Qaddafi's revolution:

...Generally, support for Qaddafi is strong...

...According to Adwan, "the problem now is that women are still afraid...

...Nawal Adwan told me that the bombing damaged her grandmother's house, killing two of her cousins...

...The revolution also includes a significant, if little known experiment in direct democracy, with 723 "Basic People's Congresses" at the core...

...technology/trade embargo is having on life here...

...others wear a peculiar mix of Western and traditionally modest Arab styles with a full scarf...

...Still, Libya has not been entirely free of these influences...

...Sassi Salem Hadj is a lawyer and member of the executive committee of the newly established (May 1989) independent Human Rights Committee in Libya (not to be confused with the government-affiliated Human Rights Committee of the High Court...

...I had taken the night flight from Benghazi to Tripoli, Libya aboard an aging and decrepit Rumanian airliner, with a Rumanian flight crew...

...Aboukhuzan recalled Libya's history of colonialism and insisted on a right to reject imperialist influences with whatever means necessary...

...The other issues will then take care of themselves...

...Some resent what they call Qaddafi's troublemaking, creating unnecessary economic and political problems for Libya...

...Today, however, Libyan women make up over 50 percent of the university student body and are encouraged to aspire to a full range of careers...

...Although three years have passed, Qaddafi's home lies in the state in which it was found on the morning after the bombing...

...At Tripoli University today, some women are wearing the most fashionable Western dress...

...Dressed in fashionable Western clothes, Adwan highlights this problem as it applies to the many women now choosing to be doctors: "A doctor is on call all the time and has to go out at night too...

...Things are stabilized now and we should not be employing these old, repressive measures...

...Shopkeepers are bitter about the government monopoly on imported goods and the stifling effect it has had on the marketplace in a nation that still has virtually no manufacturing base...

...These congresses could be likened to New England town meetings, dealing with local and domestic policy issues...

...This is no easy task, and is perhaps best revealed in the changing role of women in Libyan society...

...I checked into a hotel room and looked out my window toward the harbor where cargo ships were at rest: past the breakwater rolled the sparkling turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea...

...Unable to service a domestic airline fleet made up primarily of U.S.-made planes, and hampered by a severe labor shortage, Libya buys such services from nations willing to provide them...

...Most Libyans remain incredulous and outraged by the incident...

...Qaddafi is at the forefront of these changes, often forcing and cajoling the nation long before much of the society is ready for them...

...He seems to see women's rights as a litmus test for the egalitarian society he wants to build in Libya...

...You can't fight fundamentalism directly...

...Of course, some Libyans are disgruntled...

...How genuine are these developments...

...But when blended with the near autocracy Qaddafi enjoys on international issues, where his nonalignment and Pan-Arabism generally carry the day, the mix results in a unique breed of political animal...

...Hadj said he personally knew of at least 20 people who remain imprisoned for political reasons...

...Because of the Basic People's Congresses and the experiment in "direct democracy," some say they find speaking up a maddening experience: as one shopkeeper put it, "If you try and criticize the government, they tell you there is no government, that you are the government...

...Libyan women traditionally have not been seen outside the home...

...before and after that event, however, their viewers and readers have had almost no opportunity to know why its probable chief target stays firmly in place as Libya's leader...

...The Qaddafi revolution does not fit easily into traditional categories...

...In the last year many young women have begun to wear the hijab or the safsari as an outward sign of their religious zeal...

...Ramaden Imteres, a professor of medicine and former dean of the medical school, says, "Instead of talking about the issue itself, whether it be the veil or some other conservative religious issue, you must educate the whole person...

...He insists the issue can only be solved through the destruction of the state of Israel...

...still others are blanketed in the milava, the traditional, full-length, black dress and head covering...

...People repeatedly point to the free and compulsory educational system, the free health care, and the pension system as welcome fruits of the Qaddafi revolution...

...Although it is basically socialist, the most important dimensions of the national economy-the oil sector and public-works projects-remain as state-capitalism...

...Qaddafi was filmed bulldozing the central prison where most of the political prisoners had been held...

...They appear to be making some inroads into such traditionally male arenas as engineering and architecture...

...The lavatories did not work, the ventilation was woefully inadequate, and engine heat poured into the cabin from gaping cracks in the floor...

...While other nations and organizations are finally embracing the two-state model as a prerequisite for an enduring solution, Libya continues as the financial sugar daddy for the most rejectionist and terrorist-prone elements of the Palestinian struggle...

...Louis, vice-chair of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and editor of A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker (Temple).he Catholic Worker (Temple...

...In so doing, he has often had to stand against the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in Libya...

...Not surprisingly, the women's issue in Libya is deeply intertwined with other social issues...

...campaign to isolate Libya...

...In Libya, its main effect has been to consolidate support for Qaddafi in an unprecedented way...

...Coming as it did in the middle of the night in civilian neighborhoods, the bombing has become something of a national obsession...

...However, while Qaddafi encourages and challenges women to throw off the hijab (head scarf) and the safsari (white linen head and body wrap) as affronts to their dignity, he underscores the traditional Islamic division of family labor that leaves all the parenting and household duties to the women...

...Nawal Adwan is a twenty-year-old pharmacy student at Tripoli University...

...Hadj explained that the birth of the watchdog rights committee resulted from an awareness among many-Qaddafi included-that "the revolutionary period is over...

...Above all, though, they seem most thankful for the massive public works construction, especially housing...

...But Libyan women still have duties at home, and it is not common for them to go out at night...

...Even now, however, one could wish that Americans might come to know more than they do about Libya under Qaddafi...

...Libya-land of Muammar Qaddafi, the Sahara-is officially called the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya...

...On March 3,1988, he declared there should no longer be any prisoners held because of political opinions, and then publicly destroyed lists of names of Libyans who had not been allowed to travel overseas because of their political activities...

...Such equipment appears everywhere in Libya as the country celebrates, with public works projects aplenty, the twentieth anniversary of its revolution...

...Libya has long been deeply involved in the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict and Qaddafi has always maintained an especially hard line...

...In December 1988, Qaddafi topped off a visit to Tunisia- that was otherwise highly successful in Pan-Arabic terms-by denouncing Yasir Arafat for recognizing Israel...

...bombing of Benghazi and Qaddafi's Tripoli home killed about fifty people instantly, perhaps another fifty as people fled the city in panic...

...While Qaddafi has chosen to address these developments directly, with no-holds-barred speeches on the university campuses, critics are convinced that there are better ways to get the same message across...

...For the past decade, he has defended political activists who have run afoul of the state...

...but we don't intervene in the means they choose to conduct their struggles...

...PATRICK G. COY Patrick G. Coy is director of the Lentz Peace Research Laboratory in St...

...To date, the U.S...

...He and others estimate that there are probably between 20 and 100 political prisoners still denied freedom, down from 400-500 just a few years ago...

...media were positively celebratory about the bombing attack...

...Qaddafi presents himself as a religious reformer, developing a modern and sometimes progressive synthesis of religion and culture that will move Libya into modernity...

...The May 1986 U.S...

...We need more courage to take the rights that are ours...

...in 1988 he published a book arguing against the death penalty in Libya...

...When discussing this, as well as Libyan funding for the IRA and other such issues, Libyans insist on their right to aid what they perceive to be liberationist struggles...

...Ibrahim Aboukhuzan, the vice-president of the People's General Assembly, claims, "As a basic principle, we support independent and revolutionary movements...

...Across the road, waiting for the foreign workers who dominate the labor pool, lay a morass of construction equipment...

...Qaddafi has embarked on human rights and prison reforms during the last two years at least in part to offset the U.S...

...Libya has nearly achieved its goal of universal home ownership, abolishing the landlord-renter relationship as inherently unfair, an indignity to the renter...

...still refuses to resume diplomatic relations with Libya...

...The appalling condition of the plane provided a firsthand glimpse of the effects the U.S...

...Since the late 1970s, the Islamic world has witnessed a tremendous revival of fundamentalism, usually accompanied by a panoply of conservative social, legal, and religious measures...

...Staunchly anti-Communist, Qaddafi has tried to engineer an egalitarian revolution that will also be true to traditional Arab and Islamic values...

...Their appalling 98 percent illiteracy rate in 1959 amply reflected this...