Revolutionary Poems and Songs

It’s a few miles from the Qaddafi villa to the breathtaking ruins at Cyrene, founded in the seventh century B.C. and once known as the “Athens of Africa.” I wandered, almost alone, among the Greek and Roman temples and gazed out to the Mediterranean. Libya, brutalized, is reclaiming something deep, its history and culture.

Under the pines I found a few youths with a guitar, two of whom had lost brothers in this war. With a haunting intensity they sang: “We’re gonna chase him out of here because we have no fears. My Libya, your Libya, it’s our Libya. ...” 

My Libya, Your Libya, Our Libya

By ROGER COHEN
Published: April 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01cohen.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

BAYDA, Libya

I descended 55 steps into the labyrinth of Muammar el-Qaddafi’s mind. The glow of cellphones and a feeble flashlight lit a passage into the darkness. A netherworld unfolded — bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, even saunas — linked by tunnels with six-inch-thick metal doors agape at their mouths. No expense had been spared on this lair.

“You see what the rat planned,” said Farage Mohamed, a manager in an oil pipe company, as he led the way to the base of an escape hatch that emerged deep in the gardens of this sprawling former Qaddafi villa in liberated eastern Libya. “It’s like Hitler’s Berlin bunker.”

So Qaddafi always thought this could happen, even 42 years into his rule. He feared someone might slice away the myths — Arab nationalist, African unifier, all-powerful non-president — and leave him, disrobed, a little man in a vast vault with nowhere left to go. In the twisted mind of the despot now derided here as “the man with the big hair,” his own demise was the tousle-coiffed specter that would not go away.

Strange, then, that the United States and Europe never thought this could happen — not to Qaddafi, or Mubarak, or Ben Ali, or any of the other murderous plunderers, some now gone, others slaughtering their own people, here in Libya, or in Syria, or Yemen. Policy was based on the mistaken belief that these leaders would last forever.

They were paranoid about their fates. We were convinced of their permanence.

Of course it was not just a conviction about their inevitability that drove U.S. policy toward these dictators. It was a cynical decision to place counterterrorism and security at the top of the agenda and human rights — in this case Arab rights — at the bottom. It was about Big Oil interests. And, to some degree, it was about the perception of what served the security of America’s closest regional ally, Israel.

Oh, sure, an Egyptian human rights activist might get American support, or a worthy nongovernmental organization, but when they were suppressed a resounding silence emanated from Washington.

Arab reform was an oxymoron, as was Arab democratization. They were dwarfed by the supposed counterterrorist credentials of these despots, their professed loathing for Al Qaeda or Hamas or any brand of radical Islamist, and their readiness to kill or torture and pass on intelligence. Qaddafi never stopped haranguing U.S. diplomats about his hatred for Al Qaeda and about American support for Al Qaeda’s first home, Saudi Arabia.

Yet he, like the other dictators, was also busy creating the problem in order to portray himself as the solution to it.

Passports got into the hands of the Libyans who made their way from the eastern town of Darnah to swell the ranks of Qaeda offshoots in Iraq. Repression fed extremism. Plundering fed desperation.

Hosni Mubarak used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a manipulative tool in his repressive arsenal. He was the worst “friend” the Palestinians ever had, sowing division as he preached unity. Like Qaddafi and Ben Ali, he called himself a bulwark against extremism even as his strangled society fostered it.

So, having been in Tunisia and Egypt and now Libya during this Arab Spring, I say, Shine a light — into Qaddafi’s bunkers and everywhere. Let people out of their dark houses. Allow them to participate in the making of their societies.

Take the disgruntled and give them opportunities. That’s a different counterterrorism policy that may actually work over time. The evolving Middle East, where despotic Islamism is well past its ideological zenith, demands it.

Before visiting Qaddafi’s villa, where kids play soccer on the former tennis court, I went to the Bayda home of Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the mild leader of the Transitional National Council in eastern Libya. “The West’s mistake was to support Qaddafi, the first terrorist,” he said, citing the downed Pan Am 103 and UTA 772 flights, with a combined total of 440 people killed.

He called for weapons, especially in the embattled west of the country, the intensification of NATO airstrikes, and the ousting of a man “who is challenging the whole world.”

There’s a debt to repay to the Libyan people; a strong strategic interest in a Tunis-Tripoli-Cairo democratic example; and, with civilians dying daily in Misurata, a powerful U.N.-backed legal case for bombing that forces the issue: Qaddafi’s departure. The attack on Tripoli in which one of Qaddafi's sons appears to have been killed falls in that category. Behind the swagger lurks the coward who built that bunker.

It’s a few miles from the Qaddafi villa to the breathtaking ruins at Cyrene, founded in the seventh century B.C. and once known as the “Athens of Africa.” I wandered, almost alone, among the Greek and Roman temples and gazed out to the Mediterranean. Libya, brutalized, is reclaiming something deep, its history and culture.

Under the pines I found a few youths with a guitar, two of whom had lost brothers in this war. With a haunting intensity they sang: “We’re gonna chase him out of here because we have no fears. My Libya, your Libya, it’s our Libya. ...” 

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on May 1, 2011, on page WK11


By punditate

Every day I see pics and videos of the Freedom Fighters:
Civilians with the courage of Gurkhas
Giving their all in their fight for freedom,
Unflinching in their desire to be free of their bondage,
Innovative in their self-made weaponry mounts,
Ingenious in turning their Toyotas into semi-armoured vehicles,
Committed to the cause of Liberty.

Never have I come across lawyers, doctors, engineers, and others
Who so willingly gave up the good life,
To pick up a weapon which they have never seen before
And go into battle against an enemy trained to kill.

Never have I come across successful people
With good, comfortable lives in the west return
To help their brothers break the chains of tyranny
And help free their beloved homeland
From four decades of persecution
In the clutches of a cruel, thieving tyrant.

Never have I seen young men with their whole future ahead
Disregard the danger of losing it all
And lay their lives on the line
So that those who come after
Will have a better future,
Free from the shackles of servitude.

These are the Freedom Fighters.
These are the warriors of freedom.
These are the selfless warriors of Libya.
These are the Gurkhas of Africa!

God bless you all.
Victory is yours!
FlagIn verse and prose,

Benghazi liberates speech

Agence France-Presse
Salemya Mohammed
Published: Saturday, June 11, 2011

BENGHAZI, Libya - Freedom of speech is the name of the game in Revolution Square in the Libyan rebel capital of Benghazi, where new publications have blossomed and women recite poetry in public.

"When the revolution started, I had three choices: become a soldier, or a journalist, or stay at home and sleep," said Abdallah, brimming with enthusiasm. "I'm a journalist!"

With the insurgency against Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi came free speech in a country stifled by 42 years of dictatorship.

Dozens of young Libyans like Abdallah, of both sexes, have since turned to journalism or poetry.

The revolt has inspired a flurry of new newspapers and public speaking, often in the form of poems recited in Revolution Square.

Abdallah's newspaper has the Berber name of "Tamort," or Homeland, and publishes six Arabic pages and two in English each week.

The latest issue honours the memory of King Idriss, who was overthrown by Gadhafi in 1969, and features an interview with the new Italian consul, sent by Rome to the rebel capital.

The questioning is direct and the interview competent, even if they forgot to name the consul, Guido de Sanctis.

"We put the paper together at my place. We go to press on Tuesday for it to come out on Thursday," Abdallah explained.

A Thursday print-run means the paper can be sold to worshippers leaving Friday's main Muslim weekly prayers at Revolution Square, where the flags fly of countries taking part in air strikes on Gadhafi's forces.

It's the ideal place to sell the many publications that have sprung up in the Mediterranean city, all produced in the same format by the same printer, and each costing 30 cents.

On dusty carpets surrounded by portraits of young men "martyred" in the uprising, residents of Benghazi can pray, vent their revolutionary zeal and hatred of Gadhafi, and recite poetry.

"I used to write poetry before but I stopped. I've picked it up again since the revolution," said former Arabic teacher Fatma Abdallah in a corner of the square reserved for women.

Her poem is written in Arabic on a yellow sheet torn from the February pages of a diary, the month when the revolt broke out.

Her verses speak of martyrs and of her son imprisoned in the port city of Misrata, 800 kilometres by road to the west, which for weeks was besieged by Gadhafi's forces.

The women circling Fatma said they would also write poems and recite verses penned by other writers in support of the anti-Gadhafi revolt and their boys on the front line