Follow The Leader
Former 'mad dog' Muammar Qadhafi is taking Libya in a surprising new direction
TRIPOLI, LIBYA--The old embassy on Mohamed Thabit Street stands deserted now. The windows are punched out, and the interior is shrouded in dust. Plastic garbage bags that have snagged on barbed wire atop the roof flutter in the winds blowing off the Mediterranean. Inside are the time-frozen signs of a hasty exit: unemptied trash cans, cups stained with dried coffee left alongside manual typewriters. And up on the roof, a dirty American flag is bunched up at the base of a flagpole--likely an oversight in the evacuation of diplomats when the embassy was sacked and burned in December 1979.
The decaying U.S. Embassy in the center of Libya's capital remains a symbol of a quarter century of hostility and threats, of deadly plots and punishing sanctions, between the United States and Libya. For a time, Libya's radical leader, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, was a poster boy of sorts for international terrorism. But with Libya shedding its rogue pursuits, most notably this year abandoning its nuclear and chemical weapons programs, change is coming rapidly here. The Bush administration has lifted a travel ban and most economic sanctions. A restoration of full diplomatic ties--unthinkable a year ago--is in the offing.
The change is so swift that it can be a little disorienting. A few miles from the old embassy, my taxi is stopped in traffic, and we are looking at yet another portrait of Qadhafi. His jaw-jutting visage, usually sporting mirrored shades, pops up all over Libya--on billboards at desert crossroads, on portraits draped from the sides of buildings, in pictures hung in offices, stores, and teahouses. The message on this one reads: "The people are with our Leader in challenging America." My driver seems embarrassed. "That's old," he shrugs. "Americans are welcome."
Indeed, at Tripoli's Sea Breeze Golf Course, a dusty nine-hole track adjacent to the former Wheelus Air Base, a strategic U.S. military hub in the 1950s and '60s, the regulars are happy to see an American drop by. If more come, they're thinking, maybe the Americans will bring money to rehabilitate what was once an 18-hole course built by U.S. servicemen. "We used to play with the Americans. We beat them, and sometimes they beat us," recalls Mufta Hussein, 64, a retiree who caddied at the course as a youth. "They were very kind with us," says his golfing buddy, Amer Magader, 50. "I hope they will come back." On the coast 75 miles east of Tripoli, at the ruins of Leptis Magna, one of the world's best-preserved Roman cities, tour guide Miftah Mansour points to the areas excavated in the 1960s by University of Pennsylvania archaeologists and is hopeful that Americans will come back to help Libyans with some new digs.
In the upscale Tripoli neighborhood of Gargarsh, crowded with spiffy stores selling clothes and electronic wares, a member of the new generation of Libyan businessmen, Adel Alfadly, is trying to arrange a trade mission to Tripoli by American food and pharmaceutical companies in September. "Libyans are very interested in American movies and cars--the luxury life of America," he says. At Tripoli's only five-star hotel, the Corinthia Bab Africa, an executive in the Libyan oil industry is lounging in the spa's frothy Jacuzzi. He anticipates that American technology will revive flagging oil production: "There's no one like the Americans when it comes to oil." Reflecting the mood, Mansur Swedan, the general manager of the Rising Sun travel agency, is beaming over the prospect of the Americans--tourists and business people--returning to this once pariah nation in North Africa. " Inshallah [God willing]," he says over sweet, thick Arabic coffee, "we'll do good business."
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