Heeling to Brother Gaddafi

A revolution guided by the Green Book, sweetened with oil

Only days after President Reagan called upon all U.S. citizens to leave Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, the first of some 1,500 Americans expected to depart by the end of next month were dutifully queuing up at the Tripoli International Airport for the flight home. Despite well-publicized U.S. reports that Gaddafi had dispatched hit men to assassinate Reagan, few believed that they were in any real danger of Libyan retaliation. For the occasion, Gaddafi eased usually tight restrictions on journalists to invite members of the foreign press to hear him, presumably, denounce Washington's claims. TIME Correspondent Jonathan Beaty flew to Tripoli for a firsthand look at the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (state of the masses), as the nation has been renamed. His report:

The press conference, or rather the non-conference, was vintage Gaddafi. After two days of waiting, anxious revolutionary committeemen herded the press out of our hotels for a breathtaking, Libyan-style drive through the narrow streets of Tripoli. Lights blinking and horns blaring, the wild caravan raced to a walled compound where soldiers wielding submachine guns waved us through a gate flanked by two Russian T-72 tanks. For the fifth time since my arrival I was thoroughly searched. Inside the handsome government offices with beautifully crafted wooden Arabic arches, television crews set up their equipment on priceless rugs. Then a top Gaddafi aide, sporting a natty pinstripe suit under immaculate Arab robes, announced that the interview had been canceled. The presumed reason: the media-wise Gaddafi, who appeared, briefly, wearing a European-cut suit with a British overcoat flung over his shoulders, realized that the crisis in Poland had pushed him off the front pages and evening news broadcasts in Europe and America.

It is difficult for Westerners to grasp the extent to which Gaddafi is the sole spirit and voice of a revolution that in twelve years has transformed this North African desert wasteland. In 1969, armed with Islamic zeal and a near fanatical belief that he was the heir to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arabic nationalism, Gaddafi and eleven other young officers deposed the conservative King Idris in a bloodless coup. Gaddafi has since established iron political control of his countrymen, largely by spreading Libya's abundant oil wealth among them. Says Fouad Zlitni, a true believer: "The people decide everything, but it is the thoughts of Brother Gaddafi which guide us on to the proper path."

Those thoughts are enshrined in the Green Book, a three-volume work of revolutionary philosophy penned by Gaddafi. Cryptic excerpts are plastered all over Tripoli. "Representation is a falsification of democracy ... In need, freedom is latent . .. The party system aborts democracy." In the airport, the traveler is inundated with illuminated signs in Arabic and English that read: NO DEMOCRACY WITHOUT POPULAR CONGRESS. Portraits of Gaddafi are everywhere, in private homes, musty old hotels, on billboards in service stations. Pointedly, there are also anti-American posters depicting Libyans shoving a spear through the head of a bleeding pig clothed in Uncle Sam's red-white-and-blue suit, with doves soaring aloft carrying little Green Books.

Tripoli is a city of crude buildings constructed of flawed, hand-poured cement. The balconies of many newly built, 20-story "people's" apartment buildings are draped with laundry hanging out to dry. TV antennas bristle from small, walled houses and buildings. Dusty new automobiles line roads where they have been abandoned after they ceased functioning. In a country with an estimated population of 3 million, some 500,000 of whom are foreign workers in search of the Libyan El Dorado, there are few signs of civil control or even of traffic lights. The evidence of inefficiency is staggering. Ships in the port of Tripoli wait to off-load their cargo at crumbling concrete piers. Acres of new tractors near the harbor await unscheduled delivery to unknown recipients. Last month, say Libyans, it was Land Rovers; before that, Japanese cars lined up for miles.

Near the green domes and lush gardens of Tripoli's People's Palace, the seat of Gaddafi's power, whole streets of ancient shops are boarded up. The centuries-old suq, or bazaar, was closed this year when Gaddafi banned all private enterprise. Consumer goods, from Japanese TVs and stereo systems to gourmet food, are now available in massive state-owned supermarkets.

Theoretically, Libya is ruled from the bottom up by a bewildering array of people's committees, which formulate policy on such issues as agriculture, health and housing. Final governing responsibility resides with the General People's Congress. But in 1977, stunned by popular apathy, Gaddafi cultivated "revolutionary committees" to oversee the confused network of assemblies and lead them "to the right way." In effect, the revolutionary committees are Gaddafi's ideological shock troops. Dressed in expensive Western clothes, well educated and often affecting Gaddafi's short, modified Afro hair style, they can intimidate both wavering citizens and official functionaries with a glance, with good reason: they are apparently enforcers of a strict Islamic code that outlaws adultery, homosexuality, alcohol consumption or "scheming" against the state. Such crimes are punishable by imprisonment--and worse. According to Amnesty International, large numbers of prisoners have been held without trial and tortured in Libyan jails.

Little of this seems to faze the 68 Mobil Oil employees who lined up last week at Tripoli's Airport for the compulsory trip back to the U.S. Snapped one Mobil engineer: "I don't know whether I'm being protected from Gaddafi or the Sixth Fleet!" The reference was to the U.S. Mediterranean naval force. Indeed, some of the Americans in Libya and foreign diplomatic personnel alike were sharply skeptical of the Reagan Administration's fears that Gaddafi might hold Americans hostage in the event of worsening relations between Libya and the U.S.

Most feel Gaddafi is unwilling to risk losing access to U.S. technology and assistance--or to court international condemnation--by taking hostages. Says one Western diplomat: "The situation here is different from what it was in Iran. The Libyans are a more docile people. Not one rock is going to be thrown unless Gaddafi says so."

The consensus here is that the American pullout will be a minor irritant to Gaddafi, who will be able to find ample technicians and workers in Europe and elsewhere to replace the departing Yanks. Old Libya hands are equally certain that Gaddafi will go to extreme lengths to avoid allowing Soviet technicians to come in and help with the oil production. Indeed, Gaddafi seems careful to keep the 3,000 to 5,000 Soviet advisers now in Libya isolated in outlying military posts. The representative of TASS news agency in Tripoli complained openly last week about the Soviet inability to persuade Gaddafi to allow them to open a military base.

But it would be a mistake to believe that this suggests a softening in Gaddafi's view of the U.S. A senior Libyan official close to Gaddafi was willing to concede that reported assassinations of Libyan nationals in Europe last year were indeed sanctioned by the revolutionary committees and condoned by Gaddafi, as U.S. and Western intelligence sources have guessed. He also strenuously emphasized that the U.S. would be considered an enemy as long as it supports Israel. Libya steadfastly opposes both the existence of Israel and the U.S. role in making Israel "the American instrument in the region." He added: "If America comes to this country, we will fight, even if all Libyans have to die." It is a chilling thought, but curiously in harmony with the strange and chilling ways of Muammar Gaddafi.

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