesty International has openly cautioned that black-skinned Libyans and Sub-Saharan Africans are at high risk of abuse by the NTC's Thuwwar revolutionaries precisely because of the torment and torture meted out by the Gaddafi regiments. In one instance in Al-Khums, a city 120 kms east of the Libyan capital Tripoli, 19 detainees died of suffocation because they were locked inside metal containers. The unfortunate detainees endured temperatures far above 40 degrees centigrade, poor ventilation, electrocuting and beatings with metal wires. Small wonder then that their relatives demanded the harshest retribution against their kith and kin's torturers. The vengeance was apocalyptic. Black patients were dragged from their hospital beds in Tripoli Central Hospital, and the stench and mutilation of black people's bodies in the Tripoli Medical Centre morgue are chilling testament to cruelty and barbarity of the avenging Thuwwar. A quick and unambiguous decision by the NTC to stop the carnage would begin to repair the damage caused by the random killings of Africans in Libya. Blacks are increasingly subject to reprisals by the triumphant Thuwwar. The international community must insist that the Thuwwar treat their captives with dignity and avoid revenge attacks at all costs. Will this happen? It is easy to doubt. But just maybe the crisis of confidence between Libyan and Sub-Saharan African has been big enough to make the NTC leaders realise that it is in their individual interests to iron out differences between themselves and African leaders. We have to hope. And this is where the AU comes into play. NTC stalwarts secretly worry that the opposing Gaddafi's Pan-Africanism may have driven them into a political cul-de-sac. Yet there is a case for eventually re-examining the AU's relationship with the NTC, to put it bluntly. The two sides are deeply entrenched in their prejudices and beliefs and only secondarily concerned with mending fences. Gaddafi managed this African intrigue without losing the African leaders' favour. Gaddafi made Pan-Africanism relevant at least to some extent. Yet the privilege of Gaddafi's ruling clique was reflected in the extraordinary vulnerability of the rest of Libyan society. The contradictions inherent in Gaddafi's Libya were grotesque in scale and scope. The social gradations of power and political standing in Gaddafi's Libya were sharp and carried with them the cruel privileges of abuse. Yet Gaddafi claimed to be socialist. This myth has two things wrong with it. First, the more humble Libyans were always far more abundant than the privileged. The stark contrasts in personal wealth and income inequalities were not as daunting as in some of the oil-rich Gulf Arab states. And, not every poor person was beheaded and beaten every day, but every poor person knew all too well that he or she could be. Blacks were subject to as much fear and humiliation as their lighter skinned compatriots. As far as his detractors were concerned, Gaddafi was a tyrant, otherwise how could he have ruled the country for 42 years? Others saw in him a benign dictator. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, he had relatively few African enthusiasts. The bulk of Africans viewed him suspiciously and derided his claim to be the self-styled "King of Kings of Africa". It is against this confused and jumbled backdrop that the AU has to now deal with Libya's new rulers. "The NTC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries," AU Chairman Jean Ping explained in exasperation at an AU summit meeting on Libya in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa last week. At the conclusion of the aforementioned summit the AU declined to bow to international pressure and officially recognise the NTC as the sole representative of the Libyan people. The AU is the only continental, regional or international organisation to stick to its guns as far as Gaddafi is concerned. The Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the European Union have all endorsed the NTC as the official government of Libya. Nevertheless, a number of key African states have officially recognised the NTC as the sole representative of the Libyan people. Political heavyweights such as Nigeria and Ethiopia promptly recognised the NTC. Also Chad, despite Gaddafi's largesse over three decades, stabbed him in the back. Chad had close political ties with Libya, shares a long border, and has a similar ethnic composition to the tribes of southern Libya, but now officially recognises the NTC as Libya's new rulers. On the other hand, other African neighbours such as Algeria, Mali and Niger are sympathetic to Gaddafi's cause. It was rumoured that Gaddafi was part of a convoy making its way to Niger as Al-Ahram Weekly went to press. "They are killing Africans, ordinary people, workers and mistreating the survivors," Ping was quoted as saying. "Their attitude has been negative all along. I went to Benghazi," Ping added. He met with the leaders of the NTC but they made it abundantly clear that they had little time to spare for Africa and matters African. Gaddafi had bankrolled and championed the vision of a United States of Africa first mooted by Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah, the first country south of the Sahara to gain independence from a European colonial power. However, as hard as it is to foster a fresh relationship between the post-Gaddafi Libya and the AU, that is no reason to stop trying to open a new chapter in Libyan-African ties.
