Poetic Justice in Gaddafi’s Libya: When The Hunter Becomes The Hunted

The Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi is perhaps facing the strongest opposition to his 42-year rule in the oil-rich North African country. It may be further apt to include the fact that Col. Muammar Gaddafi is at the moment engaged in the “battle of his life”. For him it looks like a “make or mar” war, that is, he either earns victory or vanquishes.

Listening to Gaddafi’s rhetoric and theatrics since the unrest started in his country has been both funny and grim at the same time. His actions and statements have continued to define him as someone who is not only mercurial but maverick. That Ghaddafi would make a good actor whenever he finally decides to leave his present job may not be completely out of order. Since the crises started he has been reported to have said amongst several other things that he could not understand what Libyans were protesting for, because as he claims, he is one of them. He also said that protesting Libyans were suffering from drug-induced hallucinations. He even went a step further by threatening to blow up oil facilities and installations in his country. Some reports have also credited him with calling his supporters to deal with the “cockroaches” [those opposed to him] in a move that is akin to inciting genocide.

This is the quintessential Ghaddafi and his outbursts seem to represent the last stage[s] of the theatrics he has treated the world to since he stepped into the world stage in 1969. However, the Ghaddafi mystique continues to represent different things to different people across the globe that has resulted into those who are passionately “for” or “against” him.

His 42-year rule in Libya presents different scenarios to different people. Historians may need to wait for some time before an objective assessment of his place in history can be decided. It is noteworthy that it was Muammar Ghaddafi that prescribed the balkanization of Nigeria along ethnic and religious lines as the only panacea to her myriad of problems, but alas, what do we make of it as today, though Nigeria is still “wobbling” and “fumbling” it still has a functional government that exercises suzerainty over her territorial space. While Gaddafi struggles to assert his slipping authority in an already balkanized and polarized Libya, protesters and the opposition have completely over ran the eastern part of Libya and are just within miles of Tripoli the Libyan capital.

Is this a case of the hunter becoming the hunted or simply poetic justice?

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