Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Tales of Gaddafi’s magicians | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
Select Page

No-one can bring a smile to our faces amidst such a tense atmosphere in the Arab world as much as the undisputed comedian of Arab politics, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In a news article posted by “Arabia.net”, the website claimed that the African King of Kings has sought the help of a young Mauritanian magic broker, whom he recently summoned to Libya together with dozens of magicians, all specializing in their respective fields, to aid him in his fierce war against the Libyan revolutionaries. It was interesting that Gaddafi, having entered into extensive negotiations with his consortium of magical expertise, opted for a “spell” named “cutting down the tree”, with the aim of killing and confusing members of the Libyan rebel National Transitional Council [NTC]. The word “confusing” here is particularly humorous, for it is a clever tactic to circumvent the consequences, should Gaddafi’s magical agreement fail. That is to say that if the magical commandos fail to murder the members of the NTC, at least the chief magical commando on the battlefield can claim that he has confused the revolutionaries!

One of the magical agreements allegedly concluded by Gaddafi stipulates that when a magician writes down the name of a NTC member on the trunk of a tree, and then cuts that tree down, then the individual named will die. Of course, Gaddafi here is lucky that the agreement did not stipulate a specific type of tree or for the tree in question to have a specific number of leaves. It would have been disastrous if these symbols of African magic had required an extremely rare species of tree, or other conditions such as a falcon perching on its branches at sunrise, and a crow perching on its branches at sunset!

Many of the Libyan leaders’ fans have overlooked the fact that Gaddafi, the magician of Libyan politics, did not target the leaders of the NATO states [targeting Libya], inscribing their names on tree trunks and then cutting these trees down so that he could revenge himself on them all without exception. Instead, he opted to impose his magic powers against the NTC, whose revolutionaries manufacture their modest weapons using scrap metal which they obtain from the debris of Libya’s eastern cities. Why didn’t Gaddafi use his magicians against the UN Security Council, to “confuse” it, when it voted to allow NATO forces to fight him on his own ground? Why did Gaddafi not convince his band of magicians to allow him to have a permanent seat, or indeed sole seat, on the UN Security Council?

Analysts have tried to interpret Gaddafi’s recent threat to take the fighting to Europe, whilst he continues to hide in underground caves to escape NATO’s air-raids. There have even been allegations of possible agreements between Gaddafi and African magicians to destroy nuclear reactors, especially in France and Britain. Perhaps, the obstacle hindering the agreement’s implementation is the lack of appropriate magical talismans for the djin whom the magicians have summoned to do their bidding!

We do not imagine that anyone was as pleased with the U.S. Congress’s decision, rejecting Obama’s plan to intervene in Libya and support the revolutionaries, as the old Libyan sorcerer who previously, live on Libyan state television, threatened the US and Turkey with chaos, if they refused to abandon their support of the Libyan rebels. This magician inevitably linked America’s hesitation to back the revolutionaries with his threats, but what about the chaos spreading in Libya’s rebellious eastern cities? Perhaps, the magician only possesses intercontinental ballistic magical powers, and has no short-range spells in his arsenal!