Libya - The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi

by Alison Pargeter

  Indeed, while the other North African regimes all flirted (to varying degrees) with strategies of ‘accommodationism’ towards the Islamist opposition, Qaddafi left no space whatsoever for those of an Islamist persuasion. He spelled this message out in no uncertain terms: ‘From now on’, he declared, ‘the sentence … for everyone who is found guilty of not knowing God properly will be to crush him immediately.’43 He also threatened:

  If you are told that one member of your family was found in this [religious] movement, it is as if you have been told that he has AIDS, and that he is finished. You cannot possibly plead on his behalf. His is a religious hypocrite and must be crushed [sic].44

  In fact, Qaddafi came to display an almost personal hatred for his Islamist enemies. He labelled them heretics, intent on destroying progress. He also accused them of being hashish smokers, and sought to ridicule them at every turn. As he wrote in one of his short stories,

  If we were to believe in what the parties of the God coalition say, there is no need for our children to go to schools, higher technical institutes or the Bright Star University of Technology … rather, let them out in the open air on sidewalks selling cigarettes and cakes to adults … the only important thing to do is to learn the prayer.45

  Yet for all his tough talk, Islamism turned out to be a phenomenon that even the canny Qaddafi could not contain. While the 1989 arrests may have temporarily quashed militant activity inside Libya, there were still scores of young Libyan militants in Afghanistan waiting for the opportunity to get back into Libya to destroy his regime. It was among these militants that Qaddafi's fiercest enemy was to be born. Buoyed up by victory following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, a group of Libyan fighters formed the Seraya Al-Mujahideen (the Mujahideen Brigades), later to be renamed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The group sought to bring Libyan jihadists under their wing, in order to prepare to return to Libya to overthrow the ‘Pharaoh’ Qaddafi and to bring Islamic rule to Libya.

  Getting back into Libya to execute this plan proved much more difficult than these hardened militants had anticipated. Nevertheless, a number of fighters did manage to smuggle themselves into the country, where they worked to spread the LIFG's message, mainly tapping into the remnants of the jihadist structures that had escaped the cull of 1989.46 They established small cells across the country, appointing emirs to lead each region. They adopted a cautious approach and focused on gathering recruits, weaponry and ammunition. By 1994, the group had tripled its numbers to some 300.47 Their caution paid off; the regime was unable to detect the growing current of militant opposition that was developing once again right under its nose. Moreover, the LIFG was not the only militant organization on the scene. Other groups, including the Islamic Martyrs' Movement, which was more localized in nature (emerging in, and recruiting almost exclusively from, Benghazi), had also emerged on the scene.

  Meanwhile, more moderate currents were also operating. Although Qaddafi believed he had stamped out the Libyan branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood, having clamped down on the movement immediately after taking power, the group had been able to take advantage of the regime's weaknesses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and had started rebuilding its presence in the country. Although limited, it succeeded in developing a base in a number of mosques, where its members sought to spread the Islamic message.48

  Indeed, the early 1990s were the heyday for all these groups, as they sought to take advantage of the vulnerability of the Qaddafi machine and to challenge its overwhelming physical and ideological hegemony. However, in 1995, a naïve error on the part of one LIFG cell resulted in calamity for all the Islamist currents. The cell had been tasked with freeing two of its members – one from hospital and the other from a detention centre in Benghazi. However, it botched the operation: a handful of fighters, disguised as members of the security services, went to the hospital and carted their man out, raising the regime's suspicions. It was not long before the security services had uncovered a network of cells intent on overthrowing the regime.

  The hunt for the LIFG was on. The regime unleashed its full force on the militants, mopping up as many as it could and throwing them into the Abu Slim prison without a backwards glance. The LIFG and the other militant groups on the scene at the time fled to the Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountains) in the east, from where they fought back as best they could. From their hideouts, where they came under attack from ground and air strikes, they launched a string of attacks against the regime, mostly against high-ranking figures in the security services. They even tried to assassinate Qaddafi, most famously in November 1996, when LIFG member Mohamed Abdullah Al-Ghrew, threw a grenade at the Leader while he was visiting the desert town of Brak.

  Qaddafi hit back hard. Never one for half measures, the Leader set out to teach the Libyans a lesson they would not forget. Scores of suspected Islamists were arrested; so, too, was anyone suspected of having the slightest sympathy with the cause. The revolutionary committees were given free rein to eliminate suspected Islamists, and triumphantly paraded the corpses of those they had ‘liquidated’ through the streets. The regime also moved to intimidate entire families and towns. The families of suspected militants were forced to join the security services in combing whole areas in a bid to hunt down their relatives. Indeed, the east of the country was turned into a kind of security zone, with the whole region placed under siege in a bid to flush out anyone with suspected Islamist tendencies.

  The Colonel also sought to deter tribes from even thinking about protecting Islamist elements. In March 1997, he introduced a collective punishment law, the Charter of Honour, which ruled that anyone who concealed, sympathized with or failed to disavow and hand over criminals would be considered to be ‘involved in the collective crime which requires the imposition of a collective punishment’.49 This punishment was to take the form of denying whole families or tribes access to services, such as water or electricity. Meanwhile, the regime had engaged in an even more sinister elimination of its Islamist foes. In June 1996, after a rebellion by some Islamists who were detained in the Abu Slim prison, the regime engaged in a wholesale massacre of prison inmates. An estimated 1,286 prisoners were mown down in the prison yard and buried in mass graves. This was to be one of the most notorious crimes of the Qaddafi era.

  By 1998, the LIFG knew it was beaten. The group's leadership called an end to the struggle and ordered its shattered members to leave the country, prompting those who could to flee abroad, many to Afghanistan and others to Europe, where they remained an organization in exile. That year also saw an end to the Muslim Brotherhood's presence in the country, after the regime launched a mass arrest campaign, picking up 152 members of the movement, including its leadership. By the late 1990s, therefore, it was all but over for the Islamist current, and Qaddafi had triumphed over adversity.

  However, deeply shaken by the experience, the Colonel was not going to let the matter rest there. It had not gone unnoticed that it was the east of the country that had provided the core of the Islamist opposition. It was in this socially conservative region, still closely linked to its tribal and Bedouin roots, that the message of political Islam had had a greater hold. Although the Islamist movement had found support in the west, and while much of its leadership had originated in Tripolitania, the rank and file came predominantly from Cyrenaica. Indeed, its head may have been in the west, but its heart was anchored firmly in the east. The whole Islamist episode, therefore, confirmed Qaddafi's sense that the east was a troublesome and recalcitrant region that would require extra vigilance to be kept in check; the assault was to continue.

  Not only was security maintained at the highest levels, but the east was to be punished. It was kept in a permanent state of underdevelopment and near isolation. Benghazi was allowed to fall into a shocking state of disrepair, so starved of investment that parts of the city came to resemble a post-conflict zone that time had forgotten. The city and its inhabitants were made to feel, more than ever, a
s though they were Tripoli's poor relation. The east was never to be allowed to forget what it meant to challenge the regime. Yet while this hardline approach may have calmed the storm, it did not quell it altogether. The brutality that the Colonel had employed against the east fostered an extreme resentment that became more bitter with each year that passed. This festering anger was to bubble away under the surface, rearing its head sporadically in public protests that were speedily put down, until it exploded so spectacularly in February 2011, when the east finally took its revenge.

  The end of the decade

  Although Qaddafi had managed to navigate his way through the various challenges with his Jamahiriyah intact, by the end of the 1990s the Brother Leader and his regime still were not out of the woods. Falling oil revenues and the effects of decades of economic and administrative mismanagement were taking their toll, and chaos ruled. Libya was in a pitiful state and, as the rest of the world was careering into the globalized age, isolated Libya was looking more anachronistic than ever. Still clinging obstinately to his Cold War rhetoric and socialist-style vision, Qaddafi came increasingly to resemble a relic from a bygone age.

  The regime was also feeling the effects of the international embargo. Although oil exports were not included in the embargo, the inability to get hold of spare parts and the ban on international travel were cumbersome restrictions that were making life increasingly difficult. The sanctions were also starting to have a negative effect on Libya's energy sector, still the mainstay of the economy. As the then head of Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC), Hammouda Al-Aswad explained,

  The Americans knew our equipment, and they placed every item on the sanctions list. Then, when the UN embargo was imposed in 1992, the problem became even more complicated because we couldn't buy on the open market. Some machinery has been smuggled in, but we've now used up all our stores. We've had to go to junkyards to recondition our discarded parts, and we've even attempted to manufacture our own parts, but we haven't been successful.50

  The sanctions were also making life even more difficult for ordinary Libyans, who were already exhausted by the years of revolutionary experimentation. Prices went up, as the cost of importing goods rocketed and the domestic market declined due to problems over importing spare parts. From 1993 to 1997 inflation averaged a breathtaking 35 per cent.51 For Libyans, whose salaries remained frozen at 1981 levels, life became tougher than ever. Even getting married became a challenge in its own right due to the rise in the price of gold, an essential component of a woman's dowry; a gram of gold that was worth 12 dinars before the sanctions cost four times as much in 1994.52

  Although the state ensured that people did not go hungry by expanding the rationing system, under which families were entitled to subsidized goods, simply getting by became more difficult.53 Moreover, for many families, depending on subsidies was a humiliating experience, made all the worse by the fact that the subsidy system became a victim of corruption. Those controlling the system were accused of selling only a fraction of the subsidized goods, flogging the rest on the black market for a substantial profit.54

  Indeed, the sanctions regime created a whole class of ‘new rich’ who were able to exploit the crisis to their advantage. This class comprised not only officials who had been able to profit from the situation, but also private traders who were fortunate enough to have international contacts, access to foreign currency and the right connections to officials in the regime. These individuals were able to import goods and sell them at vastly inflated prices.55 By the mid-1990s, luxury goods such as French mustard, Italian chocolates, Italian suits and electronic equipment from Asia began to fill the shelves of private shops in Tripoli and Benghazi. Yet the vastly inflated prices only added insult to injury for most Libyans, who could only dream of affording such extravagances. In 1998, mobile telephones were being sold for around LYD 3,000 – five times the monthly salary of a senior academic.56 Similarly, Libyans eyed the swanky new villas that were springing up in the Gargarish and Janzour suburbs of Tripoli and the Al-Fuwayyat district of Benghazi (nicknamed Hay Al-Dollar, or the ‘Dollar Neighbourhood’) and that were way beyond their means. This growing gap between rich and poor created a surly resentment among those who were left struggling to make ends meet.

  This resentment hardened on account of the fact that vital public services were still being eroded. Schools and universities found themselves starved of funds and unable to buy the basics, such as textbooks, despite the fact that the numbers of pupils and students enrolling were rising dramatically.57 Teachers were in short supply, and school and university buildings became increasingly dilapidated as they were left to fall into disrepair. Hospitals also became increasingly decrepit; medical equipment that broke was not replaced, and it became harder to acquire medicines through the public sector. The lack of public funds, combined with administrative ineptitude, resulted in general deterioration; roads went unrepaired and rotting rubbish piled up in the streets.

  Despite the difficulties, Qaddafi continued to indulge himself in his pet project. Begun in the early 1980s, the Great Man Made River (GMMR) scheme – the Colonel's plan to bring drinking water from beneath the deserts of the south of Libya to the populated coastal areas through enormous underground pipes – was not going to be sacrificed. Qaddafi, who had once declared that there was no great people that did not have a great river, saw the GMMR as his great showcase project, and nothing was going to stop it. The project continued to soak up some 15 per cent of government expenditure during the toughest years of the 1990s.

  Not that Qaddafi shunned all efforts to appease the population. However, more often than not these were little more than empty gestures aimed at bolstering the Colonel's own popularity. In September 1996, the Leader announced a new wealth distribution scheme, under which each needy family was to receive US$5,000. However, in December 1996, Qaddafi imposed certain conditions on the scheme, announcing: ‘You are not allowed to get your money and spend it on something which is not beneficial to society or to yourself.’58 By March 1997, the policy had changed again: the regime decided instead to give each family twenty sheep, rather than the cash!59

  Equally ludicrous was the regime's attempt to bolster Libya's economy through tourism. In 1994, the country established a tourism secretariat and announced that it was turning its coastline over to tourism. While Libya certainly had a lot to offer foreign visitors, the idea of a country that was under international embargo, that prohibited alcohol and that was sorely lacking in real service provision turning itself into a Mediterranean tourist hotspot was delusional, to say the very least. Even the director of Libya's national tourist agency, Fawzi Ghnedi, struggled desperately when, in 1992, he was asked by a journalist what kind of people might like to take their holidays in the Jamahiriyah: ‘Perhaps reformed alcoholics … You know, we don't allow alcohol. And then there are those who like adventure.’60

  Clearly such gestures were not going to go far in quelling the mounting public anger and frustration. Libyans were becoming increasingly fed up with the suffocating situation they found themselves in. As one twenty-five-year old economics graduate exclaimed in 1995, ‘Today, it is very difficult being a Libyan. Before we used to travel freely to Europe, America, anywhere. Today if they see a Libyan passport, they immediately brand us as terrorists … I am sick and tired of it all.’61 Yet Libyans were not only angry with the West, which had imposed the sanctions: they were also becoming increasingly frustrated with the Qaddafi regime.

  All these pressures that were bearing down on Qaddafi like an enormous weight led him to conclude that something had to give. The Brother Leader knew that if he and his Jamahiriyah were to survive into the next century, he needed to put his heady ideology slightly to one side and take decisive action to pull Libya out of the crisis.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Chimera of Reform

  Qaddafi was faced with a dilemma. Libya was deep in crisis and the Colonel desperately needed a way out. Everywhere he looked, the pre
ssures were building and he feared the country might slip out of his hands. His cherished Jamahiriyah was on shakier ground than ever before. If his regime was going to live, he was going to have to do something drastic. The exhausted Colonel knew that the key to extricating himself from this mess was to hand over the Lockerbie suspects, thereby securing the lifting of the international embargo that was strangling the country and grinding down the all-important energy sector, which was crying out for US technical expertise.1 Yet the idea of surrendering the two suspects was still anathema to the Brother Leader. How could this proud Bedouin, who had invested a lifetime in spouting anti-imperialist rhetoric, simply bow down to Western demands? Moreover, beyond the issue of personal pride, the Leader had domestic concerns to think about. For all that Libyans may not have liked the Qaddafi regime, most viewed Western demands to give up the suspects as a further example of imperialist bullying. Most important of all, however, the Colonel feared that, if he handed the men over, imperialist powers would use the trial to incriminate the Libyan state – and him personally.

  Yet the cornered Qaddafi knew he had to find a way of navigating himself out of the crisis. His chance came in August 1998, when Washington and London put forward a new proposal: the Lockerbie suspects could be tried in a specially convened court in The Hague, under Scottish law and in front of a panel of three Scottish judges.2 This proposal was not, in essence, very different from one that the Libyans had put forward themselves in 1994. Back then, keen to be seen to be making some concessions that would nevertheless not look as though the two men were simply being relinquished to the Americans and the British, Libya had suggested that Al-Megrahi and Fhimah could be tried at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Tripoli had also conceded at the time that the men could be tried under Scottish law, before a tribunal of Scottish judges.