Libya - The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi

by Alison Pargeter

  21. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelrahman Shalgam, part 3’, Al-Hayat, 18 July 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/portalarticlendah/289104

  22. ‘US hunts Gaddafi – Libya PM’, Herald Sun, 28 November 1991.

  23. ‘Qadhafi's address to Libyan General People's Congress’, Libyan TV, 2 March 1992 (SWB ME/1319/i).

  24. ibid.

  25. For a full account of the twists and turns of Libyan diplomacy over the Lockerbie affair, see Tim Niblock, ‘Pariah States’ and Sanctions in the Middle East, Lynne Rienner, London, 2001.

  26. In an even more desperate gesture, in 1993 he sent a group of Libyan pilgrims to Jerusalem, in the hopes that this would soften the US stance. However, this gesture was deemed bizarre (to say the very least) by the Americans, who were not impressed when the pilgrims began shouting slogans calling on all Muslims to liberate Jerusalem in order for it to become the capital of the Palestinian state.

  27. Niblock, p. 64.

  28. ibid., p. 65.

  29. ‘Speech by Qadhafi to Awlad Abu Sayf meeting’, Libyan TV, 21 September 1993 (SWB ME/1802/MED).

  30. ‘Libyan Television broadcasts further “confessions of spies”’, Libyan TV, 9 March 1994, (SWB ME/1943/MED/12[23]).

  31. Interview with Ashur Shamis, Libyan writer and commentator, UK, August 2011.

  32. ‘Amnesty International Report 1996 – Libya’, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,AMNESTY,,LBY,3ae6aa0654,0.html

  33. Faraj Boualesha, ‘Alla kableen wajah ween [To the tribalists and regionalists]’, undated, available at: http://www.libyanfsl.com/%D9%85%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA/tabid/59/newsid417/3179/mid/417/language/en-US/Default.aspx

  34. ibid.

  35. ‘Qadhafi on danger of foreign intervention, role of Social People's Commands’, Libyan TV, 14 September 1994 (SWB ME/2103/MED).

  36. ‘Qadhafi addresses Zintan tribes: traitors must be eliminated’, Libyan TV, 3 August 1994 (SWB ME/2067/MED).

  37. Interview with former Libyan militant, London, 2008.

  38. Interview with Noman Ben Otman, former member of the LIFG, London, January 2006.

  39. Qaddafi launched many tirades against the hijab. On 8 December 1988, for example, in a speech before the Tunisian parliament, he provocatively declared: ‘Eve wore no clothes at all. Do you understand more than God? Our God created her in that way right from the beginning. This is nature. If it wasn't for the devil there wouldn't be any fig leaf … The hijab is the act of the devil because the hijab is an expression of the fig leaf. The fig leaf is the devil's act so that instead of becoming emancipated and forging ahead, women wear hijabs and sit at home’ (http://www.tawhed.ws/r1?i=3911&x=5n2xksni).

  40. Interview with former Libyan militant, London, 2008.

  41. Although Islamist sources claim that the Ajdabia cell, the first to be uncovered, was discovered while its members were practising rifle shooting on a farm, Qaddafi described their unearthing as follows: ‘In the past months some individuals came and said we saw a group of people whom we suspected. If someone approaches them, they open fire on him. Where? They said south of Ajdabiya. They have a car, they dug a hole. Anyone who passes by or searches … they open fire on him … Some security men went to them and said “Peace be upon you” and hardly had they finished saying this than fire was opened on them and it killed them. Another group came and encircled them. They exchanged fire. Some died and those remaining were arrested’ (‘Qadhafi's address to General People's Congress’, Libyan TV, 7 October 1989 (SWB ME/0583/A/10)).

  42. Interview with senior LIFG leader, Tripoli, June 2010.

  43. ‘Qadhafi's address to General People's Congress’, 7 October 1989.

  44. ibid.

  45. Muammar Al-Qaddafi, ‘A prayer for last Friday’, in The Village … The Village … The Earth … The Earth and the Suicide of the Astronaut, Ad-Dar Jamahiriya, Sirte, 1996.

  46. Interview with Noman Ben Otman, former member of the LIFG, London, January 2006.

  47. Interview by author with Noman Ben Otman, former member of the LIFG, London, January 2006.

  48. For a more detailed account of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, see Alison Pargeter, ‘Libya and the Islamist opposition’ in Dirk Vandewalle, Libya Since 1969: Libya's revolution revisited, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2008.

  49. ‘General People's Congress passes resolution on “collective punishment” ’, Libyan TV, 9 March 1997 (SWB ME/D2866/MED).

  50. Milton Vorst, ‘The colonel in his labyrinth’, Foreign Affairs, March/April (1999).

  51. Niblock, p. 68.

  52. Moncef Mahroug, ‘La vie au temps de l'embargo’, Jeune Afrique, 1840 (10–16 April 1996).

  53. In 1997, monthly rations for an average family included a sack of sugar, a tin of vegetable oil, tea, milk, cheese, rice, soap and baby milk (Niblock, p. 76).

  54. Mahroug.

  55. Niblock, p. 78.

  56. ibid., p. 34.

  57. The number of pupils enrolled in secondary education in 1990/91 stood at 113,683, but by 1995/96 this had risen to 251,275 (Niblock, p. 79).

  58. ‘Qadhafi on oil wealth, defence, “cleanup committees”, trade’, Libyan TV, 29 December 1996 (SWB ME/2806/MED/12).

  59. Saad Al-Bazzaz, ‘ “Take 20 sheep and shut up” – why Libyans are not impressed’, Mideast Mirror, 7 March 1997.

  60. ‘Sanctions keep West off the road to Libya’, New York Times, 28 June 1992.

  61. Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), Maghreb Quarterly Report, 18 (June 1995), Part 2 of 4.

  Chapter 7: The Chimera of Reform

  1. With the sanctions in force, Libya found itself unable to keep up with the advances being made in oil technology. To make matters worse, the regime ignored maintenance, focusing its energies on trying to extract as much oil as possible to ensure that production did not flag. Exploration also suffered. Thus, while oil production was maintained, the country's energy infrastructure was gradually eroded and new discoveries were stymied by the lack of exploration.

  2. They also proposed that, if found guilty, the men would serve their sentences in Scotland; if acquitted, they would not face any other charges arising from evidence revealed during the trial.

  3. Yahia H. Zoubir, ‘Libya in US foreign policy: From rogue state to good fellow?’, Third World Quarterly, 23:1 (2002).

  4. It also sought to satisfy the demands of the British victims' families, who, unlike the US families, were more willing to countenance the idea of a trial being held in a third country.

  5. It has been said that Libya had little choice but to accept. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had made it clear that if Qaddafi did not accept the offer, the Clinton administration would push for additional sanctions on Libya, including an oil embargo. However, given the similarity of this proposal to the one put forward by Libya in 1994, it seems that Qaddafi would probably have accepted without the additional US pressure.

  6. Tim Niblock, ‘Pariah States’ and Sanctions in the Middle East, Lynne Rienner, London, 2001, p. 54.

  7. The British also gave guarantees that the prisoners would not be interrogated by British security or police forces, nor by the forces of any other nation; that the prison would be open to inspection by international bodies and by Libyan diplomatic officials; that a Libyan consulate would be opened in Scotland to attend to the men's needs and those of their families; that the prisoners would be treated humanely; and, crucially, that they would not be extradited to the United States (Niblock, p. 57).

  8. In January 1999, under the auspices of the UN, Mandela sent a delegation to Tripoli, along with Prince Bandar Bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, which sought to reassure Qaddafi and to convince him to accept the American and British proposal.

  9. Professor Robert Black, for example, who had first proposed the idea of a third-country trial, had argued that the case against the two defendants was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, and therefore convictions would be difficult to obtain
(Menas Associates, Focus on Libya, February 2001).

  10. ibid.

  11. ibid.

  12. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelrahman Shalgam, Part 3’, Al-Hayat, 18 July 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/portalarticlendah/289104

  13. ‘Libyan PM denies Lockerbie guilt’, BBC News Online, 24 February 2004, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3515951.stm

  14. Wyn Q. Bowen, Libya and Nuclear Proliferation: Stepping back from the brink, Adelphi Paper 380, Routledge, London, 2006, p. 26.

  15. ibid., p. 60.

  16. ‘Brother Leader of the Revolution Moammar Ghadhafi presents an analysis about the actual crisis the world is passing through about terrorism’, undated, formerly available at: http://www.algathafi.org/terrorism/terrorism.htm

  17. Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p. 180.

  18. Shalgam interview, Part 3.

  19. In fact, the Libyans had shown a potential willingness to engage over their WMD programmes as early as 1992, when they tried to reach out to the US to restore relations. This is hardly surprising. While the Libyans had succeeded in acquiring the equipment for a nuclear weapon, they were far from being in a position to actually build one. They were thus prepared to use their WMD programmes as a bargaining chip in their bid to get sanctions removed. However, the regime's approaches were rebuffed by the US, which wanted Tripoli to comply with UN resolutions before it engaged in dialogue.

  20. Bruce St John, ‘Libya is not Iraq: Preemptive strikes, WMD and diplomacy’, Middle East Journal, 53:3 (Summer 2004), p. 394.

  21. Bowen, p. 62.

  22. Shalgam interview, Part 3.

  23. The Libyans agreed to: Eliminate all elements of its chemical and nuclear weapons programs; Declare all nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA); Eliminate ballistic missiles beyond a 300-kilometer (km) range with a payload of 500 kgs; Accept international inspections to ensure Libya's complete adherence to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and sign the Additional Protocol; Eliminate all chemical weapons stocks and munitions and accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC); and Allow immediate inspections and monitoring to verify all of these actions. (The White House, Fact Sheet: The President's National Security Strategy to Combat WMD, Libya's Announcement, December 19, 2003).

  24. Quoted in St John, p. 399.

  25. ‘Libya decided 10 years ago against developing WMD, Foreign Minister says’, Independent on Sunday, 11 February 2004.

  26. Shalgam interview, Part 3.

  27. Thomas Omestad, ‘Follow the Leader’, US News and World Report, 7 June 2004.

  28. Shalgam interview, Part 3.

  29. ‘Gaddafi invents “rocket car” ’, BBC News Online, 6 September 1999, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/440161.stm

  30. The General People's Committee returned shortly afterwards and continued its functions, although with fewer ministries.

  31. Menas Associates, Focus on Libya, June 2001.

  32. Menas Associates, Focus on Libya, March 2000.

  33. Libya News and Views website, September 1999, available at: http://www.libyanet.com/9-99nwsc.htm

  34. ‘Libya – Moammar Mohammed Abdel Salam Abu Minyar Al Qadhafi’, 29 July 2002, available at: http://www.allbusiness.com/periodicals/article/222869-1.html. At this conference Libya announced an economic development plan for 2000/01 to 2005/06 which would govern the expenditure of US$35 billion of investment in new assets. Some 30–40 per cent of this would, it hoped, come through direct private investment. The regime made it clear that its priorities were in modernizing the telecoms and transport sectors and in power generation.

  35. ‘Libya – the economic base’, APS Review Downstream Trends, 2 July 2007, available at: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6692384/LIBYA-The-Economic-Base.html

  36. Dirk Vandewalle, ‘The institutional restraints of reform in Libya: From Jamahiriyah to constitutional republic?’, paper prepared for the Oxford Conference, 25–27 September 2009.

  37. Quoted in Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, p. 189.

  38. 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], Gar Younis University, undated.

  39. Figures taken from the Libyan National Office of Statistics.

  40. ‘Lika'at al-Doctor Shukri Ghanem Interviews: Dr Shukri Ghanem’, Libya Today, 20 September 2005, formerly available at: www.libya-today.com (accessed 2005).

  41. Illustrative of these pressures was the fact that, in the mid-2000s, some half a million state employees were drafted into the National Centre for Qualifications and Professional Development, which was supposed to retrain and redraft them into private sector jobs. However, as these private sector jobs failed to materialize, the state was forced to continue paying salaries to these individuals while they were not working. In fact, some continued to take their salaries from the state but spent their time working in the unofficial economy. As a result, the regime decided to return these employees to the public sector – something that necessitated the state's having to increase its 2009 wage bill by 14 per cent.

  42. ‘Al-Juz al-thani min mudakhalat Dr Shukri Ghanem howlalaotha al-iktisadiawalhayatia fi Libya[The second part of Dr Shukri Ghanem's response regarding the situation of living conditions in Libya]’, General People's Committee Website, 4 March 2006, formerly available at: www.gpc.gov.ly (accessed 2006).

  43. Interview with Abdullah Al-Badri, Head of NOC, Tripoli, June 2005.

  44. Although private banks had been allowed to operate since the 1990s, the Central Bank continued to maintain a 50 per cent share in the privatized banks, ensuring that it could put a brake on any attempts by the private ventures to overstep the mark. In March 2005, the sector was opened up significantly, when a new banking law was passed, permitting foreign banks to open branches or offices in Libya. Three months later, plans to restructure and privatize five state banks were announced, with the promise that foreign banks would be able to buy shares in two of them. In 2007, these promises were realized, when BNP Paribas acquired a 19 per cent stake in Sahara Bank, the second largest commercial bank in the country, with the option to purchase up to 51 per cent by 2012. Early the following year, the Jordanian Arab Bank acquired a 19 per cent stake in Wahda Bank (with the same option to purchase up to 51 per cent at a later date). Yet despite this progress, the restructuring of the banking sector remained beset with difficulties, and Libya stayed largely a cash economy with an archaic banking system focused on trade financing (European Commission DG Trade, Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) of the EU-Libya Free Trade Agreement. Inception Report, February 2009, available at: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2009/april/tradoc_142928.pdf).

  45. ‘Libya Al-Youmfi hewarkhassma'a Al-Doctour Fathi al-Ba'aja [Libya al-Youm has special interview with Dr Fathi al-Ba'aja]’, 19 August 2007, formerly available in Arabic at: http://www.libya-alyoum.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=9994&NrIssue=1&NrSection=14 (accessed 2007).

  46. Interviews by author with Libyans in Tripoli between 2003 and 2010.

  47. ‘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.

  48. Witness statement in the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, between Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi (Claimant) and Telegraph Group Ltd., available at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/news/n21aug2a.htm

  49. In January 2006, the charity changed its name to the Gaddafi International Foundation for Development. The charities that came under this umbrella included the Fighting Drug Addiction Society, the Land Mine Fighting Society, the Underprivileged Society, the Human Rights Society and the Martyrs Society.

  50. ‘Interview with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’, London, November 2002, available to purchase from World Investme
nt News at: http://www.winne.com/mena/libya/report/2004/to01inter.php

  51. ‘The good bad son’, New York Magazine, 22 May 2011.

  52. A number of victims came forward to register their complaints, yet not one case was followed up and no one was brought to justice. Interview with the head of the Libyan Human Rights Association, Tripoli, May 2005.

  53. Ashur Shamis, ‘Gaddafi and me’, Critical Muslim, 1 (2011).

  54. Al-Jahemi was released from prison in March 2004, having served time for publicly calling for a constitution, free speech and democracy, but he was re-arrested just weeks later after he conducted a telephone interview with the international media in which he called for democracy. Despite being the subject of major international human rights campaigns, Al-Jahemi remained in detention until he was transferred to Jordan in May 2009 on account of his seriously deteriorating health. He died there shortly afterwards. Similarly, Dr Idris Abufayed, a former exile who returned to the country from Europe was arrested in 2007 after he tried to organize a peaceful demonstration in Green Square in Tripoli. In June 2008, Dr Abufayed and a group of others who were arrested with him were given harsh prison terms, having been convicted on vague charges ranging from ‘attempting to overthrow the political system’ to ‘spreading false rumours about the Libyan regime’.

  55. Nowhere was this truer than for the families of the victims of the Abu Slim massacre. This atrocity had always been buried deep by the regime; Saif Al-Islam began talking publicly about the need to open the file. Heartened by his support, the families gathered the courage to start demanding that the security services provide them with details about how their loved ones had died. They even took to holding regular protests in Benghazi – something that would have been unthinkable in an earlier time.

  56. It is noteworthy that the prisoners were not cleared of their crimes, having had their convictions upheld by the Supreme Court at the beginning of 2006. Rather their release was an ‘act of clemency’ on the part of the regime. They were also freed as individuals rather than as a group, effectively neutralizing the movement, which remained banned; and they were only given their freedom after they agreed not to engage in any political activity outside the framework of the Jamahiriyah.