Libyan public opinion awaits a sign
Our International Editor, Lindsey Hilsum, seeks a way to discover public opinion in Libya.
How can you gauge public opinion in a country which has never had an election, and where people are afraid to speak? And does public opinion matter if the leader has absolute power?
Today, in the town of Gharyan, 80 miles south of Tripoli, government minders tried to round up some 20 errant journalists, as we slunk off down side alleys and disappeared into shops to have unmonitored conversations. It was like a handful of frantic border collies trying to control a flock of determinedly disobedient sheep.
Two men I met told me they were scared to speak out. “You know what it’s like,” they said. Someone said the same to me in Tripoli yesterday. “You know what we want. We want freedom. But everyone is scared.”
The rebellion in Gharyan was swiftly quashed at the end of February. Today, the town is calm, but strangely undecorated – the normally-ubiquitous pictures of Colonel Gaddafi have been torn down, his statues destroyed. I looked in vain for the usual concrete blocks representing the Green Book, the Brother Leader’s cod political philosophy. The authorities have covered up the graffiti on the walls.
Now Gharyan is in the rebels’ sights again. Yesterday, they reportedly took Kikla, a village about 20 miles to the west. This is the Nafusa Mountain front, one of the most active in the war. Yet rebel gains are usually swiftly followed by rebel reverses. In March and April I watched them take and lose the town of Brega, in the east of Libya, at least twice. They’re battling there still.
Which brings us back to public opinion. Normally, there are three kinds of people: loyalists, opponents and those who go with the flow. The loyalists in Libya are still shouting their leader’s praises. Many opponents have gone to fight, while others have been imprisoned or silenced.
But this war is ebbing and flowing so fast and so frequently, those who occupy the middle ground are not yet convinced that Colonel Gaddafi’s time is over. They’re watching and waiting, hoping to survive whoever ends up on top.