穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲

　　Muammar Qaddafi, ruler of Libya, died on October 20th, aged 69

　　利比亚统治者穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲于10月20日去世，享年69岁

　　AS THE rebel insurgency flowed and ebbed across Libya this year, it passed through most of the staging posts in Muammar Qaddafi’s life. Sirte, where he was born in a Bedouin tent in the sand-wastes and died amid the crackle of sniper fire; Misrata, where he went to a private tutor to learn history; Benghazi, where at military college he began to plot revolution; and Tripoli, where in the sprawling half-bombed barracks at Bab el-Aziziya he pitched his tent again, the Brother-Leader, insisting he would never leave until he had fired the last bullet he possessed.

　　今年，利比亚武装力量风起云涌，近来淡出帷幕。革命之火燃遍穆阿迈尔?卡扎菲生命历程中每一个中转站。多年前，卡扎菲生于苏尔特荒野沙漠的贝多因帐篷内；尔今，又是在苏尔特，卡扎菲葬身于阻击手枪林弹雨之中。在米苏拉塔，卡扎菲拜访家庭教师学习历史。在班加西军事院校时，卡扎菲开始策划起义；在的黎波里巴布阿齐耶耶区时，他的军营一半被炸，七零八散；然而，这位穆斯林领袖又在此安营扎寨，还宣誓除非战死沙场,否则绝不撤退。

　　When death overtook him, he had ruled Libya for 42 years. The handsome, magnetic army captain who had overthrown King Idris in 1969 had become a robed buffoon, with a surgically smoothed face, a mop of dyed black hair and, until she scuttled home, a blonde Ukrainian nurse on his arm. Yet he was no less cunning. Behind the designer shades his eyes were those of a fox. By sheer imposition of the cult of himself, he had held his tribally fractious country together.

　　死亡之神将他带走之际，他统治利比亚已达42年之久。这位玉树临风，魅力四射的上尉曾于1969年推翻伊德里斯王朝。然而，他却变成了身着长袍的跳梁小丑，挂着做过拉皮手术的脸，披着蓬乱的黑色染发，搂着金发碧眼的乌克兰护士匆匆逃回老家。不过，他依旧诡计多端。时髦的墨镜下面藏着如狐狸般狡猾的眼睛。他奉行绝对个人崇拜，实现了统一国家的大业，尽管这个国家曾经因部落群立而四分五裂。

　　He ruled unsparingly. In his Libya, dissent was punishable by death. A private press was forbidden, and political parties banned. Several dozen deaths a year of political opponents were attributed to his secret police, acting on tip-offs from the surveillance committees to which around 10% of Libyans belonged. In Abu Salim prison, on one night in 1996, 1,200 political prisoners died. If his enemies fled abroad, his hired assassins found these “scum” and killed them. The colonel’s writ, as recorded in his “Green Book” of rambling political philosophy, replaced the rule of law.

　　他奉行铁血政策。卡扎菲在位期间，政见不同者以死刑处置。取缔私人报社，禁止政治团体。他成立监督委员会，成员约占全国人口10%。每年秘密警察执行委员会密诏，将几十个卡扎菲政敌都送至极乐世界。1996年一天晚上，阿布萨利姆监狱里有1200名政治犯化为亡魂。如果敌人逃至国外，他就雇佣刺客，追踪这些“败类”，了结其性命。上校的训诫代替了法律条文，记录在其漫谈政治思想的“绿皮书”中。

　　His rule had begun better. Like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, a rare ally, he came to power determined to secure oil revenues for his people rather than for foreign corporations. Having renegotiated the oil contracts, he redistributed wealth and saw Libya grow rich—though no one grew rich faster than his own clan, with billions invested abroad. Oil gave him power far beyond the confines of his dilapidated state. He began to see himself as the leader of the Third World, the voice of the world’s poor, the King of Africa (when, in 2009, he chaired the Organisation of African Unity) and the patron of world revolution. He invited to Libya for military training such bloodstained luminaries as Liberia’s Charles Taylor and Sierra Leone’s rebel leader, Foday Sankoh. He gave money to Colombia’s FARC and the IRA, and tried to radicalise even the Maoris of New Zealand. Wherever anti-Western or anti-parliamentary feelings stirred, he was there, sowing trouble; for as he said in the “Green Book”, the only true democracy was the direct, even violent, expression of the will of the people—except in Libya.

　　他始创基业时，政策更为光明。他跟为数不多的盟友-委内瑞拉的胡戈·查韦斯所怀抱负一样，初涉政治舞台时，决意保障子民的石油收入，而不是为外国公司服务。他重谈石油合同，对财富进行再分配，看着利比亚走向富裕。不过，他的家族比任何人都富得更快，拥有上亿海外投资。石油赋予了他权利，让他敢于蔑视破败不堪的祖国施加给他的限制。他开始自视为第三世界的领袖，世界穷人的发言人，非洲世界的国王（2009年他任非洲统一组织主席）以及世界革命的赞助人。利比里亚查尔斯·泰勒，塞拉利昂义军领导福戴·桑科等沾满血腥的名人都曾受卡扎菲邀访问利比亚，提供军事训练。他给哥伦比亚革命武装力量及爱尔兰共和军提供资金，还试图激化新西兰毛利人间的矛盾。哪里掀起了反西方或反议会浪潮，哪里就有他的身影，并在那儿制造麻烦。他在“绿皮书”中如是写道，唯一的真民主即人民能直接甚至运用暴力流露其意愿，不过，这句话不适用于利比亚。

　　Around this figure the West, for four decades, prevaricated. The young colonel’s “Third Mystery of Socialism”, a middle way between capitalism and communism which, in his words, solved all the contradictions of either system, seemed unthreatening enough. His people’s communes were blatantly powerless, his own “brotherly” power absolute, but then absolutism was common enough in oil-producing states. He was not a Marxist, at least: Egypt’s nationalist hero, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was his model, rather than Lenin. And he had oil.

　　四十年来，西方世界一直对这个家伙采取避让的态度。这位年轻上校提出“社会主义第三信仰”的理论，按他的话来说，这是资本主义与共产主义的中间路线，可以化解两种体系中的矛盾，这似乎也未构成足够的威胁。他的人民公社显然毫无实权，因为他奉行“老大哥”般的专制政权，但是在石油产出国专制亦是司空见惯。他算不上马克思主义者，至少他视埃及民族英雄加迈尔?阿卜杜勒?纳赛尔为偶像，而非列宁。并且他拥有石油。

　　Eventually tolerance snapped. In the 1980s, as Colonel Qaddafi shopped round the Far East for nuclear bombs, sponsored terror groups, invaded Chad in the cause of a “Greater Libya” and sent agents to blow up a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland, he became a pariah: Ronald Reagan’s “mad dog”, to be bombed until he whimpered. But by the new century he was ingratiating himself. He said the right things about al-Qaeda; offered his nuclear programme for inspection, and in 2003 abandoned it; paid compensation for Lockerbie; and, apparently chastened by his own military incompetence, seemed to have forgotten his windy pan-Arab and pan-Islamist dreams. In a world suddenly teeming with dangerous Islamists, he was now far from the worst. At the G8 in 2009 he shook hands with Barack Obama. The same year he was allowed to speak for more than an hour at the UN, repaying its tolerance by tearing from the UN Charter the pages that talked about democracy.

　　最终，人们的忍耐到了极限。20世纪80年代时，卡扎菲在中东附近采购核弹，资助恐怖团体，为了“扩大利比亚”事业入侵乍得，派遣特工炸毁苏格兰洛克比镇泛美航空公司客机。从此，他开始遭人唾弃，罗纳德?里根抨击他为“中东的疯狗”，宣誓将他炸得跪地求饶。但是进入新世纪后，他开始迎合献媚。他正确评价基地组织，主动提出接受核计划检查，答应于2003年放弃核计划，给洛克比提供补偿金。显然，他开始后悔自己军力不强，似乎忘却了曾夸夸其谈的泛阿拉伯与泛伊斯兰梦想。在危险的伊斯兰主义者骤然升温的世界里，他远远谈不上是最危险的。2009年G8峰会上他与奥巴马握手示好。同年，他获准在联合国发言一个多小时。结果，他当场撕毁联合国宪章中讲述民主的章节，来报答联合国的宽容。

　　Pitching his tent

　　安营扎寨

　　He never forgot his origins among the desert wanderers and cattlemen. Despite the gilded mermaids and white pianos of his ludicrous quarters in Tripoli, he preferred to live in a tent, and always travelled abroad with one. When not in uniform, he wore flowing robes. His grandest project, the Great Man-Made River, brought water from southern aquifers to the northern cities. Precious green was his colour, in flags, Book and billboards. His socialism, at root, was based in desert customs of shared property and grazing land. His deep devotion to the army was the gratitude of a poor boy who had used it as a ladder to higher social rank and more grandiose ambitions.

　　他从未忘记自己根源于沙漠游牧者和牧牛者。尽管他在可笑的的黎波里总部装饰镀金美人鱼和白色钢琴，但是他更偏爱在帐篷里生活，出国旅游时还常随身带着。不穿制服时，他就身着一件飘逸长袍。他修筑了最宏伟的工程-大人工河，把南部的地下水引到北方城市。宝石绿是他最爱的颜色，不仅出现在各种旗帜上，还出现在绿皮书以及广告牌上。他所倡导的社会主义，从根本上来讲基于沙漠财产与牧地共有的传统。他极力推崇军队建设，因为他心怀感激，感谢军队帮他这个穷孩子进入上层社会，实现雄心壮志。

　　Almost to the last, too, he tried to pose as one of his people. When protesters first erupted on the streets of Tripoli this year, he offered to protest along with them. Surely, after years of venomous pabulum from his “Green Book”, they would have learned to think as he did. But they were beginning to dare to think differently—about Libya, and about him.

　　几乎死到临头时，他还试图伪装为百姓中的一份子。今年，抗议者初次走上街头抗议时，他还表示与他们并肩作战。的确，多年汲取“绿皮书”中充满恶意与怨恨的精神食粮，他们本应该学会像他那样思考。但是，他们开始敢于从不同的视角看待利比亚，看待卡扎菲。