Food Scarce, Shops Shuttered : Libya Today Far Cry From Kadafi’s Utopian Vision

TRIPOLI, Libya —  At 8:30 in the morning, the Jamahiriya supermarket was already in chaos. Under a 10-foot-high oil painting of a smiling Col. Moammar Kadafi, the self-anointed “guide” of Libya’s 16-year-old revolution, women in flowing robes and men in business suits wrestled for boxes of soap powder.

As the supply of locally produced soap dwindled, shoving matches erupted in the aisles of the market, which were barren except for a meager selection of canned tomato paste, shortening and boxes of tea.

“Jamahiriya” is a term coined by the enigmatic Kadafi as the slogan of his revolution and roughly translates as “the state of the masses.” The Jamahiriya stores, basically socialist supermarkets, were established six years ago as the revolution’s economic showpiece, a measure that led in turn to the closing of most of Libya’s small shops and stores.

As the scene at the Jamahiriya store indicated, however, the country is a far cry from Kadafi’s utopian vision. Long before President Reagan imposed economic sanctions last week, Libya had become a place where food shortages are common, goods are scarce and people live in a state of almost continual fear.

Although Libya’s estimated $9 billion in oil exports last year gave it the highest per capita income in Africa, two people were said to have been killed in a melee that broke out two months ago when bananas from Somalia, Africa’s poorest country, went on sale in the market here.

“Libya is the only Mediterranean country where you almost never see people smile,” a Western diplomat said.

Most of the shops in the Arab bazaar and in the former Italian section remain shuttered and empty, plastered with posters showing a large “16,” denoting the age of the revolution, or quotations such as “In need, freedom is latent” from the Green Book, Kadafi’s quirky treatise on revolution.

In recent months, the so-called revolutionary committees, primarily groups of youths charged with protecting and spreading the revolution, have taken an increasing share of power at the expense of state institutions such as ministries and even the army.

Little Trust in Military

Kadafi’s trust in the 76,000-strong armed forces has reached such a low point that on the last National Day, Sept. 1, the traditional military parade was scrapped in favor of a rally by revolutionary committee members.

According to Western diplomats here, there appears to be growing disenchantment in the military over Kadafi’s plans to establish a “people’s army” that would rival the professional armed forces and later replace them.

Last Nov. 23, army Col. Hassan Ishkal, Kadafi’s cousin, was assassinated in Kadafi’s barracks. There were reports that he suffered six bullet wounds--and that Kadafi may have been responsible for some of them. Ishkal was believed to be relatively pro-Western, and his death appeared to indicate dissatisfaction with the army leadership.

Little is known about the structure and command of the revolutionary committees, except that Kadafi has given them increasingly wider powers.

“Revolutionary legitimacy overrides all acts carried out by the various state structures,” Kadafi told a rally recently. “This is revolutionary law, which recognizes only the language of the revolution.”

Own System of Justice

The revolutionary committees, whose members can be identified by green armbands, operate their own system of justice in parallel with the government legal system, complete with powers of arrest and trial.

A Western diplomat said that when his embassy complained recently to the Ministry of Justice about people who have disappeared, the ministry replied that it has no control over the committees.

The revolutionary committees’ wide-ranging, if eccentric, power was illustrated a few weeks ago when they rounded up all of the Western musical instruments they could find in Tripoli. They built a huge bonfire of guitars and drums in the city’s Green Square to protest the encroachment of Western culture. But a few days later, such instruments went on sale again.

More significantly, fires erupted in virtually every town last month, destroying the municipal records and all of the country’s real estate deeds. Now, in line with Kadafi’s preachings, there are no records of property ownership.

The revolutionary committees, which have been described as the “eyes and ears of Kadafi,” have infiltrated all walks of life, including the police, armed forces and government.

“The way society works, no one knows who is spying on whom,” one diplomat said. “There is a feeling of total paranoia.”

Officially, power in Libya exists in the hands of 1,400 people’s committees, something like town councils, which send representatives to a general people’s congress each year. The annual congress is now meeting here.

According to diplomats, revolutionary committee members who are in the councils manipulate the debates and control the work of the congresses from the outset.

Before the crisis with the United States erupted, diplomats say, the committee meetings were for the first time hearing outspoken criticism of the regime because of food shortages.

The collapse of the price of oil, which accounts for 99% of Libya’s export earnings, has created a desperate shortage of foreign exchange. The import budget was cut drastically last year, dropping to $1.7 billion from $2.11 billion in 1984.

In an effort to limit spending, the government expelled 100,000 foreign workers, mostly Egyptians and Tunisians, between July and September. The expulsions appear to have destroyed the last vestiges of entrepreneurship in the major towns.

Teachers were in such short supply that college students were sent to teach high school and parents were urged to educate their younger children at home. Only last month, Tripoli’s Fatah University fired all of its non-academic staff and the students took over the administration.

The government is trying to encourage Libyans to take over factory jobs.

However, the belt-tightening has not affected the country’s program of buying weapons, primarily from the Soviet Union. Diplomats say the Libyans signed an agreement to pay the Soviets $4 billion over the next four years.

“The Libyans have far more weapons than they can ever use,” said a diplomat. “Most of them are just warehoused.”