Libya: Imperial conquest and control

"Age: approximately forty years.

Race: white.
Height: approximately 5' 9" . . . The following injuries were noted in the  general examination; 1. Bullet wound in the left clavicular region, with the exit in the scapular region on the same side 2. Bullet wound in the right clavicular region, with a fracture of the same and no exit 3. Bullet wound in the right costal region without exit . . . "

Che Guevara
The above gory details are extracted from the death certificate of one Ernesto Guevara captured and assassinated by the American-trained Company B of the Ranger Battalion of the Bolivian Army. The capture was on October 8 1967 in the Churo ravine of Higuera, a hamlet situated on the Rio Pirainambi, itself a tributary of Rio Grande, in Bolivia.

The day was a Sunday, the time, about 1pm. The assassination followed a day later, on October 9 1967. The death certificate was compiled on October 10.

The operation had been codenamed "Parabano" and its objective was to finish off the remaining 17 guerillas who included Ernesto, better known as "Che", himself a hero of the Cuban Revolution as led by Fidel Castro Ruz.

After a tense moment following the capture, the voice of Captain Gary Prado Salmon, himself commander of the unit that subdued Che and his group, crackled: "This is Thin Man. Attention, this is Thin Man. I have Papa. Over!" A few minutes went by. Then a voice came from Valle Grande: "This is Saturn. Let me talk to the Thin Man to confirm that you have Papa."

Saturn was the code name for Colonel Zenteno. Prado confirmed he had "Papa", the code name for Che. He asked: "How do you want him?" "Alive," he was told. Thereafter Che was transferred by helicopter to Higuera where he was interrogated by a mixed group of Bolivian army officers and CIA agents.

Che executed
Done with him, the leg-injured Che was fed with mutton and potatoes, all at his request. "Bring me a plate of food. I want to die on a full stomach." At 1:40pm, one Warrant Officer Mario Teran came into the schoolroom were Che was being held, hands and legs tied up with leather thongs and rope. Teran carried an M-2 rifle. He stepped back, to angry voices that shouted commands. Hapless, Teran walked back into the room, balked for a while. Suddenly he raised his weapon and in a split second the ravine of Churo clapped back in faithful echo of the deadly spit from the M-2.

As he bade adieu to a world he had hoped to set right, Che thrust his fingers into his mouth, biting them hard. He did not want to scream, to die crying like a coward. His lifeless body fell slowly against the wall, as if asserting lifetime dignity. His bright, resolute eyes would not blink, but confronted his executors, giving his bearded face a haunting but hopeful serenity.

That image of him - in death - remains with us to this day, taunting his killers, Americans especially, steadying his followers, Third World guerillas mostly.

Imperialism defiles
What followed is worth recording in this piece. On the instructions of the CIA, the Bolivian military authorities cut off Che's two hands which they deposited into a cylindrical receptacle of metal, filled with formaldehyde, a strong disinfectant used to preserve such bizarre goods. Equally, a wax mask was made from Che's dead face. Both items were later handed over to an Argentinian team of experts of that country's Federal Police.

The CIA wanted the Argentinian authorities to verify that indeed Che was dead. Sub-inspectors Nicholas Pellicari and Juan Carlos Delgado, themselves Argentinians and therefore Che's compatriots, carried out the assignment, using the "Juan Vucetich" fingerprinting system.

They fingerprinted Che's dead hands, and proceeded to compare them with the individual prints shown on the photostatic copy of the record of all 10 fingers corresponding to the original recorded in the files of the Identity Section by the Argentinian Federal Police under the numbers 3.524.272 in the name of one Ernesto Guevara.

They found a perfect fit between prints of the dead palms and prints of the living Che at the time he went for national registration back in his youth.

Che's fraught letter
They went further, again at the behest of the CIA. A handwriting expert was called in to examine notes from Che's Bolivian diary. And of course from Che's last letter to his children, which I reproduce below, in full: "To my dear children Hildita, Adeilita, Camilo, Celia, and Ernesto: If you ever have to read this letter, it will be because I am no longer among you. You will hardly remember me, and the youngest children will not remember me at all. Your father has always been a man who acted in accordance with what he thought, and there is no denying that he has been faithful to his convictions.

Grow up like good revolutionaries. Study a lot so as to master the technique that allows man to master nature. Remember that the revolution is the important thing and that each of us is worth nothing alone. Above all make yourself capable of responding in your heart of hearts to any injustice committed against anyone in any part of the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary. Good-bye forever, children; I still hope to see you again. A big kiss and a big hug from . . . Papa."

Che, an Argentinian medical doctor, had fought in Cuba, in Congo and in Bolivia, exhibiting a rare quality of revolutionary internationalism against world imperialism led of course by the USA. As Che the legend expired, Che the myth was born. That Che lives to this day.

Gaddafi's will
I leave South America for the top-end of north Africa, Libya specifically. I have already written about Gaddafi: his excesses, foibles, his meritorious deeds for Africa and the Libyan people, all the time skating around the question of what his real legacy is. Until last week, Gaddafi's legacy threatened to be as controversial as the way he himself lived, ruled and died.

I fumbled for an entry point into this one question. Until I came across the following words attributed to Gaddafi in a clear misnomer title of a Will: "This is my will. I, Muammar bin Mohammad bin Abdussalam bi Humayd bin Abu Manyar bin Humayd bin Nayil al Fuhsi Gaddafi, do swear that there is no other God but Allah and that Mohammad is God's Prophet, peace be upon him. I pledge that I will die as Muslim. Should I be killed, I would like to be buried, according to Muslim rituals, in the clothes I was wearing at the time of my death and my body unwashed, in the cemetery of Sirte, next to my family and relatives.

I would like that my family, especially women and children, be treated well after my death. The Libyan people should protect its identity, achievements, history and the honorable image of its ancestors and heroes. The Libyan people should not relinquish the sacrifices of the free and best people. I call upon my supporters to continue the resistance, and fight any foreign aggressor against Libya, today, tomorrow and always. Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life.

We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour. Even of we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of others to tell you otherwise."

Gaddafi against Che
Again I leave North Africa for Southeast Asia, specifically Pakistan where we meet bin Laden, killed by the Americans in May this year. Unlike Che and like Gaddafi, previously bin Laden had been a tool and friend of America, a friend who was subsequently accused of terror acts against America.

Interestingly, planes are involved in cases raised against both Gaddafi and bin Laden. Ironically these two would have killed each other on sight despite the fact of sharing the same friend once upon a time, and dying before the same sword in the final analysis. And of course both would have killed Che on sight, given the higher ideals of Che which would never have reconciled him to religious bigotry and the obscene opulence of an owning ruling class.

True, Che had his own reservations about the highly regimented and mercurial Soviet Union under Kruschev, but that reservation was non-antagonistic. Che would never have been a Mujahideen. And gentle reader, you do not need to guess that my heart and brains are with Che, while my understanding is with the other two.

But that's not my point. My real point is what these three deaths: two in October, one in May, tell us about how imperialism kills, but more importantly, what it does with those it kills, and why. To me that is what is so fundamental to all of us the living ones.

Special operations
I have already said all perished at the hands of the Americans. In all the three cases, a special operation is employed against them: Ranger Battalion in the case of Che, a battalion whose officers had been specially trained at the John F Kennedy Centre for Special Strategy, a school run by the US at Fort Gulick, Panama Canal Zone; Desert Seals in the case of bin Laden, and US drone fighters supported by French jets in the case of Muammar.

We will never know bin Laden's last words when he came face to face with his executioners, but we know last words from the other two. Che said: "Don't kill us. I'm Che. I am worth more to you alive than dead." For Muammar, his captors tell us he said, "Don't shoot. What's wrong? What's going on?" Of course this is the story of the victor, which means it must be swallowed, not with a pinch of salt, but rather with a shovel of shit.

The Che problem
Again, this grim detail, while riveting, is not in itself so crucial. What is crucial is what happens to the three once executed in cold blood. Che immediately created what came to be known as "the Che problem", namely what to do with his remains. The same passed for Bin and Muammar. All were secretly buried, the one at night in the fields of Higuera, the other at night at sea, and the last and latest in the sea of Libyan desert sand.

So far only one - Che - has been recovered and exhumed, a good 30 years later in 1997. Those who buried Gaddafi are reported to have taken an oath under the Koran never to reveal the whereabouts of the corpse. As for bin Laden, well the sea does not brag, or does it?

Bridling the dead
Why does imperialism worry so much about the remains of its firebrand victims? The key to this question is imperialism's quest for conquest and control. Having eliminated a troublesome odd against it, imperialism realises in panic that killing begets legend and myth; that conquest only gets complete if the dead remain quietened and pacified in their graves.

Imperialism is afraid of spooks, of graveyards that can't keep their dead inside. Such dead will end up peeping, visiting the living, creating headaches in a world which imperialism seeks to pacify and render totally bridled and quiescent to its will. Mbuya Nehanda...As for her, we hear and believe some tree on an island along Josiah Tongogara Road is where she dangled dead, hanged by the settlers for her stubborn resistance.

And secretive burials in unmarked sepulchers is imperialism's final way of bridling those restively opposed to it. We saw that with Nehanda, Kaguvi, Mapondera, Chingaira, Chiwashira, Mashayamombe, Lobengula and many other impis who stood out heroically in both resistances.  We saw that with Ethan Dube and Eddison Sithole in the seventies.

Legacy of bones
Recently, Namibia has just recovered bones of its heroes, all massacred by the Germans at the onset of colonialism. But Namibia has received mere bones, all of them ashen, all of them nameless, all of them virtually totem-less beyond their synthetic collective identity as Hereros, Namas, etc, etc, or more recently, as Namibians.

It is a very tenuous, fragmented identity marker drained of its potency, specificity and meaning. It is a legacy that is as dry as the bones themselves, a dead tissue to a nation seeking to engraft onto a living cell of history. Namibia would have to invent and inspire meaning into those bare, ashen bones, all along caged and imprisoned in German museums.

We do not know where the head of Chingaira, Mashayamombe or of Chiwashira's quartered remains, are. As for Mbuya Nehanda, we hear and believe some tree on an island along Josiah Tongogara Road is where she dangled dead, hanged by the settlers for her stubborn resistance.

The tree has become a myth, a myth whose symbolic potency is diminished by incertitude, a creeping sense of doubt and self-doubt. Today Mbuya Chagwe is not a human being; she is her last words, her last stanza in a poem of death, namely that her "bones shall rise". That is all we hold on to, in the absence of her grave, of her remains.

Capital of nations
Nations, yes, are physical entities, tangibles. But they are also intangibles: narratives, myths, legends, collective griefs and collective joys. Indeed they are collective triumphs and monuments, however cobwebbed or ruined. Above all, nations are their heroes and matyars: those men and women who stand out as having taken risks, victories and heroic defeats towards the founding, preservation or expansion of given nations.

Heroes of wars of resistances, in other words. If we did not have heroes, nations would have to invent them. And from generation to generation, these mythical beings, events and monuments are what passes uninterrupted, all the time nourishing our sense of nationhood and identity.

Cleansed by history
By attacking a people, a nation, imperialism attacks this pith that keeps a people, a nation green and alive. Far more important than eliminating opponents is controlling their after-life narrativised as history, monuments, memory or myth. Or worse, narrativised as potent symbols that lift the national spirit, rouse and galvanise it even.

To subdue a people, a nation, is to murder its heroes and the myths and legends around them. And graves are foremost sites of such potent myths, legends, symbols and symbolism. Graves of heroes or figures of resistance immediately become sites of pilgrimage, foci of stubborn inspiration and resistance. This is what imperialism dreads most, indeed why it seeks to discredit heroes who live, while discreetly sequestering those it will have killed or eliminated.

And one stubborn reality for imperialism is that history does rehabilitate figures of history, cleaning them of their ugly warts, leaving them as spotless legends of overwhelming potency. This is why Kwame stands flawless today; why Lumumba shines refulgent, indeed why the blemishes of Nkomati cannot today diminish the glory of Samora.

Going back to the three, no one remembers Che for the wives he jilted, or some of his quixotic revolutionary escapades. His grandeur and gravitas far exceeds those little foibles.

Gaddafi to Mugabe
For the Zimbabwean debate, Muammar has been characterised through Western lenses. We think his role in advancing our liberation struggle is less important in our total grasp of his person than claims that he bombed Pan-Am flight whatever. We are more grieved by that bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 than we are moved by our liberation which came much sooner through Gaddafi.

Secondly, we have assessed Gaddafi vicariously through Robert Mugabe, whatever our present political predilections may be. Those who support the President and his Zanu-PF see it as a duty to embrace and defend Gaddafi unconditionally, often being mindless about it. Gaddafi becomes the spotlessly clean leader he never was. This is because these supporters of the President see their defence of Gaddafi as a defence of Robert Mugabe, albeit vicariously. Their non-defence of Gaddafi becomes some betrayal of President Mugabe. Mugabe becomes Gaddafi and Gaddafi becomes Mugabe!

Transposition of fates
Contrastively, those who hate Mugabe revel in lynching dead Gaddafi, long after his secretive burial. They flay him, stab him, burn him, long after his body has been spirited away from the morgue. Libya has long been rid of Gaddafi, but they restore him for their lynching satisfaction.

You cannot miss the macabre relish, the consummate delight in the way the Daily News, Newsday and other publications cover and treat Gaddafi's end, with Robert Mugabe fenced as the extended patient of the assassination. It is the lynching of President Mugabe through a dead Gaddafi. And to make the lynching deserved and righteous, dead Gaddafi has to be re-invented as a bosom friend, nay, an alter ego of Robert Mugabe.

Those who lynch the dead Gaddafi feel avenged on Mugabe for whatever sins they heap on him, most of them so and as near to us and our lives as the bombing of Pan-Am Airline itself! And for them, Gaddafi becomes the dead Mugabe of their wish, while the living Mugabe becomes the Gaddafi who has died or must die. For both admirers and haters of Mugabe, the true identity of Gaddafi is lost, as is also that of Mugabe. Indeed as is also their chequered relationship while the other lived.

Vexatious question
I pose my main issue for the day. Woefully we relate to both men not by their liberation of us, but by how they have hurt Western interests in pursuit of their contrasting visions. Why is it easier for us to relate to Gaddafi through Western outrage over an airline bombing, an airline which is not even Air Zimbabwe, than it is for us to relate to him as a quartermaster of a revolution that gave us

Independence and nationhood? Is December 21, 1988 and Lockerbie nearer to our hearts than 18th April, 1980 and Rufaro?

Why is our appreciation of international events mediated through Western grudges, never through our own interests, experiences, history and prospects? Does that make us a people, a nation, an identity?

NATO-given freedom
Whichever way events sway the Libyan people, the future can only belong to Gaddafi and his resistance, never mind his shortcomings and excesses as a ruler of Libya. The evolving State in post-Gaddafi Libya is bound to be a State of grave national deficit, while being a State complicity with imperialism against the Libyan people.

Few saw it in the hyped euphoria, many shall see it the morning after, now that Gaddafi is dead. The intervening State shall never be able to clothe, feed, school, house and defend Libyans the way Gaddafi did, but without conceding to them full civil liberties. For the first time, Libyans are going to tender their labour and resources to other races who will now occupy them, something unknown to them since the late 60s when King Idriss fell.

That, it seems to me, is the price Libyans may have to pay for their Nato-given freedom. Which is what will make bad Gaddafi's words prophetic and potent as Libya trudges and struggles into a lonely future, fleeced to the bone by its erstwhile liberators. Gaddafi the future myth.

Two weeks ago, I wondered why the colonel could be that stupid to retreat into a corner against a formidable onslaught. It is now clear Gaddafi was past fighting the war that encircled him. He was fighting another war, bigger and further, both in time and place: the war of post-Gaddafi Libya open to Western imperialism.

And his will which today does not have interlocutors, will tomorrow find an audience craving for a fighting myth. Gaddafi can never be a hero in today's Libya, to Libya's current generation. He is too bad for that. He needs time to become beautiful once more. He needs new difficulties and challenges of a neo-colonial Libya to be born again.

As for us Zimbos, well, Che speaks to us through his children: Above all make yourself capable of responding in your heart of hearts to any injustice committed against anyone in any part of the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

Icho!