The Kadafi Generation: Growing Up With Libya’s Revolution

The young curly-haired Libyan has learned his lessons well, smoothly denouncing American “imperialism” and boasting about leader Moammar Kadafi between drags on his Marlboro cigarette.

“America is attacking us from all sides,” Ibrahim tells an American visitor, frowning into the sunlight and fingering a Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over green fatigues. As he speaks he watches hundreds of Soviet tanks rumble by central Green Square in the annual Sept. 1 anniversary celebration of Kadafi’s ascent to power in a military coup in 1969.

“You have tried to turn Tunisia and Egypt against us. You attacked our homes, our children, with bombs, from the sea to the north. Now America is trying to get us from the south, from Chad, but we will never give in.”

Parrots Officialdom

Ibrahim is 22 years old, a member of his country’s vigilante Revolutionary Committees. Effortlessly, sometimes with a glower, sometimes flashing a toothy smile, he parrots Libyan officialdom and the words of his leader.

He is a member of the Kadafi generation.

More than half of this North African country’s 3.5 million inhabitants are age 18 or under and have never known life other than under Kadafi.

Nationalism and a revolutionary fervor have been carefully nurtured, at school and at ideologically oriented summer camps. And sometimes, observers say, traditional education takes second place to revolutionary goals.

Starting Early

Children grow up with slogans from Kadafi’s Green Book manifesto--on classroom walls, at the supermarket, at the soccer stadium. Daily tirades against American evils, on the radio, on television, are as much a part of their landscape as date palms and soccer games in dusty lots.

Children as young as 10 can be seen at televised political meetings, solemnly calling for Arab nations to withdraw their assets from American banks in retaliation for U.S. government sanctions, or threatening to form “suicide squads.”

At summer camps, mandatory for children between ages 8 and 16, youngsters make scale-model bombs and draw unflattering caricatures of Uncle Sam, along with more standard arts and crafts.

Is this Libya’s future?

“The younger generation is pretty radicalized. . . . You can’t really see them returning to a bourgeois, pro-Western outlook,” says one Italian government source with long experience in Libyan affairs. “Even if they aren’t all fanatic, you just don’t see many young people who have grown up within the regime and are against Kadafi.

Social Framework

“A certain amount of revolutionary spirit and radical position for Libya is there to stay. This is what Kadafi has achieved.”

The revolution has provided a social framework for young people in this still basically ultratraditional Muslim society, satisfying some of the needs that might be met at nightclubs or high school dances in the West.

In a society where drinking is officially banned and contacts between the sexes tightly controlled, it provides a place to meet and be with friends.

At the public rallies, young men and women trade shy glances between chants. The younger girls giggle. The guys strut a bit. Sometimes romances start that way.

Take Ibrahim and Fatia Sacher, who met in the early days of Kadafi’s revolution and say they were attracted by mutual commitment and ideals. “We had something in common,” she says.

Youthful Vanguard

Today, in their early 30s, they appear a model couple by revolutionary standards. Fatia, who caught Kadafi’s attention at age 18 when she addressed a Socialist Union meeting, is today one of his most trusted aides. Ibrahim is working in military intelligence.

Similar ties are often found among up-and-coming Libyans.

At the Information Ministry, for example, many of its young male employees attended the same revolutionary camps, part of a youthful vanguard moving up within the government and replacing older, perhaps less ideologically zealous officials.

This young radical elite, often members of the 2,000- to 3,000-member Revolutionary Committees, appears to have made significant advances during the last decade, although Kadafi is careful to keep a cadre of older and more experienced professionals in key posts, such as those running the oil industry.

Kept in Check

And while the Libyan leader encourages the young revolutionaries on the one hand, he is skilled at playing factions against each other to keep them in check, and will often publicly upbraid Revolutionary Committees for corruption and power grabbing.

Observers say Kadafi is always attentive to potential threats from ambitious youngsters rising through the ranks. After all, Kadafi himself was just 28 when he came to power.

During four trips to Libya, numerous conversations with young people from all walks of life failed to turn up a real malcontent. However, contacts with foreigners, especially journalists, are generally rigidly controlled and most Libyans are reluctant to express any criticism, whether for fear of bringing reprisal from authorities or distrust of outsiders.

There is Fatma, a dreamy and friendly 29-year-old mother who writes poetry for a living and is getting a divorce.

Advances for Women

Before the revolution, a man under Muslim-based law could break up the marriage simply by repeating to his wife three times in public: “Divorced.” Now, women have a nearly equal say in the decision.

“Kadafi is a very nice man,” Fatma says. “And he has done a lot for women.”

At the women’s military academy in Tripoli, 1st Lt. Nouria Assias, 22, is a harsh critic of President Reagan and of Western social mores she says “exploit” women. She is a seemingly fierce devotee of the revolutionary struggle against “imperialist forces that threaten us from all sides.”

“We are answering the call of our leader to all Arab women of all Arab nations to speed up the arming of the people,” she says.

“We believe woman should stand beside her countryman . . . and not just in paradise, but in hell. And by hell I mean war.”

Shifting Blame

Her words typify the state of seemingly permanent “mobilization” and sense of conflict with outside forces that pervade daily life here. She and her peers have inherited from Kadafi a tendency to blame many of their country’s troubles, whether economic or political, on the outside world. It’s a country constantly in quest of redress for past colonial crimes.

Many young people admire Kadafi for challenging the world, and, in their eyes, putting Libya on the map.

“Whatever else you may say about Kadafi, he has given the young a sense of national pride that never existed here before,” says one Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Such sentiments are echoed by Redar Sanussi, a 28-year-old University of Ohio graduate who is the center fielder on Libya’s national team under one of the first Libyan coaches.

Rhetoric a Staple of Life

“We used to depend on foreign coaches,” he says. “They came here for business and it didn’t matter to them whether we won or not.

“Now we really play our hearts out. We play for club and country. We play for pride, not money.”

Although anti-Western rhetoric is a staple of Libyan life, many people in this country, like Sanussi, have been educated in Europe or the United States. Many miss pastimes, or girlfriends they left behind, and almost invariably tell American visitors: “We really like Americans. It’s your government that is causing problems. . . .”

Many faithfully watch “Dallas” every Tuesday night, although it is ostensibly shown to demonstrate the evil ways of the American rich, while Pepsi-Cola is the preferred thirst-quencher of the young.

Strong Family Ties

Some observers speculate that exposure to Western life styles may ultimately prove the undoing of the Kadafi regime, and that the Libyan young educated outside the country, like many intellectuals before them, may not return.

Yet, observers say family ties are still very strong, luring back a higher percentage of students than in many other Third World countries.

Historian Peter Mansfield, in his book “The Arabs,” offers another reason why young Libyans who can leave the country choose to stay:

“The effect of restrictions on the personal freedom of the Arab middle class is greatly mitigated by their increasing prosperity. A young Saudi or Libyan who finds the social laws at home oppressive can fly for the weekend to Cairo or Malta. . . . “

Two years ago, a collection of Western musical instruments was burned in Green Square, with officials exhorting Libyans to return to their “own culture.”

Rock Music to Revolution

Yet on a recent evening in the port city of Misurata, hundreds of Libyans packed the town square to hear a nine-piece rock band play selections from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and other American hits.

All of a sudden, two youths got up and began break-dancing, soon followed by four little boys and a man who began gyrating in a passable imitation of Michael Jackson. The crowd burst into cheers--a rare, truly spontaneous public display of enthusiasm.