Carry-on camping, Seif Al-Islam, or just putting Fezzan in a finicky ferment? Gamal Nkrumah marvels at the Gaddafi pertinacity Revolutionary malfeasance aside, "Dead men don't bite, and being dispatched out of the way, are forgotten." It was Plutarch who first put the sagacious words into the mouth of Theodotus, the egregious teacher of rhetoric, advising Egyptians to murder Pompey. If all else fails, JK Galbraith once mused, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. Muammar Gaddafi is dead, dispatched and all but forgotten, murdered most foul in the manner of Pompey. "What are we to do with 'em anyway?�ê� Cut 'em down like that much pork? �ê� Dead men don't bite," points out RL Stevenson in his awe-inspiring Treasure Island. Gaddafi was, indeed, cut down like that much pork, but his son and heir apparent Seif Al-Islam Gaddafi is in a defiant mood hitting the headlines as only a true son of his father could do. He proudly proclaimed that he had no intention of handing himself over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague and certainly not to his father's barbarous assassins. Seif Al-Islam now rallies a band of loyalists and mercenaries at desert camps in the country's sprawling southernmost Fezzan province under the glassy heat of the Libyan Desert. He had scrambled for his life and is most likely destined to spend a dusty winter raising a ragtag army. Unperturbed, Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) has shunted Seif Al-Islam aside. As far as they are concerned, the NTC leaders do not give two hoots to bandits, outlaws and fugitive black African slaves. They have banished him from the "New Libya" under their iron grip. Let Seif Al-Islam be holed up in the wilderness of Fezzan; they have more important matters of state to attend to. They face a broader challenge than Gaddafi's progeny, and dead men don't bite, after all. Can they synthesise the demands of contemporary, democratic and liberal society and a political system closely aligned to the West with political Islam's insistence on a divinely guided theocratic dispensation? So far the NTC has not delivered. It has pledged to speed up the democratisation process. Already on treacherous ground, Seif Al-Islam cannot afford to fall into the same terrible trap that had swallowed his father. There was deathly silence among the inmates of the former torture chambers. The jailers had become the jailed. Newly empowered NTC wardens vengefully intoxicated by the sound of the susurration of steel on leather thongs in the prisons peopled with alleged Gaddafi loyalists and savouring the wild, petrified looks of cowering African inmates from south of the Sahara. The longsuffering citizens of Bani Walid, a bastion of Gaddafi support, have been singled out for cruel retribution. "Muammar is dead, we cannot resurrect him," a disgruntled inhabitant of Bani Walid bitterly complained. Ironically, this is pretty much the essence of the message delivered by NTC leader Mustafa Abdel-Jalil during a two-day visit to Cairo that commenced on Tuesday. Abdel-Jalil met Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Arabi. Abdel-Jalil's message was laconic. "Muammar Gaddafi is dead and let's open a new chapter in Libya's relations with its Arab brethren." The NTC has not yet given North Africa an encouraging example to follow. They elected an academic and a technocrat Adel-Rahim Al-Keib, educated in the United States where he obtained a masters and PhD. Al-Keib's election was by no means unanimous. There were considerable abstentions. A disillusioned NTC chief Sheikh Abdel-Jalil pronounced those who abstained as "unethical and unprincipled". Energy expert Al-Keib promptly announced that he is optimistic about Libya's future. "I have trust in that we live in a country with rich resources," Al-Keib quipped in a jubilant mood. The immediate political task of Al-Keib is to pave the way for full, free and fair elections next year. Cities like Sirte and Bani Walid will pay a terrible price for standing heroically for Gaddafi. Another of Al-Keib's tasks will be to pacify and placate the remnants of the eight-month long revolutionary rampage that toppled the Gaddafi regime. No less consequential will be jump-starting the Libyan economy. Ominously, the immediate task of Abdel-Rahim Al-Keib will be to deal directly with the Western powers that handed the NTC Gaddafi's mortal remains on a silver platter. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called off the Operation Unified Protector that dealt Gaddafi a deadly blow. Libya is awash with weapons, noted Rasmussen in Libya this week. He demanded to know from his hosts how much military equipment is now in circulation in the country. There was also the vexing question of Gaddafi's weapons, including chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. Libyans huddle for protection from the vagaries of an inhospitable desert climate and rugged terrain. Historically, there have always been shamans and sorceresses to promise them salvation and charlatans to exploit their vulnerability. Western powers dismiss these primeval fears at their own peril. Out there in the vast expanses of Libyan wastelands, a cabal of diehard Gaddafi supporters is secretly determined to manipulate the shortcomings and failings of the NTC. Looking for a scapegoat, Seif Al-Islam is the NTC's most convenient sitting duck, or more precisely bull's eye. Gaddafi diehards are fighting for their lives. The message of the NTC factions appears to lack coherence precisely because all that unifies them is that they harbour much hatred to the ousted Gaddafi regime. Political squalls are tearing the NTC apart. Too much emphasis has been placed on unrealistic targets. Tribalism and clannishness are pervasive earthly forces in the Libyan social composition. Gaddafi's maverick, divisive style of government proved in the end to be his undoing. The tribes with the notable exception of the Tuareg did not come to the rescue. Seif Al-Islam and his NTC adversaries are more than qualified to follow suit. What has emerged can be dismissed as a hazardous hot-potch of measures certain to bequeath Libya with a legacy of venomous recriminations. However, in fact there is an even older factor in play. The NTC are selling off Libya's enormous oil reserves to their Western paymasters. Oil shifts Libya's centre of gravity. The effects of advances in oil extraction techniques are undoubtedly in the NTC's favour. Western oil transnationals will have the lion's share. Activity in the oil sector has picked up since the fall of Gaddafi. The same punctilious calculation is extending to every corner of the Libyan economy. The NTC's disarray is dangerous. All in all, it is hard to conjure up a more toxic concoction of ruinous policy. Castigation of adversaries has increasingly become viewed as an end in itself rather than a means to improving the overall performance of the NTC government. Unaccountable strands in the very fabric of Libyan society will unravel in the months to come. The NTC's task will be easier if it can jump-start the Libyan economy. Al-Keib is to surround himself with a cabinet of technocrats. His priority is the economy and the building of democratic institutions. What he did not give was a convincing explanation for the conduct of his so called Liberation Army. It is doubtful whether a full inquiry will now exonerate the Liberation Army from what is now known of atrocities committed in the name of revolution. The NTC's position has been undermined by their leadership's less than candid response to the storming of Sirte, Gaddafi's hometown and last stronghold. His predecessor Mahmoud Jibril was in a hurry to bow out of office. His lack of judgement rendered his position untenable. He was openly anti-Islamist. Revenge and score-settling are complicating the post-Gaddafi picture of a fragile Libya desperately struggling to evolve into a nascent Western-style multi-party democracy. Seif Al-Islam urged his followers to treat the NTC with the disdain they deserve. He dismissed them as traitors and Western lackeys. All this could be bad enough in the NTC's paperclips. The question, though, is whether these atrocities were isolated NTC slips or part of a broader pattern in which the NTC is hoping to be spared Gaddafi's dreadful fate in the nick of time by competing Western interests. Now is certainly not the time for dogma in a post-Gaddafi Libya. It lends credence to the latter view. Post-Gaddafi Libya yearns for a Gorbachev and the NTC believes it has found such a conniving commander in Al-Keib. True there are limits to the scale of such Western intervention in Libyan domestic affairs. The West taps into a deep cultural vein. Seif Al-Islam unwittingly offers the NTC a chance to crack down on dissidents. That scenario will not make the coming weeks any easier for the NTC. Kleptocratic regimes will not be too hard to replicate in the post-Arab awakening in North Africa. The sheer profitability of running Libya was a giveaway of the abuse of power. Gaddafi was omnipotent, but how brutally the mighty have fallen. Public acquiescence during the Gaddafi era was flagrantly underpinned by government inertia. Not many of his ideas were very sensible. Perhaps the most ominous sign of the resurgence of the kleptocracy that kept Libya afloat was the news this week that a priceless collection of ancient and medieval coins were pilfered from a Benghazi museum. The NTC was too focussed elsewhere to deal with the theft. The coins will in all probability end up in Christi's or Sotheby's. Is there a shadowy ruse behind the stolen treasure of Benghazi? The answer therefore is to pursue thieves and other transgressors punitively, not excepting the NTC's Western backers, the insolent looters of today.
