TRIPOLI, Libya – Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim says he will personally pick up his AK-47 if he has to.
“When it comes down to it, we will all take our guns and Kalashnikovs and fight,” he said at a news conference last week. Moammar “Gaddafi’s departure is the worst-case scenario for Libya. If Gaddafi disappears for any reason, then the safety valve has disappeared and you will have a civil war.”
Government scare-mongering perhaps — but rhetoric that worries some business leaders from Libya and the West, who fear for the future of this divided and volatile North African country if Gaddafi no longer is in power.
Gaddafi’s government says it has distributed weapons to a million loyalists and is playing on ancient tribal rivalries to stoke fears of a takeover by people from eastern Libya.
“Our biggest problem even if Gaddafi goes will be the tribal conflicts, which will continue the fighting,” said an American energy executive who declined to be named to protect his investments in Libya. “For all of the companies waiting to resume operations in Libya, it looks like it will be a long wait. Even if the Gaddafi regime falls, the civil war in Libya will continue.”
Foreign businesses sometimes value stability above human rights, and many ordinary Libyans say that anything short of Gaddafi’s departure would be a betrayal after 41 years of repression at his hands. But the foreigners’ fears are shared by some Libyan business leaders, who say the West needs to do more to promote peace and dialogue instead of simply war.
“If Gaddafi leaves tomorrow, it will be blood, up to here,” said Abdulatif Teer, general manager of Saba Consulting & Engineering Services in Tripoli, pointing to his knees. “The international community should help us solve our problems peacefully, through dialogue. . . . We need an arrangement between all the Libyan people, and a transition period.”
One concern in many people’s minds is that the West has left little or no room for a face-saving exit for Libya’s “Brother Leader,” making it very likely the colonel will fight to the last bullet.
Indeed, last week Gaddafi turned down an offer from South African President Jacob Zuma to find him a safe haven in Africa, insisting he was determined to stay with his own people, CBS reported, citing an unnamed South African official.
“He is not a quitter, and his pride is more important than anything else,” said Pierre Bonnard, a business consultant who has been visiting Libya since 2003 and is now trying to promote a peaceful solution to the crisis on behalf of two French oil companies. “If you are imposing something from outside, he will never accept that.”
Talk peace, not war
The government’s propaganda machine has left many Gaddafi loyalists and western tribal leaders worried that a rebel victory would leave them at best sidelined and at worst dead.
So far, Western governments have done little to calm those fears.
“We need to talk a little bit more about peace and a little less about war,” said Noman Benotman, a former Libyan Islamist militant who renounced violence and is now an analyst with the Quillam Foundation, a London think-tank.
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