Sandstorm by Lindsey Hilsum

Author:Lindsey Hilsum [Hilsum, Lindsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101583593
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Just outside Benghazi, in a heavily guarded complex unseen by the outside world, Gaddafi built the World Revolutionary Headquarters, a training facility for anyone who might like to have a go at overthrowing a regime he didn’t like. It was part of the mathaba, the World Center for Resistance against Imperialism, Zionism, Racism, Reaction and Fascism. In the early nineties Musa Koussa became its director. Students came from all over the world, but the list of African alumni is striking for the chaos they brought to their home countries: Charles Taylor, who turned Liberia into a killing ground and ended up on trial for war crimes; Foday Sankoh, whose forces in Sierra Leone were notorious for chopping off people’s arms and legs, raping little girls and forcing little boys to kill members of their family; Laurent Kabila, who ousted Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and presided over an equally brutal replacement regime; Blaise Compaore, who overthrew his best friend, the popular left-wing leader Thomas Sankara, in Burkina Faso; Kukoi Sanyang, who mounted a coup against the democratically elected government of Gambia.

The recruitment methods Gaddafi employed were not dissimilar in some ways to those used by Western countries trying to attract young Africans to the ideas of democracy and the free market or Christian missionaries to win converts. Gaddafi would give grants of money to build mosques and sponsor African Muslims to go on the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Like any foreign government, the Libyans used their embassy to win friends and influence people. The Libyan People’s Bureau would be well stocked with copies of the Green Book, which were widely distributed, something that was very welcome in countries where there were few books or libraries. In Sierra Leone, the students’ union started a Green Book study group, so some were invited to Tripoli as guests of Gaddafi’s revolutionary committees for the annual Green Book celebration. They would get lectures about the Libyan system and suggestions about how to bring a Libyan-style revolution to their home countries. It wasn’t hard to exploit discontent. Sierra Leone was among the poorest countries in the world, and the pocket money the Libyans provided enabled students to continue at the university or start a small business. Libyans might think their capital was dilapidated, but to a West African student in his midtwenties who was accommodated in a hotel for the first time, it looked pretty good. This pattern was followed in several African countries. After a while, those who were most enthusiastic about Libya would become contact people through whom the Libyans channeled funds. They might be tasked with “revolutionary assignments,” such as attacking a government facility or a foreign diplomat. Their Libyan friends, who would be in the lijan thawriya, would ask them to recruit more like-minded youth for the cause of pan-African and world revolution and—if they had the right revolutionary fervor—invite them to Benghazi for further training.

The war in Chad was in part a struggle against the remnants of French

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.