Libya is no longer big enough for Gadhafi

TRIPOLI, LIBYA

Forty years after he seized power in a bloodless coup d'etat, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan leader once called the mad dog of the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan, has achieved the international status he always craved: chairman of the African Union.

Gadhafi's selection last month to lead the 53-nation African Union coincided with his emergence as a welcomed figure in Western capitals, where heads of state are eager to tap Libya's vast oil and gas reserves and to gain access to virgin Libyan markets. Once vilified for promoting state terrorism, Gadhafi is now courted.

But Gadhafi remains the same eccentric, unpredictable revolutionary as always. He has used his new status to promote his call for a United States of Africa, with one passport, one military and one currency. He has blamed Israel for the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, defended Somali pirates for fighting "greedy Western nations" and declared that multiparty democracy was not right for the people of Africa.

"This is a role that Gadhafi has been looking for for 40 years," said Wahid Abdel Meguid, deputy director of Egypt's largest research institute, the government-financed Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "He kept shifting and changing directions in search of this role."

Each step of Gadhafi's calculated transformation from terrorist sponsor to would-be statesman has bolstered the next. The thaw in relations with the West, which began in 2003 when he gave up Libya's nuclear weapons program, gave him more credibility in Africa, and his rising status in Africa has made him more acceptable to the West. All of which has been aimed at one primary objective: bolstering his image.

No credible alternatives

But now in Africa, he has found traction. African heads of state view him suspiciously, and his one-Africa agenda is generally dismissed as unworkable. But he is embraced for his growing status in the West, the lack of credible alternatives across the continent and his money. Many stories are told in Tripoli of African leaders visiting Gadhafi and leaving with suitcases full of cash, stories that cannot be confirmed but that have become conventional wisdom.

"They don't want to lose him because he is a gold mine for solving crises, usually financial crises," said Attia Essawy, an Egyptian writer with expertise in African affairs. "He is searching for a role; he wants to have a role regardless of where."

While Libya's strongman is enjoying his burnished image, it has come at a cost to his nation of 5.5 million people and to about 2 million Africans who have flocked to Libya believing that they would find warm receptions, good jobs and, perhaps, an easy path to Europe. Instead, they found a hostile environment and a struggle just to eat.

"It is a burden," Ali Abd Alaziz Isawi, who served for two years as the minister of economy, trade and investment, said of the army of illegal immigrants living in Libya. "They are a burden on health care, they spread disease, crime. They are illegal."

A dead end in Libya

Many people in Tripoli said they resented the presence of so many illegal workers. "We don't like them," said Moustafa Saleh, 28, who is unemployed, echoing a popular sentiment. "They smuggle themselves through the desert, and the way they deal with us is not good."

For the African migrants themselves, life in Libya is often a dead end. "They call us animals and slaves," said Paul Oknonghou, 28, a Nigerian who lives with about a dozen other Nigerians in a house under construction that lacks glass in the window frames, running water, a bathroom or a kitchen. He said he and his friends considered themselves lucky that they did not have to sleep on the streets.

Thomas Thtakore, 26, from Ghana, who entered Libya illegally a year ago after a three-month journey across mountains and desert, said, "I have no help; I sleep under a bridge near the river." He said his younger brother died on the way. "If I stay here, I will die."

Thtakore was about to be flown back to Ghana by the International Organization for Migration, a nongovernmental group that helps migrants return home. Since 2006, the group has helped about 3,000 travel home.

"If they find a job it can be good, but if they don't, it can be a nightmare," said Michele Bombassei, an official with the migration group, adding that most do not find jobs.

Collecting 'soft power'

His Africa agenda helps empower him in other ways, too.

Diplomats said it gave him leverage in keeping African and European leaders' doors open. If Libya sent all the migrants home, they would become a burden to poorer African nations, which would then lose out on the remittances they send home. At the same time, diplomats here said, Libya has made it plain to European countries, especially Italy, that if Libya chose to look the other way, most of those migrants would head for European shores.

"It's a kind of soft power they use," said one Western diplomat who works on Libyan affairs but requested anonymity for fear of antagonizing Libyan authorities.