Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

Meanwhile, the Basic People’s Congresses provide at least a theater of political participation. They are open to any Libyan over eighteen and meet for a week or two, four times a year. In principle, you can discuss anything at a Congress, though an agenda is set from above. When in session, the 468 Basic People’s Congresses meet daily. Afterward, a brief report is sent from each Congress to a Central Committee. (Libya is committee heaven—there is even a National Committee for Committees.) A typical Congress includes about three hundred members. Most educated people who are not trying to climb the political ladder do not go. The format is town hall with touches of Quaker meeting and Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Basic People’s Congresses were in session while I was in Libya, and I repeatedly asked, in vain, to visit one. Then, by chance, I mentioned my interest during an interview with the director of the National Supply Corporation (NASCO), which administers the subsidies that are a mainstay of the Libyan economy; he said a meeting would be held at its offices at noon and invited me to attend.

I had hoped to sit quietly in a corner; instead, I was escorted to the front row, and someone scurried in to serve me tea. A voluble woman made an impassioned speech asking why Libya imported tomato paste when there was enough water to grow tomatoes. A discussion of tomatoes ensued. The officials introduced issues of economic reform. My interest was more in the session’s dynamic than in its content, so I was paying scant attention when my translator shifted from phrases such as “openly traded equities” and “reallocation of subsidy funds” to something about how “we are lucky to host a prominent American journalist”—and just as I was registering this new topic, he said, “who will now address the Congress on the future of the US-Libya relationship,” and I was handed a microphone.

While each of my sentences was being translated into Arabic, I had a fortunate pause in which to think of the next, so I gave a warm and heartfelt speech, saying that I hoped we would soon see full diplomatic relations between our countries, that I had loved meeting the Libyans and hoped they would feel similarly welcome in the United States, and so on. I received a protracted ovation, and thereafter every speaker prefaced his remarks with kind words about me. I was just settling into the comfortable glow of new celebrity when my translator said, “We have to go now,” and took me outside, where three journalists from Al Shams wanted to interview me. We wandered through fairly predictable territory, and then they asked my opinion of Qaddafi’s efforts to broker peace in Darfur. (Qaddafi has publicly met both with rebel leaders and with the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir.) I said that anyone working on that situation deserved support. I also said that Qaddafi’s opposition to terrorism would appeal to Americans.

The following day, Al Shams ran a nearly full-page story with three large photographs of me at the congress, under a double-banner headline that said, “The World Needs a Man Like Muammar Qaddafi to Achieve Global Peace,” and, below, “The American People Appreciate Muammar Qaddafi’s Role in Easing the Pain Inflicted by September 11th.” The morning that the piece was published, I received my long-awaited invitation to the Qaddafi compound.

A minder from the International Press Office called to tell me that I was in for “a surprise” and that he would pick me up at my hotel at 4:00 p.m. At the International Press Office, near Green Square, I joined some twenty other “international” journalists, all from Arab countries, and talked about why Qaddafi might want to see us. I was solemnly told that one never knows what the Leader wants: “One comes when asked.” Finally, at about six forty-five, a minibus appeared. We drove twenty minutes and then stopped by a vast concrete wall, at the perimeter of Qaddafi’s compound. The car was searched and we were searched, and then we drove through a slalom course of obstacles and another security gauntlet before being ushered into an immense tent with a lavish buffet. Within the next half hour, four hundred or so people piled in, many in traditional robes.