Dirk Vandewalle Peers Inside Gadhafi's World

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Dirk Vandewalle Peers Inside Qaddafi's World

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

After Gadhafi, how does a country recover from 40 years of destruction
by an unchallenged tyrant? That's the title of an article in the current
edition of Newsweek by my guest, Dirk Vandewalle. We're going to talk
with him about how Libya got to this point: a state with no political
parties, no parliament, led by a tyrant famous for his iron grip on
power, his eccentric clothes and his bizarre rants.

Vandewalle's insights are based in part on the research he conducted in
Libya. He lived there for 14 months, beginning in 1986, and he's
returned every year or two since. He's the author of "A History of
Modern Libya" and edited "Libya Since 1969: Gadhafi's Revolution
Revisited." Vandewalle is an associate professor of government at
Dartmouth College.

Dirk Vandewalle, welcome to FRESH AIR. So as one of the few political
scientists who's actually lived in Libya, having watched Gadhafi from
inside Libya, do you think that he's mentally ill?

Professor DIRK VANDEWALLE (Government, Dartmouth College; Author): Well,
I'm not sure if he's mentally ill, but the whole problem with Gadhafi
was, in many ways, that here was a dictator that had never really been
challenged by everybody - by anybody for over 40 years, somebody whose
words could not be questioned. Every utterance that he said was seen as
the ultimate truth, and it was published in many publications inside
Libya.

They kept a national archive, essentially, to preserve the words of
Gadhafi in annual volumes that they printed. So, in a sense, he was
living totally isolated.

No one was there to really tell him exactly what was going on. And I
think after a while, he just started to internalize that and thought
that, indeed, what he said was the ultimate truth. And since there was
no one to really correct him, he just kept using these kinds of words,
these kinds of expressions, which were, in a sense, totally surreal, in
many ways, and indeed has been using those until the very end now.

Even now in Tripoli, where he is right now, he still uses the same kind
of language, the same kind of martyr complex comes through that we heard
all along.

GROSS: Yeah, like for instance, he recently said: Those people who took
your sons away from you and gave them drugs and said let them die are
launching a campaign over cell phones against your sons, telling them
not to obey their fathers and mothers.

Gave them drugs? I mean, what's he talking about?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, in a sense, what all of this goes back is really
- and you will see repeated references to this throughout Gadhafi's
speeches. It really goes back to the colonial period.

And one of the heroes of Gadhafi was Omar al-Mukhtar, a tribal elder in
the eastern part of the country, who eventually was captured by the
Italians after several years of resistance and was hanged by the
Italians, became the national hero.

And there has always been a charge, been - that it was with the help of
some Libyans, a fifth column, that Omar al-Mukhtar was eventually
captured and hanged. And so Gadhafi's references to people who are
poisoning others in Libya really goes back to that very moment in
history, which is now, of course, 80 years or so ago.

But we find that kind of apocalyptic language, that if Libya doesn't
really rally around the flag, so to speak, that in a sense, these fifth
columns - and now the fifth columns really are the United States, the
West, in general, Islamic - radical Islamic movements, more generally -
that this fifth column will come and destroy - will act as a poison, as
a drug for Libyans and will lead them astray. That's really the
historical context of that kind of contemporary language that we hear
from Gadhafi.

GROSS: Now, you said you heard Gadhafi say a lot of surreal things that
were later, like, printed and preserved. Can you give us an example of
that?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, the best example, of course, was the "Green
Book." And the "Green Book" was a collection of three, slim volumes in
which Gadhafi essentially put his thoughts on the economy, on social
relations, on the role of women within Libyan society, et cetera.

And these "Green Books" became obligated reading for most Libyans. You
saw them everywhere. You saw statues built around the "Green Book," and
so on. And these kinds of ideas - which, in a sense, were pretty
strange, in part because, for example, one concept that Gadhafi
developed was this concept of democracy.

And according to him, democracy could only really take place if it was
in a kind of tribal setting, where people could directly appoint their
representatives, rather than having to go through a kind of
representative system that we have in the West.

And so this kind of what he called a direct democracy - and he actually
coined a neologism for it. He called it a Jamahiriya, you know, a state
ruled directly by the people, then became this kind of overarching
concept, overarching ideological concept that he used again and again,
and then tried to implement.

And so on the one hand, there was - at least in principle - a kind of a
political structure that functioned according to direct democracy. But
then on the other hand, of course, that was really a figment of
Gadhafi's imagination, because everybody knew that the form of political
mechanism that was there didn't really represent anything.

And so here you could see how his words really became reality, and
indeed remained reality until very recently.

GROSS: Well, you know, the "Green Book," he actually held the "Green
Book" in his hand during one of his recent rants, when he was on TV
calling his opponents dogs and cockroaches and promising to squash and
kill them. So a lot of people seeing him on TV might have seen him with
the "Green Book."

So the "Green Book" was very important to Gadhafi's vision of his
revolution, and Jamahiriya, which you mentioned, is his idea of a
stateless state. So that's a paradox. How do you have a stateless state?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, I mean, in a sense, what he meant there - and it
really coincides very nicely with his idea of a Jamahiriya, and that is
that if you have a polity, if you have a political community that is
ruled directly by the people, you don't need the institutions of the
state. So you don't need the administrative institutions. You don't need
the bureaucratic institutions.

GROSS: For example, you don't need parliament.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: You don't need a legislative body.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Exactly. The argument, of course, is that without
these institutions of the state, people govern themselves directly, but
by implication, of course, it also means that there really are no checks
and balances within that political system.

And that, of course, in a sense, was what Gadhafi equally intended, that
he could rise above this political system because he always claimed, for
decades now, that he no longer was part of the political system of
Libya, that people's democracy functioned without him - and again, here,
you know, the bifurcation between what was real and what was really a
figment of his imagination.

GROSS: My understanding about his idea of Jamahiriya, the stateless
state, was that he would talk to people directly. He would have these
regular, formalized meetings with, quote, "the people," and that they'd
have direct input through that and, therefore, they were represented. Do
I have that right?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Oh, no. You're absolutely right. And indeed, that was
the kind of mechanism - you know, as he told his audience, the Libyans,
that he was outside the political system, he really became known as Acca
al-Guadem(ph), which means the leader and the guide.

So he had no more formal - at least according to his own rhetoric, he
had no more formal representation in Libya. But he would go around and
give these big, long, rambling speeches about what Libya should do,
about what the popular committees should do.

And so again, it was really a big divorce from reality. But everyone, of
course, was supposed to go to these kinds of speeches. And indeed, not
to attend could lead to all kinds of not-so-pleasant consequences.

GROSS: Like what?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: All kinds of things, from the very mundane: losing
membership, for example, in the state supermarkets, where a lot of
people had to buy their stuff, because at one point Gadhafi abandoned
private enterprise in Libya. Again, it had to take place through the
community.

All the way to, of course, if there was any kind of public expression of
dissent, to incarceration, torture and, indeed, as we now know, also, a
kind of revenge actions against family members of those who had acted
against the regime.

GROSS: Now, you mentioned that he took away all the private businesses
and created these, like, state-run supermarkets that sold a lot of
stuff. So with the justification of his "Green Book," his ideological
bible, he took away private businesses. He took away properties from
landlords...

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Oh, yes, indeed. The argument he made was that people
should only have as much as they need to live. And that is, for example,
if you had two or three apartments, you could only live in one, and the
other two he saw as exploitation.

And so at one point, there was a famous slogan in the "Green Book" that
you saw everywhere in Libya that said: The house belongs to those who
live in it. And by that, he meant that you should only have one house,
and if by any chance you are renting it, the people that are renting it
from you, that's actually their house.

And so what we saw very quickly in Libya, soon after that edict came
online, was that a lot of families either got their sons and daughters
married to be able to keep houses in the family, or had to abandon
houses.

GROSS: And who took it over, the government or the renters?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: They were usually given over to those people who were
actually renting it at the time.

GROSS: And Gadhafi also eliminated the practice of private law. Were
there other professions that you weren't allowed to practice, as well?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, none of the professions was really allowed to
organize. They were allowed to function, but they were not allowed to
organize in any meaningful way. So the whole kind of organizational life
around professions that we in the West here take for granted, really
disappeared in Libya.

But that was only representative of what happened within society at
large. Any kind of group that could potentially become an opposition,
whether it was a stamp collecting club at the very basic level, all the
way to these professional organizations were not allowed to organize,
were not allowed to hold meetings because that could eventually lead to
opposition. And opposition, according to a law that has never been
repealed in Libya, was treason and hence punishable by death, if needed.

GROSS: And no political parties were allowed.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Oh, absolutely not, because - and in a sense, this was
the Orwellian vision that came through here. You could not have
political parties because Gadhafi argued that all the people were
already represented in his popular committees and popular congresses and
this kind of scheme that he had made for people directly representing
themselves - so again, you know, reality versus a non-reality to what
was surreal, a political system that existed, but really had no meaning
and no purpose.

GROSS: My guest is Dirk Vandewalle. His article, "After Gaddafi," is
published in the current edition of Newsweek. He's the author of "A
History of Modern Libya," and teaches at Dartmouth College.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Dirk Vandewalle. He is an
associate professor of political science at Dartmouth College and the
author of "A History of Modern Libya," "Libya Since 1969" - he edited
that second book - and he has an article called "After Gaddafi" in the
current edition of Newsweek.

How close did you get to Gadhafi? Did you ever, like, meet him? Did you
go to his speeches?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Yes. At one point, we interviewed him, and then we
also got to actually interview the son, and then at one point, had
dinner and so on with Saif al-Islam, the son.

GROSS: And he had been seen as the heir apparent until very recently.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, yes. Saif al-Islam had always been seen as the
heir apparent. But I think to any careful observer of Libya, there was
something very strange about somebody who called himself a reformer of
his father's political system, but really had no political standing in
that system, who was where he was because of who his father was and
nothing else.

And I met him at one point over dinner, and it was very clear that all
of these ideas that he had, in a sense, were not very well-formed. And
so it was not so - no surprise to me, then, that what we saw last week,
when Saif al-Islam came out in defense of his father, and in kind of a
very surreal language, eerily reminiscent of his father, kept invoking
the same symbols and the same kind of threats that his father had used
for the last 40 years.

In a sense, you know, the big reformer, the would-be reformer that
particularly the Western press was so eager to promote turned out to be
exactly like his father.

GROSS: He was talking about that there would be rivers of blood if
people didn't stop protesting.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Indeed, and again, very reminiscent of what his father
had always said. This rivers of blood analogy, really, again, goes back
to the colonial period and the blood, you know, that was shed by Libyans
during the colonial period.

We shouldn't forget that in eastern Libya, in Syrianata(ph), it is
estimated that up to half of the local population may have died during
the Italian colonial period. So there was an enormous amount of
bloodshed. And that image of martyrdom, of blood being shed for the sake
of Libya, has been an image - a recurrent image in Gadhafi's ideology
and of his sons ever since.

GROSS: So when you interviewed Gadhafi, was he coherent? Like, what was
it like to talk with him?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, it was a little bit surreal in that, you know,
he had this habit of kind of staring off into space all the time. And
there were long pauses in which you didn't know if he had really
understood you, or if indeed, he was reflecting on what you were saying.

But then usually the answer that you would get was a very kind of
pedestrian answer, or he would simply refer to the "Green Book." So
there wasn't much of substance there, and it was kind of, again, an
almost surreal-type of interview.

GROSS: Can I ask you a very challenging intellectual question? What was
he wearing?

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: His clothes are just so odd. So do you remember what he wore to
the interview?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Yes. And, as a matter of fact, interestingly enough,
the kind of the changes, the sartorial changes of Gadhafi, can be very
clearly pinpointed according to the period in which you talk to him.

And at that particular point in time, he wore what is called a
traditional jift(ph) in Libya, which is this kind of wraparound cloak
with the Roman fibula at the shoulder - very traditional and, of course,
still in line with what most Libyans thought of kind of as a national -
the sense of a national community.

Then later on, of course, it devolved into this rather bizarre African
dress that he wore and that I think most Libyans could not identify with
at all and - as a matter of fact, would make jokes, of course, very
silently, about the way he was dressed and the way he behaved in public.

GROSS: So if we can just talk a little bit more about his clothes and
what they reflect about him, kind of politically, originally, Gadhafi
saw himself as a leader of the Arab world.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Correct.

GROSS: So how did he dress then, and what did those clothes say about
how he saw himself politically and globally?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, initially, remember that the big hero of Gadhafi
was Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt. And Gamal Abdel Nasser
came, much like Gadhafi, out of a military tradition. And so during the
initial phase, when Gadhafi was talking primarily about Arab socialism
and offered Libya and its resources at one point to Nasser, he tended to
dress rather nattily, very well, in a pressed military uniform with a
swagger stick under his arm.

And so, you know, he very much saw himself as the young military, the
younger revolutionary, who would, in a sense, lead the struggle for Arab
nationalism and put Libya's resources at the disposal of that
revolution.

GROSS: So did he see himself as the head of a pan-Arab world?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Oh, very much so, and that really permeates his
initial speeches, at least for the first five or six years. But then, of
course, it became quite clear that Libya - which, after all, is a rather
inconsequential country when you think of it, a very small population,
and except for oil, nothing is really there.

And it became clear that particularly within the Arab community, the
Arab world at large, that Gadhafi didn't really didn't have the kind of
stature he thought he had. And so in a sense, he started to abandon Arab
nationalism. He lashed out against Arab leaders, in part because, in a
sense, they were snickering behind his back. He was considered, in a
sense, a country bumpkin by many of the Arab leaders.

And at that point, the revolution really kind of turns internal. And
it's at that particular point in time that we start Gadhafi seeing to
wear more traditional dress. And that again...

GROSS: Traditional African dress?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: No, no, traditional Arab dress, traditional Libyan
dress, the kind of wraparound cloak, you know, with - again, with the
Roman fibula at the shoulder.

And that lasted for quite a few years, actually. And we saw kind of a
very interesting mixture, because on the one hand, Gadhafi increasingly
started to wear civilian clothes, three-piece suits, Western three-piece
suits, and for some reason he seemed to prefer white suits. But then he
would marry those Western suits with the traditional dress that he wore
on top of it. So it was a kind of a juxtaposition, which I think struck
many Libyans as rather strange.

And then that second phase really was abandoned later on, when it was
very clear that the Arabs would not pursue his vision of Arab
nationalism, and he turned toward sub-Saharan Africa to create what he
called the union, the African Union, of which, of course, he himself
wanted to be the president.

And it's at that point that we start to see him wear some rather strange
outfits, very, very colorful, and they're really sub-Saharan African
dress, having nothing to with Libya at all anymore. And it was really at
that point that a lot of Libyans really shook their head in disbelief,
kind of snickering, again, at, you know, a kind of a type of dress that
had really nothing to do with Libya at that particular point in time
anymore.

GROSS: My guest, Dirk Vandewalle, will be back in the second half of the
show. His article, "After Gaddafi," is in the current edition of
Newsweek. He's the author of "A History of Modern Libya" and an
associate professor of government at Dartmouth College.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross back with Dirk Vandewalle.
We're talking about what led to the uprising in Libya, how Gadhafi
developed and maintained his grip on power and how he became
increasingly eccentric and delusional. Vandewalle's article “After
Gaddafi” is in the current edition of Newsweek. He is the author of “A
History of Modern Libya” and edited the book “Libya Since 1969.” He
lived in Libya for 14 months beginning in 1986 and has returned there
every year or two since. He’s an associate professor of government at
Dartmouth College.

When we left off, we were talking about how the changes in Gadhafi’s
unusual clothing have reflected changes in his political self-image.

What is the outfit he's been wearing lately when he’s appeared on
television?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Actually, he's gone back. Now the one we saw most
recently is more, again, of a Libyan outfit. It's a Bedouin outfit. And
also the headgear that he wears is very much in a Berber or a Bedouin
tradition, I should say.

GROSS: And his father was a Bedouin who lived in a tent and herded
camels. Do I have that right?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Yeah. His father was indeed a – well, he was somebody
who traveled back and forth across areas of Libya, illiterate, and so
there are lots of pictures of Gadhafi with his father before he died in
a tent and, of course, the tent then became also one of the symbols of
Gadhafi's revolution. Again, a sign or a kind of an indication that he
wanted to be what he saw as his roots, so to speak, within the Bedouin
population of Libya.

GROSS: But, again, correct me if I'm wrong, when he'd go to a foreign
country and meet with leaders there, he’d pitched a tent in the city and
insist that he had to sleep in the tent.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Yes, indeed. He insisted always on taking a tent with
him. Now this was no ordinary tent. This was a bulletproof tent.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: I didn't know they made such things.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, I did not either until I actually found out. But
the point was, of course, that this was an enormously heavy tent by
implication, and so it would necessitate a special airplane to fly the
tent into wherever Gadhafi went.

I saw this happen, for example, when he flew into Brussels for a meeting
with European Union officials. But in a sense that wasn't the strangest
thing because he also sometimes insisted on bringing two or three camels
along with the tent and that, of course, riled up a lot of officials
wherever he went.

GROSS: So the camels would be flown in?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Yes, the camels would be flown and would be tethered
to the tent.

GROSS: So what was this about? Do you have any idea? Was this an
expression of his roots? Was he paranoid about hotels so he'd only sleep
in his own tent?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Oh, no, no, no. This was very much an expression of
him going back to his root. He very much, as he again repeated in the
last speeches we've heard, he very much saw himself as a Bedu, you know,
as a traditional person from the desert. And the argument was, or at
least the argument Gadhafi made was that men of the desert are very
simple, they have very simple and clear morals and they live in a sense
by and their wits.

And so in a sense he was trying to emulate what he saw, all of these
noble characteristics of the traditional Arab. You know, an image in a
sense when you think of it that most Arabs themselves would not really
recognize anymore at this particular point in time.

GROSS: Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, has said that he
learned about bunga-bunga sex parties from Gadhafi. And I'm wondering
like did Gadhafi ever pass himself off as a devout man? Were these like
sex parties that I guess he was famous for and traveling with the
Ukrainian nurse who seemed to be his lover, if I read all that
correctly? Was that seen as hypocritical because he passed himself off
as devout or was religion not an issue with him?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: I think we have to deal with a great deal of
suspicion, these allegations. Gadhafi himself as far as I know, there
were never these kinds of allegations and certainly, I've never heard
those kinds of stories in Libya. If they come from Berlusconi I would
tend to treat as with not only a grain of salt but a scoop of salt.

And the whole point about the amazons, as I recall, the female guards
surround Gadhafi and so on, was in a sense Gadhafi's attempt to improve
the situation of Libyan women, and so he created a military academy
specifically for women and so on. I tend to treat with great suspicion,
as I said, all these allegations of Gadhafi’s involvement with women, in
part because there simply is no real record of that. He was a pretty
austere man, as we know from one of the WikiLeak cables, and he was also
a very devout Muslim. Indeed, most of the pictures that you see of him
particularly in the first decade after taking over are him praying in
the desert.

GROSS: If we can just go back in Libyan history for a moment. Libya had
been part of the Ottoman Empire. From 1911 to ‘43 it was an Italian
colony. After World War II, the country of Libya was created by the
Western powers who won the war. And then in, was it ‘63, that Gadhafi
leads the revolution?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: No, ’69.

GROSS: '69, Gadhafi leads the revolution that overturns the monarch who
had ruled after World War II. What was Gadhafi about then? Can we go
back that 1969 Gadhafi?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Gadhafi in 1969 was a very young captain. He was only
27 years old. And if there is one thing that we need to remember about
him at that time it was that he was very much enamored of particularly
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president who, of course, had been the
leading figure in Arab socialism. Arab socialism that was meant to bring
the Arab nation back to the glory that it had once had. And so Gadhafi
in a sense really saw himself as possibly the successor to Gamal Abdel
Nasser.

He strongly believed in putting the resources of Libya at the disposal
of the Egyptian president and hoped that together they would be able to
really implement this vision of Arab nationalism, the kind of grandeur
that Gadhafi and Nasser had really wanted Arabs to have.

But unfortunately, Gamal Abdel Nasser died of a heart attack in December
1970. And so in a sense the junior partner in that relationship,
Gadhafi, was left alone. And there also was at that point no one really
who could check his ideological ambitions anymore. Nasser was gone and
certainly Nasser could have done so.

But in a sense, you know, we start to see the kind of phenomenon that we
will notice much later in Libya and that is that Gadhafi’s really out
there on his own. By that time no one could really question him anymore.
The regime became increasingly authoritarian, protected by all these
revolutionary guards and other committees, and other security
organizations. And so that initial image of Gadhafi as the defender of
Arab nationalism would yield within a decade or so to a disillusionment
with Arab nationalism.

GROSS: Was there a period after the revolution that Gadhafi led in 1969
in which he was genuinely seen as a hero for, you know, overturning the
monarchy and liberating Libya?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Oh, very much so. And I think that really explains
even until today the kind of support that we're still seeing around him
in Tripoli, certainly, initially during the early years of the
revolution when Gadhafi nationalized the oil industry. But in a sense he
brought to Libya a kind of sense of pride that certainly had not existed
during the monarchy which was seen as a lackey of the West essentially.

Certainly, at that particular point in time Gadhafi enjoyed a relatively
high level of legitimacy and it was added to by the fact that he did
have - at least initially - during those early years a certain charisma
that really rubbed off on people. And so the level of legitimacy was
actually quite high and didn't start to really deteriorate, I would
argue, until the late 1970s.

GROSS: And when did he write his “Green Book?”

Prof. VANDEWALLE: “The Green Book” was published in three volumes. The
first volume was published in 1975. And in a sense the publication of
“The Green Book” was perhaps the first indication that people had that
of the kind of strange directives that would come down the pike in the
years ahead, and I think also the first point at which some of the
legitimacy of the regime was starting to get undercut.

GROSS: My guest is Dirk Vandewalle. His article “After Gaddafi” is
published in the current edition of Newsweek. He’s the author of “A
History of Modern Libya” and teaches at Dartmouth College. We’ll talk
more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you’re just joining us, my guest is Dirk Vandewalle and he's a
political scientist who teaches at Dartmouth University. He’s the author
of “A History of Modern Libya.” He edited “Libya Since 1969: Gaddafi's
Revolution Revisited," and he has a story in this week’s Newsweek called
“After Gaddafi.”

So you lived in Libya, you know, off and on. You've visited many times
and you lived there off and on for 14 months starting in 1986. Did you
live there in fear? Were you worried that you would be, you know,
arrested, spied on?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: No. Actually living in Libya was on the one hand very
easy. There were lots of difficulties in terms of logistics, in part
because it was very difficult sometimes to get food; it was very
difficult to find housing. But it was a typical
authoritarian/totalitarian state, and that is once you were in the
country, once you had gotten a visa, and once you had been approved, the
fact that you had that visa in a sense made you invulnerable. No one
would dare question you or, you know, put any obstacles in your way
because you had been approved and you had been approved at the highest
level. And so it was incredibly easy for me to actually get around in
the country, to travel around.

People uniformly were very friendly, very inviting. And so the actual
physical research that I had to do was made quite easy. But as I said,
the physical conditions of living in Libya at the time, because again
remember there was no private sector. There were very few restaurants at
the time. They were no cafes or anything. So it became a challenge to
really live in the country. And I remember very distinctly that for
weeks on end my lunch would consist of a piece of bread and almost
nothing else.

GROSS: And what were you researching, the history of Libya?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Yeah. I was looking at the impact of oil revenues and
how those oil revenues had been used by the regime to either create or
destroy national institutions that would allow the country eventually to
really take off economically. And what I found, of course, was that
Gadhafi had been utterly destructive. That most of the institutions, the
modern institutions of the state, in pursuit of that statelessness that
he always claimed that he wanted and that a lot of those institutions
really had been destroyed.

GROSS: Libya under Gadhafi was built on such a big lie. He has this
“Green Book,” his revolutionary text, his revolutionary Bible that
preaches this direct input of the people into the government, and the
people have no input at all and there's no political system. There's no
political parties. There's no parliament but he sets up these
revolutionary committees to basically control things and to control the
people.

So, like do you think that Gadhafi ever believed “The Green Book?” I
mean he’d have to be, talk about cognitive dissonance, to act so
differently then what he was preaching, do you think he knew what he was
doing?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: I think cognitive dissonance is a very good way to
describe the kind of process that Gadhafi was laboring under. But
remember again, this was a political system where no one was allowed to
say anything to Gadhafi, to question him in any way. And, of course, in
a sense he internalized this.

If no one questions your ideas and for 40 years you're allowed to simply
talk about it and no one is there to challenge you or to, in anyway,
engage you in conversation about your ideas then, you know, in a sense
it becomes reality.

But it became worse particularly after 2003 and 2003 is really the point
where the regime gets rehabilitated. And at that particular point in
time there was a publicity – a PR campaign made that would promote the
ideas of Gadhafi, to portray Gadhafi as he himself put it at a global
level as an international thinker. And at that particular point in time
they hired a company out of Boston to bring to Libya public
intellectuals from the United States and public figures to engage
Gadhafi to talk about democracy.

Now, of course, for anybody who had ever even glanced at “The Green
Book,” the notion that any true intellectual would want to have a
conversation with Gadhafi was, of course, purely ridiculous. But several
individuals went and, of course, it made Gadhafi appear as the global
figure that indeed he wanted to be because here you had, you know, world
renowned intellectuals talking to him about the prospect about democracy
in Libya, about his concept of democracy. And so in the sense, the West
also was at fault by making it appear to Gadhafi as if these ludicrous
ideas that he had really had any value. And, of course, in the end, why
these individuals went had more to do with money than a real interest in
Gadhafi’s ideas.

GROSS: You mentioned this was around - this is in 2003 or just after.
And it was in 2003 that the United States ended its sanctions against
Libya and Libya, in return, gave up its weapons of mass destruction
program and it also paid reparations to the families of the people
killed on the Pan Am flight that was - that exploded over Lockerbie,
Scotland. So that was the tradeoff. So do you think that the people in,
the American government – the Bush administration at the time – believed
that Gadhafi had been rehabilitated, that he was a more responsible
leader, or was it just a really kind of practical deal that they made?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: I think Washington was always very skeptical of the
so-called rehabilitation of Gadhafi. And you saw that very clearly after
they declared their weapons of mass distraction. Libya thought that, as
a result of that, they would be immediately taken off the list of
sponsors of terrorism and would be fully rehabilitated and, in a sense,
would become this integrated partner again into an international
economy.

Washington, on the other hand, was considerably more skeptical and kept
putting a number of demands in front of the Libyans. And eventually, of
course, we did reestablish diplomatic relations with Libya. But it was
very clear that the United States always remained somewhat skeptical
about the regime and about Gadhafi, in general. But then something
unexpected happened and that was that Gadhafi, who himself had once been
considered as the master terrorist, suddenly became our preferred
partner in North Africa in the fight against terrorism.

GROSS: Yes. And how did that happen? Because he’d been considered a
sponsor of terrorism and he was implicated in several major terrorist
acts. Name a couple.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, of course, Lockerbie, first of all, the La Belle
discotheque. Before that...

GROSS: In Germany.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: In Germany. The fact that the regime was channeling
weapons to the IRA. I mean there were lots and lots of involvements that
the Gadhafi regime had with all kinds of shady organization, also
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the regime had really tried to
destabilize a lot of the local governments.

GROSS: So WikiLeaks released a cable from 2008, from the ambassador -
American ambassador in Libya, saying that Libya is a strong partner in
the war against terrorism. What did Libya contribute? What did Gadhafi
contribute to the war against terrorism?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: Well, the details are not terribly clear here, and so
my answer cannot be, in a sense, complete. But what we do know is that
Libya provide some information to the United States, particularly on al-
Qaida in North Africa. And, of course, by that time the Libyans had
gathered quite a bit of information, because remember, the Libyans
themselves had tried to destroy the Islamic movements in eastern Libya
previous to that, so they had accumulated quite a bit of intelligence,
particularly on al-Qaida, and that was what they allegedly turned over
to the U.S. government.

GROSS: My guest is Dirk Vandewalle. His article “After Gaddafi” is
published in the current edition of Newsweek. He’s the author of “A
History of Modern Libya” and teaches at Dartmouth College.

We’ll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you’re just joining us, my guest is Dirk Vandewalle. He is an
associate professor political science at Dartmouth College and the
author of “A History of Modern Libya,” “Libya Since 1969,” he edited
that second book, and he has an article called “After Gaddafi” in the
current edition of Newsweek.

Now President Mubarak in Egypt said that he was not leaving, no way was
he going to leave, he was staying there, the people elected him and he
had a responsibility to stay - and then he left. Do you think Gadhafi
really will stay till the end, till he's either thrown out or killed? Or
do you think, at some point, he might leave, realizing that his time is
up?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: I think the big problem for Gadhafi is that he may
have nowhere to leave for, and that is he has systematically antagonized
all his regional partners. Saudi Arabia, which is kind of the
traditional country that deposed dictators go to, certainly would not
want Gadhafi because the relationship between King Abdullah and Gadhafi
has been very bad for at least a decade. And so I'm not sure what
country would be willing, at this particular point in time, particularly
since we're likely to see some criminal indictments by the United
Nations, that any country would be really willing to take him. And so
the kind of surrealism that I described, together with the lack of
options, makes me think that he may very well stay till the very end.

GROSS: What do you see – well, first of all, do you think it's
inevitable that the Gadhafi regime is going to fall?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: I do think it's inevitable. There are no more options.
I think all the personnel around him, even high-level personnel, is
defecting. Eighty percent of the country is now under the control of
rebels. Effectively he no longer has control over the flows of revenues
coming from oil. And an international campaign is starting against him,
that will isolate him further. So I do think it's a matter of time but
it is the endgame for Gadhafi.

GROSS: What do you see happening after Gadhafi?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: In a sense, the real tragedy of Libya has been that
Gadhafi has very systematically destroyed whatever institutions were in
the country, that the monarchy had tried to create, a kind of embryonic
political system, some bureaucracies and so on. And we shouldn't forget
that Libya really was created almost accidentally, as a matter of fact.
I often refer to it as the accidental state. In part because Libya was
created by the great powers after World War II, essentially for the
strategic purposes of those great powers. The two main provinces in
Libya, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, had very little in common and indeed,
after they were put together into the kingdom of Libya, were quite
suspicious of each other.

The man who became King, who was originally from Cyrenaica, from the
Zanussi family, and he kept complaining, for example, to the American
ambassador at the time, that he didn't want to be king of Libya. He just
wanted to be the ruler, the emir of Cyrenaica. Libya was not really
unified, truly, until 1963 when legislation was introduced that
abandoned the federal formula. And the reason that was done, was
primarily to provide a sense of property rights for the international
oil companies that were drilling and were commercializing oil at the
time.

So when you think of it, there is all this kind of history to Libya,
that hints at the differences between the provinces. And, of course, the
big question now is whether or not those differences will resurface,
whether tribes in different parts of the country will rise up or create
alliances that eventually could make this country break up. Personally,
I don't think that will happen. I think all sides have an interest in
making sure that the country remains unified, because that's the only
way they can sell their oil on the international market - pipelines and
so on are shared. But nevertheless, there could be a lot of contestation
in the weeks, the months and years ahead over what the rights and duties
are of these different provinces and of the different tribes within a
future Libya.

GROSS: What’s at stake - just looking at it, provincially, for second,
what's at stake for the United States in Libya now?

Prof. VANDEWALLE: In a sense, I think the challenge of the United States
really goes slightly, also, beyond Libya. And that is what kind of
credibility we still have at certain levels in the region. And that is -
we supported, not only Gadhafi but also Mubarak and Ben Ali in Tunisia,
in part because we argue that they were a bulwark against the radicals
Islamism and so on. And so we don't know exactly when, particularly, a
new government comes into power in Libya, whether or not governments
will still share that kind of vision that the United States had. I mean
it was an ideal kind of vision to be shared with Gadhafi, because it was
one way for him to control his own country. Once we have the new
government, of course, we don't know. And my hunch is that, probably,
successors to Gadhafi will be a lot more skeptical of this alliance that
had been made with the United States, than Gadhafi ever became after
2003.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. I really
appreciate it.

Prof. VANDEWALLE: My pleasure.

GROSS: Dirk Vandewalle is the author of “A History of Modern Libya. His
article “After Gaddafi” is in the current edition of Newsweek. He’s an
associate professor of government at Dartmouth College.

You can download Podcasts of our show on our website, freshair.npr.org.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: You know the famous cover photo on the 1963 album, “The
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,” showing Dylan walking arm in arm with the woman
down a Greenwich Village street? The woman, Suze Rotolo, was Dylan's
girlfriend at the time. She's died at the age of 67.

On the next FRESH AIR, we listen back to the interview I recorded with
her in 2008.

Join us.
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