Kate Adie: The Gaddafi I knew

"THE GUARDIAN

Gaddafi's Libya ran on farce mingled with fear, recalls the BBC reporter he nearly ran down in a small, battered Peugeot

Nothing was ever straightforward dealing with Gaddafi.

There was little to do in revolutionary Libya in the evenings. Television was dreary, full of the Leader's speeches and only occasionally enlivened by pirated foreign programmes, including the nation's favourite: Monty Python's Flying Circus. Libyans watched it, not laughing but nodding. They said: "That's our country they're showing." It was an oil-rich country with broken pavements and an atmosphere that discouraged taking a walk in the dark. No obvious threat, no armed men prowling the street, just hotel employees and anonymous regime officials twitching with an unexpressed fear that "things might happen . . ." 

So how did the nation function?

There were ministries – just about. Some able men managed to push various policies into practice, but were frequently thwarted by capricious and instant legislation. One afternoon the Colonel addressed a deliriously enthusiastic meeting and suddenly announced that all imported luxury cars were to be got rid of. Fifteen minutes later, a bodyguard sidled up to him to mention that several vehicles in his own motorcade were on fire outside. The order was rescinded on the spot.

Appointments were made without relevance to merit. A nervous civil service never questioned the coming and goings. At the Interior Ministry I asked the man in the biggest office (with a broken fax machine and no working telephone) if he were the minister.

"Maybe," he replied, adding that he had been last year, then someone else had been appointed while he was still in post, but had subsequently . . . er . . . left town . . . "So, maybe I'm the minister," he added helpfully.

Farce mingled with fear. That is how the country ran. At the very heart of the mysterious administration was a clutch of men loyal to – but still very scared of – the Colonel himself.

There are few times when any of us experience total fear. To tremble with fear is a cliche. However, on two occasions I noticed officials in his presence start to shake. I wondered if they were ill, then realised that they were unable to control their fear, sweating and twitching and trying to edge out of his direct gaze. I once asked one of his inner circle – we were not in Libya – why his close colleagues behaved that way. He thought and then said that the Colonel's rages were occasionally so terrible that many thought he might kill. "It's terrible," he said. "But what can we do? He has the power. There are no alternatives in this kind of world. I'd rather not talk about it."

The outside world mostly saw the circus, the oddities, the bizarre behaviour. "Flaky," chuckled President Reagan.

Gaddafi called himself Colonel occasionally and refused to acknowledge the phrase President, preferring the term Leader. He was costumed theatrically – admiral, desert Bedouin, Italian lounge-lizard. He occasionally used the trappings of conventional power – long motorcades – or the occasional white horse. However, he was just as likely to turn up driving a battered small Peugeot with the bumpers missing. I know, because he nearly ran me over one morning trying to park the wreck very inexpertly outside my hotel.

Gaddafi grew notorious for weird behaviour – pitching tents in cities, spouting seven-hour speeches and making absurd claims. However, ignorance drove this as much as instability.

What actually went on in his innermost circle was virtually impossible to learn with any certainty. As his sons grew up, appeared in public, travelled abroad, partied and disgraced themselves with the behaviour of wilful rich brutes, there was no public mention of the succession."

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