Middle East

Libya Comes in From the Cold

Joseph Kirschke
November 19, 2007

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (right) meets with Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam in September, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. (Photo: Nicholas Kamm / AFP-Getty Images)

After decades of sowing terror abroad while crushing dissent at home, Libya is finally coming into the international fold. In 2003, the wily, enigmatic, and forever eccentric Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi renounced terrorism and his weapons of mass destruction. He and his regime have also made good, in part, on reparations to families of the Lockerbie disaster and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin discotheque that killed two United States servicemen. In fact, Libya has even been hosting talks aimed at resolving the crisis in Darfur.

At the same time, the Colonel Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, a Westernized, self-styled reformer, has made numerous public statements and policy announcements ostensibly intended to repair Libya's dismal human rights record—along with repeated overtures to Washington.

Libya has plenty of other things to offer, too—including significant natural resources, strong intelligence assets in one of the most volatile parts of the Arab world and a shared interest in neutralizing Al Qaeda, its loyalists, and its emulators.

But when it comes to rapprochement between the North African nation of 5.7 million and the United States, many lawmakers, State Department officials, and policy experts are concerned that Washington is dragging its feet over domestic concerns—namely, passions over the 1988 explosion that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 and claimed 270 victims, mostly Americans.

Moreover, say experts, by hindering full diplomatic relations with Libya, bitter memories of the Lockerbie tragedy are effectively sabotaging vital American interests in the region.

And time may be running out.

This political pressure was readily apparent on Oct. 16 when Alejandro D. Wolff, the deputy American ambassador to the United Nations, refused to say how the United States voted after Libya was overwhelmingly elected by United Nations member states to serve a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council.

"We look forward to working with all new members that are elected," he said, according to The New York Times.

Some cooperation is already underway. In addition to garnering the "rendition" of Libyan Islamists from places like Afghanistan, Thailand, and Hong Kong, Libya is participating in an American effort to track Islamist militants across the Sahara. Libyan intelligence agents, meanwhile, have helped American interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo, according to The Economist.

But many in Washington say the United States needs to do better—and soon.

W.M.D.'s and a Diplomatic Opening

Four years ago, Colonel Qaddafi—the longest-ruling leader in the Middle East—officially renounced Libya's terrorist activities and weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.'s). The White House and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill immediately trumpeted Libya as a shining consequence of their preemptive war against Iraq—while ignoring evidence that Libya may have had other motivations.

International sanctions have been lifted, and United States scientists have quietly begun to dismantle Libya's nuclear and chemical weapons facilities—designed, in part, with technology from Pakistani rogue nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and North Korea. In the process, they are gaining valuable insights into the intricacies of W.M.D. programs in other parts of the world. Diplomatic engagement between Washington and Tripoli has since begun in earnest.

"We wanted to show you can have a rogue nation—a supporter of terrorism with weapons of mass destruction—coming in from the cold to our side," said David Mack, a Libya expert at the Middle East Institute and a former translator for the United States ambassador to Tripoli. "It wasn't initially our prime candidate, but it became our prime candidate."

Still, he added, "I think we should be moving faster—for the sake of U.S. strategic interests."

Well before, European Union countries began infusing enormous amounts of money into Libya. These funds are flowing in by the billions: not only in development aid, debt forgiveness—and, of course, comprehensive investment in the former Italian colony's oil and natural gas sectors—but also in sales of military hardware. In addition, the French are helping the Libyans build nuclear power.

By contrast, Washington has a staff of only half a dozen State Department officials operating out of makeshift offices at the Corinthian, a four-star Tripoli hotel. As a result, even high-ranking Libyan officials must make lengthy trips to neighboring Tunisia—which shares no air links with Tripoli—to initiate the long-drawn-out process of applying for a United States visa.

The reason rests in the Senate. In July, four Senate Democrats, led by Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, renewed their pledge to block President Bush's nominee to be ambassador to Libya—Gene Cretz, currently deputy chief of mission at the United States Embassy in Israel—pending full compensation to the relatives of victims of Lockerbie and terror attacks in the 1980's.

So far, the Libyan government has reached a settlement to compensate the families of the Pan Am 103 victims to the tune of $10 million per victim. However, Tripoli has yet to pay the last $2 million to each of the Lockerbie families who believe they are owed.

"Libya must no longer be allowed to drag its feet," said Lautenberg, Reuters reported, "and the U.S. must not pursue fully normalized diplomatic relations with Libya until they fulfill their legal obligations to American families."

Lautenberg enjoys powerful support on Capitol Hill. His allies include Democratic Senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer of New York, Carl Levin of Michigan, and Joseph R. Biden of Delaware.

"Libya needs to understand that the way forward must finally and fully account for the past," said Biden, who is also chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a statement. "The bombings of the Pan Am flight and La Belle discotheque in Germany are unforgivable and unforgettable."

Others, however, say full diplomatic relations is part of the solution—not the problem.

"It's important to keep in mind that an ambassador to a country isn't a reward—it's a tool," said Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman. "We believe having an ambassador in Tripoli is important to resolving bilateral issues."

Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agrees. "We cannot allow that nation's success story to falter in any way," he said at a conference sponsored by the United States-Libya Business Association in Washington on Nov. 6, according to U.S. News and World Report. He recalled a 2005 meeting with Colonel Qaddafi in which the Libyan leader complained, "A great deal has been given up, and not much has been attained."

David Goldwyn, executive director of the United States-Libya Business Association, also says the Libyans are losing patience. "What they hear from other countries in the neighborhood is 'you gave up all this stuff and what did you get for this?'" he said. "This is a parent-child relationship, not a fellow country relationship—and the longer we wait, the less likely they are to listen to us."

Goldwyn and others say the potential of loss of influence over an economy with such vast natural resources cannot be overlooked.

Indeed, with proven reserves one-sixth the size of Saudi Arabia's, enhanced access to Libyan oil markets, some have suggested, could be the antidote America needs to curtail at least partly its energy dependence on the country that produced 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.

Much more of a wait could also trump any influence Washington might have over Libya's sorry human rights record, according to Libya-watchers like Mack of the Middle East Institute.

"You can't do it on the cheap, you have to have normal relations to engage people with what can be embarrassing issues," said Mack. "In Libya, where we don't have an ambassador in a hotel, where they can't issue visas, it all becomes that much harder."

And then there is terrorism.

Islamic Militancy in North Africa

On July 10, Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend journeyed to Libya to hand-deliver a confidential letter to Colonel Qaddafi from President Bush. In addition to paving the way for the first diplomatic presence in Libya since the United States Embassy was shuttered in 1979, it also presaged the planned arrival of Condoleezza Rice later this year—the first visit to Tripoli by a secretary of state since 1953.

The overture underscored a pressing matter. "I also raised [the] ongoing sort of regular counterterrorism matters that we believe are a common threat," Townsend said at a Washington press conference on her return, according to The Washington Post.

These include internal threats to Qaddafi's regime, like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and external challenges—namely, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Based in Algeria and a holdover from the civil war that ravaged that country throughout the 1990-s, the Islamic Maghreb continues to launch terror attacks across North Africa, and is closely affiliated with Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Incursions by elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, long a threat to stability in Hosni Mubarak's neighboring Egypt, were also likely on the agenda.

Colonel Qaddafi certainly had good reason to want to meet with Townsend: He has survived at least two assassination attempts by Islamic extremists in recent years.

Modern Libyan history provides a window of perspective.

Over the years, Libya's floundering command economy crumbled under the dual stress of sanctions and falling oil prices. As a result, many Libyans fell into hardship, characterized by significant financial and property losses. To many, such day-to-day problems only made Colonel Qaddafi's highly ideological regime—and its ceaseless tirades and edicts—all the less tolerable.

"Qaddafi is deeply disappointed with people for failing to embrace the revolution—and Libyans are likewise distrustful of the revolution," said Libya expert Lisa Anderson, a professor of international relations at Columbia University. "He knows the revolution hasn't been the success he hoped it to be—it's just costly to sustain all the principles."

Colonel Qaddafi's "Third Universal Theory" offers a prime example. A model for governance aggressively espoused as an alternative to market capitalism or state socialism, it alienated struggling Libyans—as did the government's reversion, at one point, to a barter economy ("partners, not wage earners," was the official refrain for a policy that all but a few Libyans found perplexing at best.)

The regime's secularized take on Islam aggravated parts of the populace, too. In particular, Qaddafi's aggressively heralded signature manifesto, The Green Book, which fused Islam with tribal cultural values and egalitarianism native to his Maghreb nation, along with some partially democratic ideals, alienated many.

Consequently, more than a few Libyans turned to Islam. "Qaddafi has his own spin on Islam," said Mack. "And some Muslims consider him a heretic."

Including radicals associated with Al Qaeda. In fact, in 1998, not long after the dust had settled from the rubble of the twin United States Embassy bombings in East Africa and Americans, Kenyans, and Tanzanians began extracting victims, Qaddafi issued an Interpol arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. And while the elusive bin Laden would remain an obscure figure to most Americans over the next three years, Libyan officials and their intelligence agents grew ever more determined to bring him, his adherents, and his admirers alike, to heel.

Internal Strife and External Threats

Islamic opposition to Qaddafi's secular regime became increasingly militarized in the early 1990's with the return of several hundred volunteers who fought in the "jihad," or holy war, against the Soviets in Afghanistan. By 1995, there were three main radical Islamic movements on the move inside Libya, as the Il Sole-24 Ore Web site, of Milan, Italy, reported last year. These included Ansar Allah (a branch of Hezbollah), the Martyrs of Islam Movement, and the larger Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was originally founded with money and weapons brought from the Sudan (a country sympathetic to Osama bin Laden at the time).

The consequent crackdowns in cities and air strikes on militant redoubts further alienated the Libyan people, and had another, equally pernicious, and unintended effect: they forced many extremists to flee Libya—taking their radical ideas and military training with them.

This outflow has had tangibly serious repercussions for American, NATO, and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan—and elsewhere. In May of 2006, for instance, The Daily Telegraph of London reported that 500 antiterrorist police officers in Britain arrested eight Libyans in a wave of predawn raids in the city of Manchester, thwarting an effort to a launch a series of suicide bomb attacks in Iraq against American and British forces there.

More recently, on June 15, the U.S. Treasury Department officially named three Libyan Islamic Fighting Group extremists as members of Al Qaeda, accusing them of everything "from recruitment to military training to procurement of explosive components." This list included, notably, Abd al-Sayyid, one of the group's regional leaders, and a prominent member of Al Qaeda's military committee responsible for plotting an attack on Sudan's president and, in 1993, against the United States Embassy in Yemen.

Libya has a history of wanting to cooperate with Washington on such issues. By the late 1990's, as American military and diplomatic facilities overseas were being targeted by Islamic militants with alarming frequency, and not long before the Al Qaeda attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, the Libyans approached Washington hoping to remedy the Lockerbie impasse.

Then-Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Martin Indyk would later write, "Libya's representatives were ready to put everything on the table, saying that Qaddafi had realized … that Libya and the U.S. faced a common threat from Islamic fundamentalism," according to a 2006 article in The Middle East Report. "In that context, they said Libya would actively cooperate in the campaign against Al Qaeda."

First, however, the Clinton White House sought a resolution of Lockerbie before consideration of lifting sanctions in exchange for anything else—including terrorism and W.M.D.'s, said Lisa Anderson of Columbia University.

Not surprisingly, this muscle is testimony to how vulnerable Washington policy on the world stage is to domestic considerations.

"We have to get up to speed," Lugar said at his Nov. 6 news conference, citing the Bush administration's rejection last year of a Libyan request for more funds to destroy chemicals that could be used to develop sarin, a deadly nerve agent.

The Rules of Engagement

The first step forward, say Libya watchers, is to open an embassy, and allow the appointment of a full representative. The next is "to engage them at the ministerial level," Goldwyn added. "From their point of view, we don't have a mutual relationship—and they're going to lose interest."

Libya's internal insecurity in no small part stems from its economic stagnation. And over the years, says Goldwyn, Libyans have lost their ability to properly operate their country's businesses—including oil and natural gas refineries built by American engineers before Colonel Qaddafi came to power in 1969—and government bureaucracies.

All this, of course, will take time, says Jon Alterman, a director and senior fellow for the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "The opportunities are vast," he says. "But anyone looking at Libya has to appreciate that that system has developed over 38 years—and it's not going to change on a dime."

But many are optimistic. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, a Libyan-American scholar and a professor of political science at the University of New England, says that, for too many years, Washington has harbored a "big man" theory toward Libya: Qaddafi controls everything. "That's not true and it's simplistic," he said.

With 70 percent of Libya's elite American-educated, Ahmida noted, the United States is in a unique position to exert a positive influence over Libya by helping to foster civil society by encouraging political reform and advocating cultural exchanges with Americans. The H.I.V. infections of several hundred children at a Benghazi hospital in the late 1990's—most likely from poor sanitary conditions—illustrated that basic infrastructures like the health sector are in dire need of improvement.

Goldwyn concurs. "There are people from all over the world willing to tell them how to run their country," he said. "We're going to educate the next generation of Libyans—or someone else will."

The Libyan people, for the most part, appear to be on our side, says Mack. He recalls receiving an unexpected call from Abu Zayd Durda, Libya's former Ambassador to the UN, in the week after Sept. 11. "How do we give blood to people of New York?" Mack remembers him asking.

The stakes in not being able to acknowledge such offers on an official level could be very high. Some, like Anderson of Columbia University, even see the North African country as teetering on the brink of implosion—not unlike Somalia in the 1990's.

There is no "bureaucratic organizing principle," underpinning Libya's government, Anderson said. "This is, in other words, not a state—and the U.S. has a strategic interest in improving the country's security."




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