As Gaddafi addressed his seemingly fake and bored audience to celebrate his day of “People’s Authority”, there seemed to be little to celebrate. In less than two weeks of confrontations with mostly unarmed civilians, Gaddafi's regime has already lost control of more than three quarters of his empire. A quick scan of headlines carried by his official mouthpiece paper today, could only find cables of support for the “Brother Leader” from the likes of Lesotho, the infamous Equatorial Guinea and the” Malian People’s movement”, alias “Mercenaries”. Another headline cites the forming of a new committee for the “Rescue of Benghazi”, an implicit acknowledgement that the regime has now lost control of this second most important city. As winds of change are sweeping the Libyan shores and inner desert, Gaddafi finds himself holed up in Tripoli, one of his last few bastions and is doing his best to put on an “all is fine” face, stay afloat and salvage what he could.
To those who have followed the dictator closely over the years, it does not come as a surprise to hear him deny facts and distort others about current unrest in Libya. He is well known to be a master of deception and a pathetic liar. To discredit the spontaneous and successful revolt against his brutal regime, he accused it of being part of a conspiracy by Al-Qaeda. In a bid to cling to power and appeal to some in the West, he has been playing this scare card over and over, but hardly anybody is buying. Quoting National Public Radio sources, the battle for Benghazi for example was won by town citizens and unlikely heroes. Fathi Terbil was a lawyer championing the case of 1200 political prisoners massacred by Gaddafi in 1996. His arrest by authorities sparked recent events in Benghazi. Abdul Abdely was a military pilot who was ordered by the Libyan dictator to bomb rebel targets in the East, while a gun was held on his head by a co-pilot. He took a personal risk and parachuted instead, aborting the mission. Mahdi Ziu was an oil company manager and a father of two. His wife reported that during recent confrontations with the military, he often came home with his clothes smeared in blood from carrying the dying and wounded comrades. On Feb. 20, he loaded his KIA with propane cylinders and rammed it into the fortified gate of the local military base, paving the way for the liberation of the city. Gaddafi is also an accomplished liar. Despite the fact that he has been an absolute ruler for over forty years, he continues to deny that and claims that he is just a normal everyday citizen. On the lighter side, he is also known to invent silly facts, such as his claim that Shakespeare was originally an Arab by the name of "Sheikh Zubair" who had emigrated to England.
It was in 1977, when Gaddafi first sold his genie idea of a “People Authority” and a “Jamahiriya” system to Libyans, claiming he was no longer president. He declared that “People in Libya would from now on be their own masters, rule themselves by themselves and live in perpetual Paradise”. However, it did not take long for Libyans to realize that this was a big lie. In his bid to monopolize power, Gaddafi abolished the constitution, orchestrated campaigns of publicly televised hangings and systematically banned all forms of political expression. He then went on to dismantle all elements of good government, promoting corruption and intentionally destroying vital services such as education and health. To discourage potential revolt, Gaddafi worked hard on weakening and eventually disbanding most of the regular army. Instead, for his own security, he depended on informants, revolutionary committees, special forces and bands of paramilitary mercenaries. Practically each of his sons has an army of his own. Every town has been kept in check by one or more of Gaddafi’s well-equipped battalions, known as “Katibas”. Meanwhile, being notoriously megalomaniac and paranoid by nature, he embarked on a bizarre personality cult campaign, plundering the country’s oil money and bestowing on himself titles ranging from “Brother Leader” to “King of Kings”. Thanks to instant communication, eccentricities of the Libyan dictator have now become common knowledge and a source of jokes not only in Libya but around the world.
