Libya straddles isolation and re-engagement

Remains from the Roman empire lie amid modern garbage at the Leptis Magna archeological site in northeastern Libya. (Iason Athanasiadis/GlobalPost)

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TRIPOLI, Libya — Libya used to be one of the most hermetically sealed countries in the world, up there with, if not quite equal to, North Korea.

As with North Korea, visitors wanting to enter Libya had to come as part of a tour group, a law that survives to this day. As in North Korea, no street signs are in English, which complicates moving about for non-Arabic speakers.

There are other complications too for the independent visitor to Libya: cars and public transport are flagged down as they journey from one town to the next by security forces; foreign passengers asked to step outside and questioned; a simmering civil conflict in eastern Libya between Islamists and the government rumbles on.

But perhaps the greatest threat to seeing Libya is the rapid rate of the country’s modernization: Libya is seemingly disappearing under a tidal wave of construction that sees glass-and-steel buildings erupting out of the ground in the capital Tripoli and UNESCO World Heritage sites such as the oasis town of Ghadames undergoing mass-scale renovation.

Modern garbage amid Roman ruins in Libya. (Iason Athanasiadis/GlobalPost)

In the 1980s, Libya and its combative president Moammar Gadhafi held the role that Iran has today as the West’s main antagonist. But after a U.S. bombardment that killed Gadhafi’s adopted daughter and years of sanctions, the pan-Africanist leader made his peace and opened his country to Western investment. This was the context in which he addressed himself to the U.N. in September.

But as with so many of his past appearances, that was guaranteed to contain controversy. As I balanced out of a press box a few yards above where the Libyan colonel sat, Gadhafi reclined on his tan seat surrounded by advisers and holding a scarlet handkerchief to his face. The presidents, sheikhs and other heads of state crammed into the General Assembly for the annual inaugural meeting stood expectantly.

But for some 15 minutes, Gadhafi did not budge.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/091028/libya-straddles-isolation-and-re-engagement