This week’s news of strengthening relations between the North African country of Libya and the OECS is of great interest to me and undoubtedly to other PanAfrican workers based in the Caribbean Region.

According to the news, following several initiatives spearheaded by the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, plans are now afoot to establish Libyan banks in the Member States of the OECS. Recent activity toward that end included a visit to Tripoli by Prime Minister Gonsalves, and his Dominican counterpart Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit who was able to negotiate Libyan financing for several projects in Dominica. On Monday OECS leaders including Anguilla’s Minister of Health and Social Development, Evans McNeil Rogers, met in St. Vincent and the Grenadines with a Libyan delegation headed by Special Envoy Mokhtar Ghanas. Among the Prime Ministers who prioritised this meeting were those of the host country, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis.

The Declaration of Kingstown emanating from the meeting indicated that Libya will also set up an embassy in an OECS Member State and that the OECS will establish a joint embassy in Tripoli. In addition, a Libyan holding company will be established in the OECS and technical teams would have a presence in each OECS country. This, of course, will not include Anguilla, not only because we are not a full member of the OECS but also because as a non-independent Terrritory of Britain, we do not enjoy the sovereignty required to establish diplomatic relations with anyone. Yet, I am very heartened by Anguilla’s participation in the discussion because it means we are finally finding ways and means of connecting to African development, though we are probably guilty as everyone else sucking up to Libya with visions of its oil money fuelling our development interests.

And why not? This was the question I asked when Dominica’s late Prime Minister Rosie Douglas journeyed to Libya seeking help in 2000. If I remember correctly, he was also accompanied by the late Tim Hector of Antigua and Barbuda who had also visited Libya before with Pierre Charles who eventually succeeded Douglas. In those days Caribbean socialists were still holding dear to their leftist ideology. Another visit to Libya by Caribbean leaders took place in August 2001. This time Dominica, St. Vincent and Grenada were seeking assistance to modernise agriculture and in Grenada’s case to reduce its debt. I remember too that they got rapped on the knuckles by Big Brother who was not happy at all that they had dared to seek out Libya. They, however, stood their ground most pragmatically as the aid from the US of America had slowed significantly.

Libya is a country that has intrigued me for a very long time. The intrigue began during my youthful years when I came across some version of the Holy Bible that used Libya instead of Ethiopia wherever there were references to that ancient country. In my ignorance I was not too happy about that but it prompted me to go do the research which has helped me to understand the depth to which the European colonial enterprise impacted the history, geography, social, cultural and economic relations in that part of the world.

Officially the country is named the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and it is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt in the east, Sudan in the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, Algeria and Tunisia to the west. These last two countries were once included in the whole area of the country known as Libya. With an area of approximately 700,000 square miles, it is the fourth largest country in the African continent, though most of this land mass is desert. 1.7 million of the country’s 5.7 million people live in the capital city, Tripoli. All this may be interesting but not the reason that Libya will have friends even among its enemies. That reason is found in the country’s tremendous petroleum reserves which primarily account for Libya’s economic might and a per capita that is second only to Equatorial Guinea. Another interesting fact about Libya is that its unique flag is a single colour, plain green, with no other features. Over the centuries, Libya was occupied by Spain who turned it over to Malta in the 16th century only to have parts of it recaptured by pirates before occupation by the Ottoman Turks who eventually lost it to Italy. Under the auspices of the United Nations, on December 24th 1951, Libya was the first of the European colonies in Africa to declare its independence with a constitutional hereditary monarchy headed by Sayyid Muhammad Idris bin Sayyid Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Senuss more simply known as King Idris.

As could have been expected, the Arab nationalists in Libya and the surrounding Arab states were not at all happy that King Idris insisted on maintaining relations with the United Kingdom and the United States of America. As his health failed, King Idris drew up an instrument of abdication naming his nephew as the Crown Prince but that Prince would never reign. While King Idris was in Greece for medical attention, on September 1, 1969, 28 year old army officer Mu’ammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi successfully staged a bloodless coup and installed himself as the ultimate leader. He is still going strong today, currently holding the Chairmanship of the African Union. Qadhafi is also the ultimate politician, shifting like a chameleon to survive bombings by the US, Lockerbie and a host of not so much dangerous as eccentric moves to remain intact in spite of all forms of opposition from a host of sources including his Arab brethren. In recent years this has prompted him to adopt more of a PanAfrican interest in development than a PanArab one, yet some think this is only a ploy to continue the Arabisation of Africa. While I do not support this, I do support Qadhafi’s agitation for speeding up the process for the formation of the United States of Africa and was instrumental in ensuring that Rastafari youth were represented by a young Ras from Puerto Rico at his Youth Summit in Tripoli a couple of years ago, to lobby the youth sector for support in the move toward the new USA.

As I write this article, the international media is reporting on Colonel Qadhafi’s visit to Rome where he has set up his traditional Bedouin tent as his meeting place in the grounds of the Roman Villa where he is staying. On his itinerary is a meeting with 700 prominent Italian women, similar to one held during a visit to France, with 1000 French women, as part of his programme to save the women of Europe. Since the women in the Caribbean Region also need attention in all kinds of ways, I am putting my signals out there to be added to the list if there is ever a call for the women of the OECS to called together to be saved by Qadhafi. However, even I may have ulterior motives because I am really tired of being saved by others and give thanks to the Living I within, who really wants us to know how to save ourselves.

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