Gaddafi and I - 1

 I wish Muammar Gaddafi had been arrested on the ‘Fateh [First] of September’ 2011, so that the duration of his foul tenure would have been 42 whole years exactly. However, he has escaped for the time being. I begin with three requests to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) and all the rebels in Libya: First, they must reject any foreign military presence in their country, under any excuse, and for any reason. Trainers for the police forces or the army may be allowed in limited numbers, but only in an assignment with a timeframe agreed upon prior to their arrival. True, I am not concerned about the situation in Libya ending up resembling the Iraqi tragedy following the occupation, since the Libyan people is coherent, and does not suffer from sectarian divisions. However, there is greed for Libya’s oil, which the greedy Europeans were not ashamed of expressing candidly, so I hope that France, Britain and Italy, along with the United States, will be kept away from meddling in internal Libyan affairs. Second, women and children in the Gaddafi family must be treated with compassion and respect. It is not acceptable at all to blame the wife or the daughter for the sins of the father or the adult male brothers who took part in the crimes. We were taught that no bearer of burdens shall bear another's burden, and mercy is better than revenge. The third request resembles the above, which is that African refugees must be protected, even the mercenaries who worked for Gaddafi, and must be treated compassionately and fairly, and no racism should be practiced against blacks. I will not write anything about Gaddafi except what I know personally, and directly. Hence, I choose two stories today, one that is important, and another that combines both useful and entertaining information: The first story: Everyone has heard about Colonel Gaddafi’s attempt to arrange for then-Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the present king, to be assassinated, and I had a personal involvement in the matter that I will recount here. I reveal today that an Arab minister, who is a friend, had visited me in London in 2004 and told me that Gaddafi summoned him to Tripoli. When he went there, they sat in a tent, and as my friend was fantasizing about an oil deal, Gaddafi surprised him by saying: Let us think how we can kill Prince Abdullah. I told my friend that Gaddafi is insane, and I advised him not to take what he says seriously. However, my friend came back to me two months later, and told me that Gaddafi had summoned him a second time and asked him to examine what the European reaction to the assassination of Prince Abdullah would be. Here, I decided that the subject may be important, and conveyed my information to the Saudi Royal Court, and I subsequently heard that five Libyan intelligence operatives were arrested, led by Colonel Mohammed Ismail and others. Following the plot against the Saudi Crown Prince, I criticized the Colonel and his regime in a few dozen articles. However, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz pardoned the Libyan detainees, and diplomatic ties between the two countries were soon resumed. After that, I stepped up my criticism of Gaddafi, and explained the reason for this in this column on 21/12/2006, when I said, “The accusation that is most frequently used against any critiquing Arab journalist is that he is instructed to do so by this or that party, or that he is paid to do so, i.e. paid money to attack someone. Since I did not want to be accused of attacking Libya at the behest of Saudi Arabia, I waited several weeks after the crisis ensuing from the attempted assassination was resolved, diplomatic relations were resumed, and the ambassadors were mutually reinstated (it is clear that the King’s benevolence is bigger than mine), before I attacked the Colonel personally, and called on Arab leaders to see what he does and then avoid doing it, to guarantee success” (the last words echo what I wrote about the Colonel on 13/10/2005.) The second story is about the word Jamahiriya, which the Colonel coined and added to Libya’s official designation. In the summer of 1998, I objected to the term, and again on New Year’s Eve in 2004, and in both times, I was speaking on television. I told the Colonel that we were taught that the Nisbat [Ar. Grammar; relation-onomastics] is constructed only after putting the term question in the singular first. If the Colonel had contented himself with Jumhur (Jumhuriya) [Republic], he would have constructed the Nisbat on a simple plural noun. However, he chose Jamahiriya, i.e. he pluralized the plural, or put in the ‘absolute plural’ [cannot be pluralized further]. The Colonel then responded to me twice in anger, but I continued to defy him. While I realize that there are exceptions, such as when we say ‘Muluki’, i.e. fit for royalties, my goal was to provoke him, not to start a linguistic debate with him. For the readers’ information, the subject is older than all of the above. Mr. Ahmed Abdul Ghafoor Al-Attar, Rest in Peace, in his book ‘Linguistic Issues and Problems’, had referenced a debate between me and Mr. Akram Zuaiter over the issue of Nisbat. The Arab Language Authority in Cairo had abandoned the doctrine of the Basris who believe that Nisbat must be limited to the singular, and adopted the Kufis’ doctrine which allows Nisbat to be constructed on the basis of plural nouns. I say that this license does not apply to the word Jamahiriya, and add that the School of Basra is essentially focused on declension and grammar taught today, while the Basris study the entire spectrum of grammar, with the exception of some cases. khazen@alhayat.com