Dark Underside of the Libyan Uprising

By John Ballard

I take second place to no one in my support and enthusiasm for Arab Democrats. We are witnessing a historic sequence of events not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, the vox populi is not always the voice of patience or reason. America's dirty past with lynch mobs come to mind. It is a part of history we might want to forget but would do well to guard against.

It is now clear that one lynchpin of Gadhaffi's evil infrastructure of tyranny has been the use of mercenaries from the South, easily identifiable by their black skin. In the same way that Saddam Hussein could quickly tell Sunnis from Shiites by how they spoke and prayed (one underpinning of his tyranny was using mainly Sunni henchmen to control a Shiite majority) Libyans can quickly conclude at a glance that at least one group among them is apt to be supporting Ghaddafi.

This disturbing observation is from a BBC report.

Part of the Libyan story now is the scramble to escape of Turks, Germans, Indians, Englishmen, Italians, Malaysians and a host of other nationalities that include black men commonly known as Africans.

In the violence of the last fortnight, the colonel's African connections have only served to rekindle a deep-rooted racism between Arabs and black Africans.

As mercenaries, reputedly from Chad and Mali fight for him, a million African refugees and thousands of African migrant workers stand the risk of being murdered for their tenuous link to him.

One Turkish construction worker told the BBC: "We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company. They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: 'You are providing troops for Gaddafi.' The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves."

Libya's new forces for change have simply picked up where the colonel left off his bloodletting.

And as the world moves to freeze Libya's assets, they must unpick the intricate web of the colonel's investments and decide what is his and what is Libya's - although in 42 years of absolute power it has never been easy to tell the difference.

Belated noises are now coming from the African Union, condemning the use of violence.

Even that anonymous community made from that meaningless phrase - the international community - now deny ever arming him, and claim there is no evidence that their teargas has been used against protesters, as if teargas floats in the colours of a national flag so we can all know where it was made as we choke.

The forces of change must now hope that Mr Gaddafi's fighting friends evaporate, and he can live out his last days in a tent pitched on a hotel lawn once owned by Libya, or Gaddafi plc; or face the music.

This is not the time to bring up the issue of Arab racism. But if I have learned nothing else in life, it is that from the viewpoint of the racist, there is never a good time. My hope is that a grasp of human equality has taken root among the young people providing the idealistic energy animating this movement.

Until Libya, their appreciation of the power of non-violence has been a bright light for the world to see. Power that depends on fear is crippled when fear is overcome. Those willing to die rather than submit to evil cannot be held captive alive. And without living captives there can be no tyranny. The success of non-violent confrontation has been demonstrated in India, South Africa and the American civil rights movement. An argument might be made that the implosion of the Soviet Union was essentially a non-violent phenomenon.

And someday, hopefully soon, another generation of young Arabs will address that universal flaw in the human condition we call racism.  Non-violence clearly has no effect on the madness of the Ghaddafi apparatus. Blood and and violent confrontation will be applied. But hopefully that atavistic urge can be constrained in time to return the Arab Awakening to its powerful commitment to non-violence.