"Gorte khotom Gaddafi!"
That's what the Bengali daily shouted out today morning. Muammar Al-Gaddafi, that Libyan guy with wicked looks, he's dead now. And so comes to an end of the bloodiest portion of the Arab Spring(hopefully), a string of democratic revolutions going on in the Middle-East ever since last year, around December. Among the countries in which the disruptions took place, Libya went through the bloodiest one . 9 months, almost. And now, it's over. Meanwhile, a lot of things have happened in the world scenario. Protests all across Europe, 15-M movement, London protests, Occupy Wall Street, Anti-corruption movement in India, protests carried out by the middle class. It seems like other than Latin America, the rest of the world, it's burning in some sacrificial pyre. And all this while, we, I atleast, kinda' forgot about Libya, that little country in North Africa, and whatever that was happening in there.
As you all know already, I won't go into details and waste your time, and my finger muscles. The Libyan Civil War 2011, it all started on 15th Feb with peaceful protests, and Gaddafi, I guess he sensed something rotten in the state, decided to crash the party with his military boys. And so it all began, Libya was on fire. But unlike in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, where Mubarak and Ben Ali, the two rulers were disposed off without much of a fight, Libya got tangled into its own bloody mesh, and a civil war ensued between the Gaddafi loyalists, and the rest of them. And it went on for so long, that we forgot there was a country out there, getting all messed up, a bit more messed up than the others. Only maybe once or twice a month we'd see updates about Libya, how the NATO forces were doing a good job, at being the nosy bastards that they are, how the America and her allies were slowly gaining a hold on to Libyan soil, because it is rich with that liquid gold, which has kept them busy for the past two decades, and how the tug of war was continuing between the Rebels, and the Gadaffists.
And then, bang! Yesterday, in the evening, all the news channels started announcing Gaddafi's death, how he was shot in the head and abdomen, how he shouted out asking for mercy, how it was a victory of the people. Then, videos surfaced, and all the channels, as if in a macabric sense of joy, started showing them. There was one in which he was still alive, all bloodied and tired, and in another, his limp body, already dead, most probably, was being kicked around. Rifle shots were being fired, joyous celebrations all around, it was a gory, almost surreal sense of victory.
Now, I'm no fan of the man, and inside my mind, I wanted him dead as much as any other sane minded person out there. But to see his death, the man who was heralded once as the "King of Kings of Africa", to see that man, who was feared by the high and mighty US to have been included in their list of "Axis of Terror", to see that man, who was once a saviour, now the oppressor, lie there, on that pavement, in his own pool of blood, and all those men celebrating his death, who once bowed before him out of respect, and then out of fear, was disturbing, somehow. No, blood and gore don't disturb me much, it was something else. Just to see what the common man can do to even the mightiest of individuals, is disturbing. It is an oft quoted line, and maybe the truest one: It is us who make a ruler out of a living man, and it is us who make a dead man out of a ruler (I don't know the exact line, but you get my point). Just being conscious of one's own power, it comes as a shocker, ain't it so my friends? The common man is the one who has the power, not any politicians, not the 1% cream of the globe, not that rich man inside his posh villa, but the regular, average, generally apathetic man on the street.
Gaddafi may be dead, but it ain't over, the battle in Libya, just like it ain't over in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Palestine, in Europe, in America, in Myanmar, in China, in India. The fire, yeah, it's burning, and there ain't enough water in the world at present to dash off that fire.
Yeah, it's burning a good deal.
