BAMAKO, Mali — Moammar
Gadhafi’s regime poured tens of billions of dollars into some of
Africa’s poorest countries. Even when he
came to visit, the eccentric Libyan leader won admiration for
handing out money to beggars on the streets.
“Other heads of state just drive past here in their limousines.
Gadhafi stopped, pushed away his bodyguards and shook our hands,”
said Cherno Diallo, standing Monday beside hundreds of caged birds
he sells near a Libyan-funded hotel. “Gadhafi’s death has touched every Malian, every
single one of us. We’re all upset.”
While Western powers heralded Gadhafi’s demise,
many Africans were gathering at mosques built
with Gadhafi’s money to mourn the man they consider an
anti-imperialist martyr and benefactor.
Critics, though, note this image is at odds with Gadhafi’s
history of backing some of Africa’s most brutal rebel leaders and
dictators. Gadhafi sent 600 troops to support Uganda’s much-hated
Idi Amin in the final throes of his dictatorship.
And Gadhafi-funded rebels supported by former Liberian leader
Charles Taylor forcibly recruited children and chopped off limbs of
their victims during Sierra Leone’s civil war.
“Is Gadhafi’s life more important than many thousands of people
that have been killed during the war in these two countries?” asked
one shopkeeper in the tiny West African country of Gambia, who
spoke on condition of anonymity fearing recrimination.
Some analysts estimate that the Gadhafi regime invested more
than $150 billion in foreign countries, most of it into
impoverished African nations.
“Gadhafi was a true revolutionary who focused on improving the
lives of the underdeveloped countries,” said Sheik Muthal
Bin-Muslim, from the Gadhafi mosque in Sierra Leone’s capital that
was built with Libyan funds. Muslim worshippers were planning an
all-night vigil in honor of the slain Libyan leader.
In Bamako, the capital of the desert nation of Mali, one huge
Libyan-funded mosque was built right next door to the U.S.
Embassy.
And in Uganda, Gadhafi built a mosque that can host more than
30,000 people. Libyan-funded companies — everything from mobile
phone companies to cookie factories — are valued at $375 million
and employ more than 3,000 people in the small East African
country. Schoolchildren and Muslim supporters lined the roads,
waving Libyan flags, whenever Gadhafi visited.
“Gadhafi was a godfather to many Ugandans,” said Muhammed
Kazibala, a head teacher at a Libyan-funded school in the country’s
capital.
The Libyan leader also built a palace for one of Uganda’s
traditional kingdoms. It was a fitting donation for a man who
traveled to African Union summits dressed in a gold-embroidered
green robe, flanked by seven men who said they were the
“traditional kings of Africa.”
Gadhafi used Libya’s oil wealth to help create the AU in 2002,
and also served as its rotating chairman. During the revolt against
Gadhafi, the AU condemned NATO airstrikes as evidence mounted that
his military was massacring civilians.
Gadhafi’s influence even extended to Africa’s largest economy:
The Libyan leader supported the African National Congress when it
was fighting racist white rule, and remained close to Nelson
Mandela after the anti-apartheid icon became South Africa’s first
black president.
Current President Jacob Zuma also was one of the most outspoken
critics of the NATO airstrikes in Libya, and he told reporters he
thought Gadhafi should have been captured and tried, not
executed.
The ANC Youth League described Gadhafi as an “anti-imperialist
martyr” and a “brave soldier and fighter against the recolonization
of the African continent.”
For many of Gadhafi’s supporters, the military operation to oust
him was another example of the Western interference and
neocolonialism that he railed against.
F. Mbossa, 52, a school teacher in Brazzaville, Republic of
Congo, said she was shocked by the “arrogance of the West” in
carrying out the NATO airstrikes.
“It’s clear that France and the others never truly wanted an
independent Africa and that is why they never hesitated to kill all
those who advocate for a strong and unified Africa,” Mbossa said
with tears in her eyes. “But for Africa, Gadhafi remains a
martyr.”
In Central African Republic, Gadhafi sent troops to support a
government confronting coup attempts and an insurgency in 2001. But
he also fomented instability. He funded rebel movements that
committed some of the worst human rights abuses on the continent,
including the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. Gadhafi also
supplied arms, training and finance to rebels in Liberia and
Gambia, and invaded Chad from 1980-1989.
Historian Stephen Ellis called Gadhafi’s World Revolutionary
Headquarters, just outside Benghazi, “the Harvard and Yale of a
whole generation of African revolutionaries.”
In the 1980s, they included Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday
Sankoh of Sierra Leone, as well as former Congolese President
Laurent Kabila.
While Gadhafi won praise from some for not fleeing Libya, others
chastised him for failing to see how it all would end.
In Zimbabwe, businessman Daniel Musumba said Gadhafi had been
trapped by his own ego.
“For a man who was telling his people they were rats and
cockroaches to end up in a drain. Who is the rat now?” he said.
“But the rat needed to be captured alive.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/across-africa-gadhafi-remembered-as-martyr-benefactor-instigator-in-the-continents-wars/2011/10/24/gIQAaExuCM_print.html
