Monday, February 28, 2011

EDITORIAL

For a self-professed (and self-deluded) man of the people, Moammar Gadhafi has, over more than four decades of thievery and oppression, amassed an obscene amount of money.

He may claim parenthood of the “Third Way” between Marxism and capitalism but his multiple bank accounts fall resoundingly in favor of a tyrannical corruption of the later. 

It is hard to imagine the iron grip Gadhafi exerted over his oil-rich country lasting as long as it did without the possession of billions of petrodollars. He and his family managed to buy off anyone who didn’t like the way they behaved, both at home and abroad, as his people fell further and further into destitution.

Money buys power, but also insulation. Flanked by yes men and courted by international oil consumers, Gadhafi once bathed in the curious green light of contentedness; grumbles of unhappiness never reached him, until recently, and caused the dictator to become as far detached from reality as he clearly is today.

The United Nations sanctions now being aimed at Gadhafi’s financial assets will hopefully hit the old man harder than the insults of his own people, to which, until now, he has feigned deafness. Added to calls from one-time strategic allies to place Gadhafi, his offspring and his hideous entourage on trial for war crimes, the punitive measures could possibly persuade the patriarch that his time in power – and in the black – is at an end.

Sanctions are welcome, but not unreservedly so.

History brings with it warnings of the need to properly apply and scrutinize financial penalties against autocrats. One need look no further than the sanctions placed by the international community on Saddam Hussein’s regime, which crippled civilian finance and impoverished millions of Iraqis while the rotten administration carried on unscathed.

Sanctions against Libya, if not properly implemented, monitored and managed, could not only spell disaster for the people who have been brave enough to speak up against Gadhafi, but could also end up empowering the despot himself.

Sanctions that inadvertently penalize an already bedraggled populace will rob both livelihoods and a popular voice; short of self-immolation, there is little someone in hopeless poverty can practically do to spark the fall of a megalomaniac.

The world community needs to be careful who it is punishing. If it manages to properly squeeze Gadhafi’s billions there should be a framework for returning them to the people from which they were originally taken.
While his rapidly freezing bank balance might not tell him so, Gadhafi has a very big debt to pay.