Libya - The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi

by Alison Pargeter

  48. Bianco, p. 112.

  49. Blundy and Lycett, p. 86.

  50. ibid., p. 87.

  51. Interview with Libyan intellectual, London, June 2011.

  52. Blundy and Lycett, p. 92.

  53. Bianco, p. 114.

  54. Blundy and Lycett, p. 95.

  55. In July 1973, for example, the regime held a two-week conference for 350 Muslims from 103 countries, many of whom were left far from convinced by the Leader's thinking.

  56. Blundy and Lycett, pp. 93–94.

  57. Al-Magarief, ‘Safahat min Tariq al-nidham al-inquilabi fi Libya’.

  58. Deborah Davis (Linda Berg) with Bill Davis, The Children of God: The inside story by the daughter of the founder, Moses David Berg, Part 1, Chapter 9, 1984, available at: http://www.exfamily.org/art/exmem/debdavis/debdavis09.shtml

  59. Al-Magarief, ‘Safahat min Tariq al-nidham al-inquilabi fi Libya’.

  60. ibid.

  61. The Children of God were known for trying to lure men into conversion through what Moses David called ‘flirty fishing’, namely seduction by the group's young female members.

  62. Davis.

  63. Al-Magarief, ‘Safahat min Tariq al-nidham al-inquilabi fi Libya’.

  64. ‘Gheddafi told Oriana “You massacre us” ’, Corriere della Sera, 23 February 2011, available at: http://www.corriere.it/International/english/articoli/2011/02/23/oriana-fallaci-interview-gheddafi-1979.shtml

  65. ibid.

  66. Rajab Bou Debous commenting on Dr Mahadi Imberish's lecture, posted by Il Politico Libico, 25 January 2011, available at http://lyrcc.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/article-260/

  67. Muammar Al-Qaddafi, The Green Book, World Centre for the Study and Research of the Green Book, Tripoli, 1984.

  68. ibid.

  69. ibid.

  70. ibid.

  71. ibid.

  72. Muammar Gadaffi, Escape to Hell and Other Stories, Blake, London, 1999, p. 24.

  73. ibid., p. 27.

  74. The Belgians were totally bemused in April 2004, for example, when, on his historic trip to Europe following Libya's re-emergence from isolation, Qaddafi chose to erect his massive tent in the grounds of the Val Duchesse residence for visiting heads of state. Similarly, the tent caused major controversy during Qaddafi's September 2009 visit to New York, where he was attending a meeting of the United Nations. The Colonel first asked to pitch his tent in the five-acre estate that belongs to Libya in Englewood, New Jersey, but his request was turned down. He then asked to erect it in Manhattan's Central Park, something that was also denied him. He got as far as having one erected at a property belonging to US tycoon Donald Trump in a New York suburb, but had to take it down at the last minute, reportedly under pressure from Trump himself.

  75. Al-Magarief, ‘Safahat min Tariq al-nidham al-inquilabi fi Libya’.

  76. ibid.

  Chapter 4: Jamahiriyah in Practice: A Revolutionary Decade

  1. Those members of the now-moribund RCC who were still by Qaddafi's side – Abdelsalam Jalloud, Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, Khweildi Al-Humaidi and Mustafa Kharroubi – were also appointed to this body.

  2. Hanspeter Mattes, ‘The rise and fall of the revolutionary committees’ in Dirk Wandewalle (ed.), Qadhafi's Libya, 1969–1994, St Martin's Press, New York, 1995, p. 91.

  3. A report issued by the Accounts Office for the period 1973–76 greatly embarrassed Qaddafi, as it revealed not only the chaos that had been engendered by the economic policies of the early years, but also the widespread administrative and financial corruption that had taken hold.

  4. Mohamed Al-Magarief, ‘Al-Qaddafi Wal Lijan Al-Thawria … Al-Asl Wa Sura [Qaddafi and the Revolutionary Committees … Their Origin and their Image]’, Libya Watanona Website, undated, available at http://www.libya-watanona.com/adab/mugariaf/mm210210a.htm

  5. ibid.

  6. By 1981 he had placed his cousin Sayyid Qaddaf Al-Dam as military commander in Tripoli, his brother-in-law Masoud Abdel Hafiz as military commander in Sebha in the south (a position he retained until the fall of the regime), and his cousin Hassan Ishkal as military commander in Benghazi (Claudia Wright, ‘Libya's foreign strategy’, New Statesman, 21 August 1981).

  7. In April 1976, the Colonel went to Gar Younis University in Benghazi and announced that revolutionary committees would be set up in every college. In November 1977, the first revolutionary committee in Tripoli University was announced.

  8. Mattes, p. 93.

  9. ibid., p. 97.

  10. Other figures included Ali Gaylani Qaddafi, and Ibrahim Abdelsalam Qaddafi.

  11. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1987, p. 127.

  12. ‘Opinions are how the Colonel sees them’, Al-Majalla, 17 June 2011, available at: http://www.majalla.com/ar/political_essay/article456457.ece?service=print

  13. Bint Al-Mukhtar, ‘Awraq Fatat Libeeya, 1 [Journal of a Libyan girl, 1]’, 25 May 2010, Libyan Documentation Centre, available at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/news/ldc/ld250510a.htm

  14. Bint Al-Mukhtar, ‘Awraq Fatat Libeeya, 4 [Journal of a Libyan girl, 4]’, 10 July 2010, Libyan Documentation Centre, available at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/news/ldc/ld110710a.htm

  15. M. Z. Mogherbi, Itijihad wa tatourat turkeybat an noghra al-siasiya fi Libya 1969–1999 [The Orientation and Development of the Political Elite in Libya 1969–1999], Gar Younis University, undated.

  16. Bint Al-Mukhtar, ‘Awraq Fatat Libeeya, 2 [Journal of a Libyan girl, 2]’, 3 June 2010, Libyan Documentation Centre, available at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/news/ldc/ld030610a.htm

  17. Footage of this trial is available at http://blog.witness.org/2011/08/execution-footage-found-in-libya-offers-glimpse-of-gaddafis-abuses-could-be-used-for-justice/

  18. Al-Magarief, ‘Al-Qaddafi Wal Lijan Al-Thawria …’

  19. Blundy and Lycett, p. 135.

  20. Ali Al-Fazzan, ‘Qaddafi … Wa Alkhiar Shemshoni, 2 [Qaddafi and Samson Choice, 2]’, available at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/adab/aalfazzani/af110310a.htm

  21. ibid.

  22. Blundy and Lycett, p. 138.

  23. ‘Interview with Musa Kusa’, The Times, 11 June 1980.

  24. Blundy and Lycett, p. 139.

  25. Al-Magarief, ‘Al-Qaddafi Wal Lijan Al-Thawria …’

  26. Mogherbi, Itijihad wa tatourat turkeybat an noghra al-siasiya fi Libya.

  27. Al-Mukhtar, ‘Awraq Fatat Libeeya, 4’.

  28. Quoted in Lisa Anderson, ‘Qadhafi and his opposition’, Middle East Journal, 40:2 (Spring 1986).

  29. ibid.

  30. Sanussi Besikari, ‘Khazkhaza Alqat Ala'am [Privatization of the public sector]’, Iqlam Online, November–December 2006, available at: http://www.mafhoum.com/press10/291E14.htm

  31. Anderson, ‘Qadhafi and his opposition’.

  32. Dirk Vandewalle, Libya since Independence: Oil and state building, I.B. Tauris, London, 1998, p. 112.

  33. Anderson, ‘Qadhafi and his opposition’.

  34. Al-Fazzan, ‘Qaddafi … Wa Alkhiar Shemshoni, 2’.

  35. Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), 14 April 1985.

  36. John Wright, Libya: A modern history, Croom Helm, London and Canberra, 1981, p. 202.

  37. ibid., p. 201.

  38. Women were not to be left out of this mass mobilization. Women were already involved in the Revolutionary Committees Movement and the Leader wanted them to play their part in defending the people's authority. In February 1979, Qaddafi set up a women's military college and, in the same year, opened a female military secondary school in Benghazi. In 1980, he set up the female revolutionary guards, often referred to as the Revolutionary Nuns, whom (famously) he came to rely upon as his bodyguards. Qaddafi once said of these women: ‘If there is anyone who will enter paradise without being judged it will be the Muslim nun. Revolutionary nuns don't think of marriage, gold or silver. Rather they think of performing a historical task.’ While Qaddafi may have revelled in his progressive take
on women's role in society, the concept of revolutionary nuns did not go down well with much of Libyan society, which remained largely conservative. In her memoirs, one Libyan woman rather unkindly recounts: ‘The girls who joined the military college were not from respected families. Rather they had no families or they were from revolutionary families. Most were ugly and they looked more like men than women’ (Al-Mukhtar, ‘Awraq Fatat Libeeya’). While this is a somewhat unfair assessment of the women who signed up for these colleges, it is reflective of how some of the more conservative parts of society viewed the women who joined these institutions.

  39. For an excellent and comprehensive analysis of Libya's oil policy, see Vandewalle, Libya since Independence.

  40. Ronald Bruce St John, Libya and the United States: Two centuries of strife, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002, p. 122.

  41. From 1977 to 1978, for example, there were three separate ministries dealing with the economy: the Secretariat of Commerce, the Secretariat for the Budget and the Secretariat of Planning. From 1979 to 1981, the Secretariat for the Budget was changed to the Secretariat of Economy. From 1982 to 1984, the Secretariat of Economy was integrated with Light Industry. In 1985, planning and economy were amalgamated into one secretariat and a Secretariat for the Budget was established once again. Then, from 1986 to 1989, there were three separate secretariats again, one for economy and commerce, another for planning and a third for the budget (Mogherbi, Itijihad wa tatourat turkeybat an noghra al-siasiya fi Libya). Although one could excuse these disruptions as the teething troubles of a new regime, these kinds of arbitrary changes characterized the administration throughout the following decades. Secretariats were set up, amalgamated and dissolved at whim, keeping the country's administration in a state of perpetual chaos.

  42. Mogherbi, Itijihad wa tatourat turkeybat an noghra al-siasiya fi Libya.

  43. Vandewalle, Libya since Independence, p. 107.

  44. He once declared: ‘I hold the Sharia for a positive law in the same way that I hold Roman law, the Napoleonic Code, and all the laws elaborated by lawyers in France, Italy, England and Muslim countries’ (quoted in Francois Burget and William Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas, Austin, 1983, p. 157).

  45. ‘Qaddafi Musaylimah Al-Aser [Qaddafi is the false prophet of this age]’, no author, no date, available at: http://www.tawhed.ws/r1?i=3911&x=5n2xksni

  46. Burget and Dowell, p. 155.

  47. ‘Communiqué from Hizb ut-Tahrir to Colonel Gadaffi’, 9 September 1978, available at: http://www.khilafah.com/images/images/PDF/Books/gadaffi_extract.pdf

  48. ‘Qaddafi Musaylimah Al-Aser’.

  49. YouTube clip of Al-Bishti interrogation, available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8teYuUEUAYc

  50. Fathi Al-Fadhli, ‘Harkat Masjid Alkasser, 2 [Movement of Alkasser Mosque, 2]’, undated, available at: http://www.libya-nclo.com

  Chapter 5: Foreign Adventurism

  1. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelsalam Jalloud, Part 1’, Al-Hayat, 29 October 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/323352

  2. John Wright, Libya: A modern history, Croom Helm, London and Canberra, 1981, p. 158.

  3. Mohamed Al-Magarief, ‘Safahat min Tariq al-nidham al-inquilabi fi Libya [Pages from the history of the coup regime in Libya’, Libya Watanona Website, undated, available at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/adab/mugariaf/mm121010a.htm

  4. J. Wright, p. 165.

  5. Needless to say, the uprising was not a success. France immediately jumped to the defence of her Mediterranean ally, sending military transport planes and helicopters to Tunisia, as well as stationing three warships in the Gulf of Gabès, as a warning to the Libyans. With the world in the grip of the Cold War, the US also sent military assistance to help staunchly Western-oriented Tunisia defend its border with Libya.

  6. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelmonem al-Houni, Part 4’, Al-Hayat, 26 February 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/238228

  7. Jalloud interview, Part 1.

  8. Der Spiegel, 17 December 1979.

  9. Quoted in Ronald Bruce St John, Libya and the United States: Two centuries of strife, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002, p. 112.

  10. J. Wright, p. 217.

  11. ibid., p. 166.

  12. ibid.

  13. Ivan George Smith, The Ghosts of Kampala: The rise and fall of Idi Amin, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1980, p. 8.

  14. Brian Titley, Dark Age: The political odyssey of Emperor Bokassa, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 2002, p. 129.

  15. Jalloud interview, Part 1.

  16. From 1973 the area was effectively run by a Libyan administration. The Libyan government began issuing identity cards and official Libyan family books, official documents containing details of one's personal details, to all the inhabitants of the strip, who were made part of the Merzaq People's Congress in the south.

  17. Fathi Al-Fadhli, A Book of the Chad War … Disaster … Disaster, available in Arabic at: http://www.fathifadhli.com/art81.htm

  18. ibid.

  19. ibid.

  20. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1987, p. 183.

  21. ibid., p. 183.

  22. J. Wright, p. 215.

  23. St John, p. 110.

  24. ibid., p. 122.

  25. Qaddafi had always claimed that Libya had sovereignty over the entire bay of the Gulf of Sirte; the US challenged these claims and, in what Qaddafi deemed to be a gross act of provocation, its Mediterranean-based Sixth Fleet had taken to conducting air and naval exercises in the waters. This was too much for the proud Colonel, and he retaliated by sending Libyan fighter jets to try to intercept the US aircraft, some of them flying dangerously close to the American planes.

  26. St John, p. 134.

  27. ibid., p. 135.

  28. ‘US raid haunts Libya’, MERIP Middle East Report, 141 (July–August 1986).

  29. ‘Ibn Al-Kaid Libyee yenshur majallat siasiya, yetahadith aan hayat [Libyan leader's son to publish political magazine, speaks about his life]’, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 16 July 2002.

  30. ‘US raid haunts Libya’.

  31. ‘A week after raid: Qaddafi seems firmly in control’, New York Times, 23 April 1986.

  32. Al-Hayat, 31 October 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/324036

  33. Quoted in Blundy and Lycett, p. 214.

  34. ‘Speech to the Libyan General People's Congress’, Tripoli TV, 2 March 1987.

  Chapter 6: Jamahiriyah in Crisis

  1. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelsalam Jalloud, Part 3’, Al-Hayat, 31 October 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/324036

  2. ibid.

  3. Figures from InflationData.com. In March 1987, the outgoing secretary of the General People's Committee, Jadallah Azzuz Al-Talhi, acknowledged ‘the circumstances resulting from the collapse in oil prices incomes necessary for financing the budgets adopted by the Basic People's Congresses for 1986 fell by the very large proportion of almost 40%. This resulted in real difficulties in facing up to the requirements of various budget expenditures’ (Tripoli TV, 1 March 1987).

  4. Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p. 154.

  5. ‘US raid haunts Libya’, MERIP Middle East Report, 141 (July–August 1986).

  6. Dirk Vandewalle, Libya since Independence: Oil and state building, I.B. Tauris, London, 1998, p. 145.

  7. David Hirst, ‘Last days of the prophet’, Guardian, 24 February 1992.

  8. ‘Qadhafi interviewed on release of prisoners and role of revolutionary committees’, Tripoli TV, 3 May 1988 (BBC Monitoring Summary of World Broadcasts [henceforth SWB] ME/0144/A/1).

  9. Interview with Mohamed Belqassim Zwai, London, 2004.

 
10. David Hirst, ‘Dramatic gestures in Libya’, Guardian, 10 July 1988.

  11. ibid.

  12. ‘Speech on improving the Libyan economy’, Tripoli TV, 26 March 1987 (SWB ME/8528/i).

  13. The Colonel also took steps to shake up light industry, a sector he acknowledged was failing miserably, with production levels in decline or virtually non-existent. He concluded that the reason for this failure was that, while the factories were in public ownership, the workers were still effectively wage-workers and therefore not interested in production. Characteristically laying the blame for these failings on the people's inability to implement the Jamahiriyah properly, he bemoaned: ‘Some [workers] pretend to be ill, others sign in and then leave; this proves that the system of partnership is not implemented and you are not capable of implementing it because you do not believe in it and have not got sufficient courage to take part in such an experiment’ (ibid.). Qaddafi's solution was for factories to operate entirely outside the state sector: they would be handed over directly to the workers, who would share the profits between them. Within one year, some 140 medium and small-scale enterprises had been handed over to workers' management committees and no longer received state subsidies (Vandewalle, Libya since Independence, p. 152).

  14. ‘Speech on improving the Libyan economy’.

  15. Qaddafi furthered these economic reforms in the early 1990s, introducing other measures to encourage the private market and foreign investment. In September 1992, a law was introduced that allowed for the establishment of more private companies and specifying that they could have access to credit from state and commercial banks, the latter of which were established in 1993.

  16. ‘Libyan leader addresses Revolutionary Committees' Movement on anniversary of the Great Fateh Revolution’, Tripoli TV, 29 August 1988 (SWB ME/0244/A/3).

  17. Vandewalle, Libya since Independence, p. 155.

  18. ‘Qaddafi scoffs at demands for bombing suspects’, New York Times, 29 November 1991.

  19. ibid.

  20. See for example Jim Swire's website http://www.lockerbietruth.com/; and John Ashton and Ian Ferguson, Cover-up of Convenience: The hidden scandal of Lockerbie, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, 2001. It has also been pointed out that it was highly convenient for the US and Britain to switch their attentions to Libya at this time, as they were trying to court both Syria and Iran for their support against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the Gulf war of 1990–91.