FOR all practical purposes, the rule of Muammar Gaddafi is in its final days. After Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the fall of Gaddafi marks the end of the third Arab dictator within the space of eight months. The biggest lesson for the West is to not support dictators when it suits, and for the remaining Arab rulers to reform or face a fate similar to the fallen dictators.
As is normally the case with dictators, Gaddafi had increasingly become delusional. At the helm for 42 years, he thought that he had become infallible and that, with the exception of his equally delusional son Saif al-Islam, there was nobody to replace him. His rule was based on fear, torture, patronage, self-adulation and aggrandisement. He plundered Libya's oil wealth in pursuit of bizarre and idiosyncratic ideas and practices that demeaned Libya internationally and stigmatised the Arab people as a whole. In this, he was not much different from many other Arab authoritarian rulers.
Yet, he stayed in power not simply because he was able to deceive the Libyan people and the world for so long. There was also the matter of the West's love-hate relationship with him. They loathed him because he was, as the late US president Ronald Reagan put it, ''the mad dog'' of the Arab world, and therefore an unpredictable rogue and supporter of international terrorism who needed to be watched and feared.
All this was against a backdrop that implicated him in a string of terrorist operations against Western targets - ranging from the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in 1986, in which scores of American servicemen were killed, an act that invited a US retaliatory air attack on Tripoli, to supporting the Irish Republican Army in its operations against Britain, to the blowing up of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Although Gaddafi was sanctioned and isolated as a result, the Western oil companies and their governments never found it desirable to sever all ties with him. As soon as he announced in 2003 that he was forgoing his nuclear program - a tactic spawned by his London School of Economics graduate son, Saif - London was more than willing to forgive him and lobbied Washington to do the same. Former British prime minister Tony Blair made a highly publicised and personal visit to Gaddafi's tent in the desert to embrace the great leader and welcome him back into the Western fold - an act that was quickly followed by the US and its other allies.
Gaddafi again became the darling of the West, and a blind eye was turned to his predatory and self-centred behaviour. Once more, he was the leader with whom the West could do business. Saif was received in the Western capitals as someone representing the new and enlightened face of what by all measures remained Gaddafi's brutal dictatorship.
Ending Gaddafi's rule has not been a cheap affair. It has proved to be very costly for both the Libyan people and NATO, which provided five months of air cover for the opposition.
It has taken a heavy toll on the Libyans in blood and material. In the process of overthrowing Gaddafi, Libyan people have been badly scarred and much of the country's infrastructure destroyed - similar to what happened in Iraq as a result of the 2003 US-led invasion that secured the demise of Saddam Hussein. Like the Iraqis, Libyans may not recover from this for a generation to come.
Meanwhile, for the Libyan opposition, it is only the beginning of a very long, arduous and possibly bloody journey in shifting Libya from a dictatorship to what might be acceptable to a majority of the Libyan people and embraceable by the Western powers that facilitated it.
Libya is a highly tribal society and the opposition is made up of different groups. There is no certainty that, with the fall of Gaddafi's regime as the main focus of its unity, the opposition will not disintegrate. It is also possible for Libyan politics to take an Islamist direction - similar to what seems to be on the horizon in Egypt.
As for the other Arab dictators - from Bashar al-Assad of Syria to Ali Saleh of Yemen - they now have two options: either to do whatever it takes to suppress the opposition and avoid facing the same fate as their fallen counterparts, or unfold a vigorous reform agenda and make a somewhat honourable exit. They would be well advised to take the second route.
Amin Saikal is professor of political science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.
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