How much today resembles yesterday!
On Monday 21 November 1949, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution granting Libya its independence no later than 1 January 1952, despite the efforts and coordination of the colonial powers, Britain and France in particular, to keep their hold on Libyan territory and to divide the provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan between them. On Monday 24 December 1951, Libya’s independence was indeed proclaimed, and the three provinces were brought together, within a constitutional federal system, under the banner of the United Kingdom of Libya, with its three capitals: Tripoli, Benghazi and Bayda.
On Saturday 19 January 1952, less than a month after independence was proclaimed, Sheikh Mahmoud Bouzouzou of Algeria, a pioneer of the national reform movement who as a young man had attended the lessons of Imam Abdelhamid Ben Badis, wrote an editorial entitled “Inspired by Libya’s independence: we shall follow you!”, published in the fourteenth issue of the newspaper Al-Manar. Al-Manar, which Sheikh Bouzouzou had founded, was then one of the most important media outlets of the national movement in Algeria.
And here we are, nearly sixty years later, at the end of the blessed month of Ramadan and after the fall of the head of tyranny in Tripoli, finding ourselves, as Algerian citizens, spontaneously repeating: Congratulations, Libya! We shall follow you!
Sheikh Bouzouzou began his article: “Today another people is regaining its sovereignty and independence: the brotherly people of Libya, whose independence we welcome with the same joy with which we welcomed the independence of the peoples mentioned above. Indeed, our joy at its independence is of a special kind, because of the strength of the bonds that tie the peoples of the Maghreb to it. The Maghreb, as Ibn Khaldun noted, extends as far as Alexandria, so Libya is a Maghreb country, a natural link between us and the Arab and Islamic East. Libya will join the United Nations, and the Arab and Islamic nations, the nations freed from colonialism and the supporters of freedom will have one more voice; Arab Libya will join the Arab League, whose influence will grow; and Muslim Libya will join the World Islamic Congress, whose centres will multiply… We rejoice in particular because independence has now entered the gates of the Maghreb and will spread through it from Libya to the Atlantic Ocean.”
Today we can only echo the Sheikh’s words of joy at the liberation of the Libyan people, this time from the grip of a tyrant who excelled in humiliating it for more than four decades. We hope that with this liberation Libya’s voice will become a strong voice supporting just causes in the Arab and Islamic space, indeed in the whole world, a voice that is heard and that supports other free voices in regional and international forums such as the League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the African Union and the United Nations. We also see this liberation as a good omen, because it supports the liberation of the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples, gives impetus to the Arab peoples rising against despotism and corruption, especially in Yemen and Syria, and encourages the remaining peoples to rise up, especially in the Greater Maghreb.
Sheikh Bouzouzou went on: “We had hoped that this independence would come in its most complete and perfect form, so that Libya would not be burdened with the upkeep of foreign troops, its soil would not be trodden by the feet of colonial wolves, and its ports would not be blocked by colonial pirates… If only it had found in its own hands the means to spare it what the Arab poet described: (It is one of the world’s miseries for a free man / To see an enemy whose friendship he cannot do without). We still hope that our sister will obtain her right to freedom and independence in full, and this depends above all on her own efforts, the efforts of her Arab and Muslim brothers, and the stance of the supporters of right and justice, if they have sincere supporters… For the independence we seek is the integrity of sovereignty from every foreign shackle, the integrity of the economy and finances from every foreign monopoly, the integrity of the ports from every foreign fleet, the integrity of the soil from every foreign soldier, and the integrity of domestic and foreign policy from every foreign influence.”
Unfortunately, what the Sheikh had warned against happened to the young state. Its limited means led it to seek the help of Western states, Britain in particular, and these powers exploited the weakness of the Libyan state to try to keep a divided federal entity. The situation remained fragile until 26 April 1963, when the constitution was amended, the Kingdom of Libya was unified and Tripoli became its capital. There is no doubt that Western influence in Libya, the seizure of the people’s resources, especially the oil discovered at the end of the 1950s, and the Italian community that remained in Libya clinging to its privileges in property, employment and business, were among the main factors that later led to the coup of 1 September 1969. Carried out by a group of army officers led by Muammar Gaddafi, it established the “Libyan Arab Republic”, which in 1977 became the “Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”, with “Great” added after Reagan’s air raid on Bab al-Aziziya in 1986. Over time, Gaddafi turned it into a dictatorial “republarchy” with hereditary rule.
Today, by right of brotherhood and neighbourliness, we must once again alert those in charge of free Libya to the importance of protecting the sovereignty of the state and preserving national independence in the political, military and economic fields; safeguarding and defending the interests of the Libyan people against the greed of the covetous, who are many; and building Libya’s foreign relations on respect for the values of the Arab Muslim Libyan people and on the principle of legitimate mutual interests between Libya and other states, including those that took part in the coalition against the Gaddafi regime after Security Council resolution 1973. Until recently, the governments of those states were travelling to the tent of the “Leader of the Revolution”, racing to obtain lucrative contracts; today they are racing to gain a firm foothold in the land of Omar al-Mukhtar. These are critical times: any infringement of Libya’s sovereignty, God forbid, will sooner or later lead to a setback for the new order.
Sheikh Bouzouzou addressed Libya thus: “They say your numbers are few, but they do not know, or pretend not to know, that the loftiness of Arab dignity and the height of Islamic resolve require every Arab Muslim to embody the rule ‘one man is worth a thousand’! So give them proof of this that removes all doubt, establishes the argument and silences the tongues!… Fly with flying time to where eyes look on you with reverence, where tongues coin proverbs about you, and where the edifice of glory rises in you, proud of its builders, beyond the reach of the greed of oppressors, deflecting the arrows of invaders! Enter into the heart of life, the life of realities, not of empty rhetoric, and shake off the vanity of hollow titles and the deceit of an ‘enslaved’ princedom. The poet of wisdom, Shawqi, advised you and all the Arabs when he said: (It is one of the tricks of politics that you are lured / By the titles of princedom, when they are slavery).”
Today we address our brothers in Libya and tell them that the condition for the success of your revolution is the unity of your ranks, which can be achieved only through self-denial and a focus on the common good; by not falling into the trap of the “seat” of power; by involving every section of the Libyan people in the battle of construction; by overcoming the ideological barriers between the components of the revolution; and by guarding against strife between factions that may arise from old sensitivities or be fanned by dirty foreign hands. This, incidentally, is exactly the advice King Idris al-Senussi gave the five leaders of the Algerian revolution, headed by Ahmed Ben Bella, after their release from prison in France in 1962, when he received them during their visit to Libya to attend the Council of the Revolution in Tripoli. He “urged them to solidarity and self-denial, reminded them of the noble hadith in which the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: (We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad), asked them to be guided by this hadith, and called on them to renounce every form of disagreement, discord and selfishness, which, if present, would harm Algeria and its independence”, as our brother Ali Muhammad al-Sallabi notes in one of his writings. But the Algerian leaders did not heed his advice; they did the opposite, falling out and fighting among themselves, and thus was born the state of political violence and despotism in Algeria.
Sheikh Bouzouzou also apologised to Libya for the meagre support: “Forgive us, sister, for when you look right or left, you find only the cries of the struggle for glory that you know so well rising from the breasts of your proud brothers: the roar of the overflowing Nile to the east, and the roar of the shackled, rebellious Amazigh to the west. And yet the struggle in which they are engaged, so that they too may enter into the heart of life as you have, has not kept them from rejoicing at your victory and caring for the fullness of your glory; and this joy and this care are all that those of little means can offer… Who is responsible for a state of affairs that allows us to give you nothing but poetry and fine words, when you have least need of them and most need of other things, now that you have moved from the margins of life to its heart, and demands and burdens that would weigh down mountains pull at you!?”
Today, as Algerians, we too regret that we have been unable to keep pace with the revolution of the free in Libya as we should and to give it every kind of support. The Algerian people has been held in the grip of the regime of putschist generals since January 1992 and has no say in its own affairs. All it could do was pray for its brothers’ clear victory, and all it can do now is share their joy and rejoicing, which is truly all that those of little means can offer. If, in Sheikh Bouzouzou’s view, the party responsible for the wretched state of the Algerian people when Libya won its independence from brutal European occupation, which prevented it from helping the Libyan people bear the burdens of building their state as well as possible, was French colonialism, which “stood against the aspirations of the Libyan people at the United Nations and alone opposed its independence and unity” and which “is still committing crimes and sins in neighbouring countries”, then those responsible for the deteriorating situation of Algerians today are the remnants of French colonialism in the army and the administration, who usurped power, monopolised wealth and wreaked havoc in the land of a million martyrs.
Those who have been set over the people of Algeria and who run the state’s foolish domestic and foreign policy do not represent Algerians: they lack popular legitimacy in the first place, having come to power on the backs of tanks in a coup against the people’s choice nearly two decades ago. Had they truly represented the Algerian people, they would have taken into account, in deciding their position on the 17 February revolution, the centuries-old history of close relations between the Algerian and Libyan peoples, and they would have kept in mind the support given by Libya, king, government and people, to the Algerian war of liberation: support that took many forms and was unlimited and unconditional.
Did King Idris al-Senussi not make Libya a rear base for the Algerian revolution, sheltering its leaders, hosting its councils and conferences and collecting aid for it? Did he not refuse to allow a pipeline carrying Algerian oil to cross Libyan territory, in support of the revolution, despite a treaty of friendship between Libya and France? Did his prime minister, Mustafa Ben Halim, not lead a broad diplomatic campaign to win support for the Algerian revolution, notably with the Turkish government, which he persuaded to support the struggle in Algeria with weapons? Did he not personally supervise the transport of arms, equipment, ammunition and other aid to the Algerian revolutionaries across the Libyan-Algerian border? Did Libyans not collect and give money to Algeria’s revolutionaries? Did Libyan women not donate their jewellery to the Algerian revolution? Did this revolution not become rooted in the Libyan consciousness, reflected in poetry and prose?
But these people know no gratitude and no regard for the generous. Instead of supporting Libya’s revolutionaries, who rose to regain their right to freedom and a decent life, the Algerian regime preferred to support the tyrant of Tripoli politically, diplomatically, in the media and materially, by supplying fuel and vehicles to transport his brigades, and there is even talk of transporting mercenaries.
And instead of recognising the National Transitional Council from the outset, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, Minister of State and personal representative of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, went to the media, as reports of Algeria’s support for Gaddafi multiplied, to criticise sharply the chairman of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, saying: “Those who accused Algeria of transporting mercenaries to Libya are the ones who sought NATO’s help against their brothers, and Algeria fought the Atlantic Alliance, as history confirms”, and “these people should perform their ablutions before talking about Algeria”. Belkhadem would have done better to ask his master Bouteflika, and Bouteflika’s benefactors among the army and intelligence chiefs, to perform the full ritual washing, after defiling themselves by embracing Israeli and American politicians on many occasions and by rubbing shoulders with their officers and soldiers, whom they meet regularly in joint manoeuvres organised by NATO in the Mediterranean basin or in the American military centres set up in the Algerian Sahara.
Then Algeria’s interior minister, Dahou Ould Kablia, went to the media threatening that “Algeria’s relations with Libya will become strained if the revolutionaries come to power”. Yet in 2008, at a historical symposium, as president of the association of veterans of the Ministry of Armament and General Communications (MALG), he had praised “Libya’s role under King Idris al-Senussi” in supporting the Algerian revolution.
To this day, as this article is written, the Algerian regime refuses to recognise the National Transitional Council, and has even made recognition conditional on the Council undertaking to fight al-Qaeda!? An excuse worse than the offence.
Sheikh Bouzouzou ended his editorial of 19 January 1952 by addressing Libya: “You have broken the chains of servitude by your will and the will of God. You believed in life, and life believed in you; you sought dignity, and it yielded to you; you raised your head to the stars, and they smiled on you and opened their skies to embrace you. So fly towards them as the eagle flies; grow your feathers and spread your wings, and God be with you, and we shall follow you. Yes, we shall follow you, because we believe in life! We shall raise this noble Maghreb to the zenith of the sky of glory; the heavens will tremble at its wings, and on the face of this Mediterranean Sea it will make waves that will make those amazed at its glorious past forget the mighty roar it once had. Yes, we shall follow you, and all peoples will follow! These are the first signs of a new era, announcing the end of the era of enslavement and exploitation and the beginning of the era of freedom and independence. That is the will of God and the law of history; woe to those who try to oppose the divine laws and halt the march of history! And glad tidings to the believing, heroic strugglers!”
Congratulations, Libya! We shall follow you! Just as we followed your independence from colonialism ten years later, we shall surely follow your liberation from despotism, and sooner, God willing. The Algerian people will soon free itself from the grip of the intelligence regime, and together we shall wage the battle to build a state of sovereignty, rights, justice and good governance, and to build the Greater Maghreb to which the peoples of the region have long aspired.
Abbas Aroua
Monday 29 Ramadan 1432, 29 August 2011
Source: Al Jazeera Net
