The Croesus of Crisis

Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is lavish with both words and money. Last week he took five hours--quite a stretch for Arabs who love prolix oratory--to extol pan-Arabism. Arab states, he insisted, do not need "Communism, fascism, foreign capitalism or liberalism." Instead, they are capable of forming a united force that could easily become the third great world power. One step toward this goal, Gaddafi said, would be to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan and King Hassan of Morocco, just as he and fellow officers 21 years ago toppled Libya's King Idris. Radio Cairo helpfully broadcast the speech all over the Middle East.

Gaddafi is a dedicated pan-Arab in the Nasser tradition, but where Nasser swayed the Arab masses with his personality, Gaddafi supplies cash. Libya's annual oil income is $2.4 billion; the money comes in almost faster than Gaddafi can spend it, but no one can accuse him of not trying. In impulsive, mysterious ways, Gaddafi hands it out to some of the political visitors who are understandably streaming into the Libyan capital nowadays.

Palestine Praise. One apparent beneficiary is a fellow Moslem, General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dada of Uganda, whose army and air force were trained by Israeli military advisers, and whose country has received $25 million worth of Israeli aid and credits. Two months ago, after a fruitless mission to Tel Aviv in search of $10 million additional cash aid, Amin stopped off in Tripoli--aboard an Israeli-provided executive jet. Big Daddy emerged from conferences with Gaddafi to praise "the just struggle of the Palestinian people." After reportedly receiving a promise of $26 million from Libya once the Israelis were out of his country, Amin forthwith ordered the military advisers to leave. Last week he made the break complete by abrogating aid programs, ordering the Israeli embassy to close down, and advising all 470 Israelis in Uganda to make plans for immediate departure.

Other Africans besides Amin are also beholden to Gaddafi. Libya is arming and training Moslem separatists in neighboring Chad and sending weapons to Eritrean rebels fighting Haile Selassie ("a lackey of Israel"). It has supplied guns to Guinea and money to Upper Volta, Mauritania and Niger. Libya also provides yearly subsidies of $125 million to Egypt and $45 million to Syria, with which it is joined in a new Federation of Arab Republics, and is a principal financial angel of the Palestinian guerrilla movement. More than 300 Libyan soldiers are serving with the fedayeen; five of them were killed and 16 wounded when Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in February to flush out the guerrillas.

Still another new admirer of Gaddafi is Pakistan's President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who recently renamed the stadium in Lahore Muammar Gaddafi Stadium in gratitude for Libyan assistance--reportedly including the loan of U.S.-built F-5 fighters--to Moslem Pakistan during the war with India last December. Socialist Prime Minister Dom Mintoff of predominantly Roman Catholic Malta is also in on Gaddafi's personal foreign aid program. Because Gaddafi saw Mintoff's battle with Britain over a new lease for military bases on Malta (see International Notes) as a struggle against imperialism, the Libyan leader last December volunteered $12 million in loans to strengthen Mintoff's hand.

Until recently, little of Libya's vast wealth trickled down to the nation's 1.8 million people, 35% of whom are illiterate Bedouins. Gaddafi, a Bedouin who grew up in a desert tent, has now decided to help them by turning Libya into an instant industrial state. So far, he has decreed that 40 new industries must be launched, ranging from clothing and pharmaceuticals to steel tubing and petrochemicals. To the delight of European suppliers, Libya has ordered $180 million worth of cement, shoe and glass factories from West Germany, a $50 million power plant from France, and other major equipment from Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. Gaddafi is unimpressed by evidence that the highly automated plants will provide fewer than 5,000 new jobs--the most exacting of which will undoubtedly have to be filled by the army of technicians he has imported from Egypt--and that many of the made-in-Libya products will cost ten times more than comparable imports.

Gaddafi mysteriously disappeared from sight for a time last year, and there are rumors that he suffers bouts of severe depression. But he remains firmly in charge of the youthful (average age: 28) clique of officers who overthrew Idris; in addition to being chief of state, he holds no fewer than nine titles--including Prime Minister, Defense Minister and commander in chief of the 22,000-man armed forces. Practically speaking, he has no opposition among the introspective, lethargic Libyan people, except perhaps at the University of Libya in Tripoli. Gaddafi stalked off in a towering rage not long ago, after students there disputed his explanations of Libya's mercurial foreign policy.

Night Tours. He takes an intensely personal role in seeing that Libya remains faithful to Islam. Adopting the custom of Haroun al-Rashid, the Libyan leader likes to disguise himself and take night tours of Tripoli to make sure that Koranic laws are being obeyed. He has personally closed down nightclubs whose acts he thought lewd. Last July he took an incognito look-in at a noisy wiener roast for the teen-age children of U.S. oil-company personnel to make certain that no alcohol was being served and that no Libyans were present.

In a display of frugality, the colonel tools about Tripoli in a Volvo or Land Rover, but he recently publicly chided a slumdweller earning $2.80 a day for not building his family a better house. Gaddafi was married in 1969 to the daughter of an army officer, with Nasser as witness. He later divorced her and married a nurse he met while hospitalized with appendicitis; he has never seen a son by that first marriage. One reason for his impulsiveness and eccentricity, apparently, is that the handsome, introspective Libyan soldier sees the world through the tunnel vision of a True Believer. "My life is clear," he announced not long ago. "I am married. I pray and fast and perform my duties as a Moslem believer. I don't smoke or drink, and I read the Koran whenever I have the chance, especially at time of prayer. What else is there?"

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