Sand Under Kadafi Is Shifting

In Janzur Village, a Mediterranean beach haven for the new oligarchy of rich, well-connected Libyans, families sit outside whitewashed bungalows, watching television with expensive satellite dishes that bring a glimpse of the outside world to their ostracized nation.

Ignoring warning glares from neighbors, two university students converse with some visiting Americans, eager to discuss NBA basketball and their favorite musicians--singer Barry White and the rock group Metallica.

The Americans ask if classes are free. “Of course,” one answers. “No, no way,” says the other.

It takes a moment to straighten out the disagreement: The first student was talking about tuition; the second was talking about thought. As soon as the topic turns political, the two excuse themselves and hurriedly leave.

Freedom appeared to be Libya’s scarcest commodity this month as the country’s eccentric dictator, Col. Moammar Kadafi, staged a celebration of his Great September Revolution, marking his 27th year in power. Kadafi was hard-pressed to disguise the police-state methods that secure his reign: In a ham-handed attempt at press manipulation, authorities banned unmonitored interviews and in some cases physically barred reporters from talking to ordinary citizens.

The paranoia has a reason: There are strong hints that Kadafi’s revolution is in trouble. According to analysts, diplomats and opposition figures in Cairo and London, the combination of armed resistance, economic malaise and social dissatisfaction in Libya are mounting to pose the most serious challenge to Kadafi in the past two decades.

Marginalized and sometimes laughed at by his Arab neighbors, Kadafi is largely ignored these days by the West, left to stew in his own juices, a pariah for his past support of terrorism and his refusal to turn over two men suspected of planting the bomb that killed 270 people on Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Armed resistance to his regime has erupted in eastern Libya, coming mainly from Islamic extremists who think Kadafi’s religious fervor does not measure up to their own. Mismanagement of the economy has left store shelves empty and civil servants unpaid for months at a time, despite $7 billion a year in oil revenues for a country of just 5 million people.

United Nations sanctions remain in force, banning international flights to and from Libya. To fly abroad, Libyans must first make a bone-jarring journey over hot, dusty roads to Cairo or Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, or take an eight-hour ferry ride to Malta--annoying reminders that their country is divorced from the civilized world.

Kadafi’s tone was hurt and defiant as he addressed his people during the celebration, blaming the United States for the sanctions imposed in 1992. “America presents propaganda,” he said. “America is against life and progress. It wants to push the world toward darkness.”

Man-Made River

New troubles afflict Kadafi just when he has completed what may be remembered as his grandest achievement--or folly: the $25-billion “Great Man-Made River” that now brings 2 million cubic meters of ages-old fossil water every day to Tripoli from aquifers 1,000 miles across the desert in southern Libya.

“A great river for a great people,” the celebratory banners declared. No matter that when the taps went on, Tripoli’s streets were filled with torrents and puddles because the added pressure had broken the city’s old underground plumbing.

Kadafi himself looked similarly stressed as he glowered, his face deeply lined and pasty, his hair thin and flecked with gray. His vigor and good looks, part of the charisma that bound him to the Libyan people in years past, are leaving him.

But the 54-year-old leader still uses costume to dramatic effect. Like a Ken doll, Kadafi has an outfit for every occasion--a doctor’s white coat for a hospital dedication, a military uniform for an army parade, flowing desert robes when he is meeting with Bedouin tribesmen. He tools around in an Alfa Romeo, a Praetorian Guard of soldiers jogging after him in green head scarves.

Kadafi deposed Libya’s king in a military coup in 1969 and evicted British and U.S. military bases. He trumpeted his brand of radical Arab nationalism, mixed with elements of socialism, tribal democracy and Islam. Libya was renamed the “Jamahiriya,” or “mass entity,” and all inhabitants were supposed to participate in its governance through people’s committees.

With a security apparatus financed by the country’s vast oil wealth insinuated into all aspects of life, dissent is not permitted. Newspapers are censored, opposition parties do not exist, telephones are bugged, and police checkpoints control the highways every few miles. But the level of tension that exists here was revealed July 9 when a soccer match in the capital’s stadium sparked a riot against one of Kadafi’s sons and a gun battle that left eight people dead and 39 wounded.

Kadafi’s eldest son, Saadi, was the sponsor of one of the teams, and when fans of the opposing side began hostile chanting against him in an argument over a penalty, Saadi’s bodyguards opened fire, according to reports that reached newspapers in neighboring Arab countries a few days later.

Analysts abroad say Saadi and Kadafi’s other sons, Mohammed and Ahly, have become objects of resentment in Libya for their growing power and extravagant lifestyles at a time when ordinary people have been asked to tighten their belts for the sake of the revolution. At least one Arab newspaper has compared them to the sons of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, adding, “The children of the rulers are also rulers.” And some people are starting to react.

“It suggests that there is a sense of instability and a sense of resentment that is increasing,” said Ibrahim Karawan, the head of the Middle East program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “The fear is eroding, but gradually.”

“I believe that, internally, they are ready to explode,” a Western diplomat in Tripoli agreed. “If there is a riot at a football match over a penalty and eight people are killed, can you imagine what it would be like if the issue was something really important?”

Earlier this year, in Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, two guards outside the Egyptian Consulate were killed, an action claimed by a shadowy group called the Libyan Martyrs Movement. Gun battles have been heard this summer in the hills outside Derna, another eastern city. They were explained by the official media in Libya as an operation against “drug traffickers.”

‘Still in Command’

Diplomats, meanwhile, have received reports of deaths on both sides, with the use of planes, tanks and curfews by the government to crack down on its foes. Despite such resistance, external opposition groups caution against assessments that Kadafi’s regime is nearing its end.

“Kadafi is still in command, and no organized body presents threats to his regime,” said Faraz Mirab, a spokesman for the secular Libyan National Democratic Organization, an exile opposition group that is close to the deposed royal family.

The armed resistance is mainly Islamist, including fighters returned from the war in Afghanistan, said Mirab. They see Kadafi as a socialist modernizer who at heart rejects their fundamentalist doctrines. Because they lack a strong leader or coherent plan, their resistance has not yet gained momentum, said Mirab. He asserted that most Libyans want change but are powerless to bring it about.

For nearly three decades, Kadafi has been using oil money to buy loyalty and reward friends, while splintering the state, police, army and society in ways to make any coup attempt unlikely. “We feel [Kadafi] is much more in control than leaders in many other Arab countries that, to normal eyes, appear stable,” Mirab concluded.

The former king’s nephew, Prince Idris Sanousi, said in London on Monday that Kadafi’s security forces recently unmasked a plot within his own tribe to bomb or poison the Libyan leader.

“Rejection is coming from every level of society and every region of Libya, including from Kadafi’s own tribe,” said Sanousi, speaking to the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat. “This shows that Kadafi’s end is coming sooner or later, no matter how he clings to power.”

Despite oil money, which has brought revenues of more than $50 billion in this decade alone, Libya looks shabby. The old part of this port city has pretty Italianate architecture newly painted white, with shutters and doors in Kadafi’s favorite color, green. But elsewhere, beneath the revolutionary banners, the city is dirty and dilapidated.

Although Libya’s annual per capita income of about $5,500 is higher than in many Third World countries, Libyans do not approach the lavish lifestyle of other oil-rich states in the region.

Two parallel economies function. State-run “people’s souks” offer long lines of customers cheap goods in scant supply. Private shops operate in a legal gray area, offering abundant imported goods at high prices. At legal exchanges, $3 buys one Libyan dinar. On the black market, it’s the opposite.

Kadafi has shown an ambivalent attitude toward the private sector. He banned private businesses as “parasites” in the 1970s but in the early 1990s allowed them back to overcome shortages. Now, he’s tightening again.

“Purification committees” composed of university students and young officers have been sent out to harangue merchants to make sure they are not profiting illegally. Hundreds of traders have gone to jail in recent months, one diplomat said.

Officially, Kadafi holds no state position. He is merely the leader of the revolution and an advisor. In fact, his power is absolute, and the government maintains a cult of personality that might have made Stalin blush. Kadafi’s portraits are everywhere.

He was showered with rose petals by ululating nurses this month when he arrived to dedicate the Tripoli Medical Center, which claims to be the most modern hospital complex on the African continent. A camel was slaughtered in his honor at its glass-and-chrome entrance, its blood gushing over the pavement at a facility that boasts CT scans, magnetic resonance imaging equipment and other ultramodern gear.

The list of international supporters who came to be with him on this anniversary was not impressive. No high-ranking Arabs came. The crowds were generally thin and appeared bored.

In contrast, the new torrent of sweet water was hailed with childlike joy. Kadafi’s “river” is made up of concrete pipes 17 feet in diameter, their flow aided by pumps powered by five new electric stations. More phases are planned, with the goal of pipelines stretching across 2,400 miles of desert to supply 6 million cubic meters of water every day and increase Libya’s arable land, making it self-sufficient in food.

‘Eighth Wonder’

Many soldiers have donned new camouflage uniforms sporting designs of a water-gushing pipeline, symbol of a project that any Libyan will tell you is the “world’s eighth wonder.” Critics of the scheme, however, say food can be imported more cheaply than it can be grown here and that the investment in the desert pipeline could have been better spent on plants to desalinize seawater, which will never run out. How long the underground desert water will last--50, 100 or 200 years--no one seems to know.

The regime has quietly asked European countries, among them Italy and Germany, to help open a dialogue with the United States. However, it appears doubtful that Kadafi will bow to Washington’s demand that he turn over the two Pan Am suspects to face Scottish or U.S. courts, because that would mean too great a loss of face.

Kadafi has suggested that they be tried at the World Court in The Hague, by Scottish judges under Scottish law. The U.S. and British governments have rejected that offer, saying only their courts have jurisdiction.

The Western diplomat in Tripoli said Libyans have told him: “We are behaving, and yet you always put us in a corner.” Even the naughtiest child in the family gets let out of his room eventually, they argue.

But in most families, the child has to say he’s sorry.