http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/404842

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer
posted August 23, 2011 at 3:27 pm EDT

As the single-largest contributor to the budget of the African Union, a prime 
aid donor for poor African countries, and a dependable advocate for pan-African 
cooperation, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is a man whose impact reaches far 
beyond his country’s borders.

That impact is sometimes good, as when he funds hospital or road projects, or 
when his estimated 15 percent contribution of the AU’s budget allows the AU to 
send peacekeepers to Somalia, Darfur, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. And 
it can be bad, when he buys weapons for rebel groups to destabilize his 
neighbors like Sudan and Chad.

Small wonder, then, that African leaders are reacting to Qaddafi’s imminent 
overthrow this week with a certain ambivalence.

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

“A lot of people took his money while not liking him, and being uneasy about 
him,” says Richard Moncrieff, a senior research fellow at the South African 
Institute for International Affairs in Johannesburg.

“Qaddafi’s donations have drawn the vast majority of Africans toward a kind of 
support for him during the past few months, and African leaders will give 
lip-service for his support because [he advocates] pan-Africanism. But they also 
realize that he’s a destabilizing figure at a broader continental level. There 
is profound ambivalence about Qaddafi the man," he says.

As Libyan rebels claim to have captured 90 percent of Libya’s capital Tripoli – 
including Qaddafi’s personal compound – the fall of Qaddafi’s government is all 
but certain. The impact of that change of government will be felt for weeks and 
months to come, as former friends and enemies lose either a source of financial 
support or cause of constant tension.

The greatest impact will be felt among the impoverished and fragile nations of 
the African Sahel region, the semi-arid countries that line the southern border 
of the Arabic-speaking countries of the North African Sahara.

“For now, the immediate impact of Qaddafi’s departure, on the financial and 
political side, will be felt in Chad and Sudan,” says Comfort Ero, director of 
the Nairobi office of the International Crisis Group. “Qaddafi’s support of the 
AU is one of the reasons why the AU has been reticent on the Libyan crisis, and 
cagey about how to resolve it.”

Stronger nations like Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa may have qualms about 
the way in which NATO has changed the original humanitarian motivation of its 
United Nations-approved air campaign in Libya – from protection of Libyan 
civilians to outright regime change, Ms. Ero says. But those same nations have 
also had longstanding qualms about Qaddafi’s interference in the politics of its 
neighbors, and also his use of oil money to manipulate smaller and weaker 
African nations.

“Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan was among the first African leaders to 
urge Qaddafi to go, and that is in part because of Qaddafi’s past statements 
relating to divisions between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria’s north,” Ero 
says. Qaddafi has steadily been losing credibility at the AU with South Africa, 
as well, particularly in 2009, when Qaddafi urged fellow African leaders to 
start calling him “king of kings.”

Yet for some African intellectuals, and particularly those close to the 
anticolonial struggles of the later part of the 20th century, Qaddafi retains 
credibility.

Qaddafi’s initial qualms about a hybrid African Union and UN peacekeeping force 
in the Sudanese region of Darfur, expressed in 2006, resounded strongly among 
other Africans who may also share Qaddafi’s skepticism about the supposed 
humanitarian motives of Western powers on the African continent.

“The presence of international forces in Darfur would be a new return to 
colonialism,” Qaddafi said in Tripoli in 2006, quoted by Associated Press. 
“Since when were the colonialist powers concerned about us? In the past, they 
treated us like animals and took us as slaves in their ships. ... If there is a 
need for an army to occupy Darfur, the Sudanese army is better than 
international forces.”

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