Libya's New Role in Africa

Prof Dr Colonel (Retired) K Prabhakar Rao

Libya is a country located in North Africa and has ancient history. It is bound to the north by the Mediterranean Sea, the west by Tunisia and Algeria, the southwest by Niger, the south by Chad and Sudan and to the east by Egypt. It is ranked as 17 th largest state in the world and has long coast line along Mediterranean sea in Africa. Most of the country is desert. It was occupied in the past by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals and Byzantines. Romans have left magnificent edifices that stand even today in Libya reminding of past glory. Infact, Romans unified the country and ruled for nearly 400 years. Subsequently Greeks and Arabs (7 th century) had sway over it. Ottoman Empire conquered it in 16 th century. Then came Italian occupation in 1911 that was resisted between the two world wars and finally Italians left in 1947. Libya declared itself as Independent state in 1951 under constitutional monarchy of King Idris.

The Arab countries were greatly influenced by legendary Egyptian President Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser in those bye gone days. Libyan ruler King Idris maintained pro west policy and US and UK maintained military bases in Libya. It kept off from Arab Israeli conflict although it was a member of Arab League of Nations and did balancing act of maintaining good relations with West and nations such as US, UK, France, Germany and Italy while at home, it had to appease Muslim clergy. In 1959, oil reserves were discovered and this made all the difference and the poorest country got transformed into a wealthy State. However the financial power was controlled by few wealthy and elite people and the monarch and this resulted in building up of resentment in the country and at last led to a military coup led by young military officers as a result of influence of Nasserism of Egypt who became a cult figure in Arab world and Middle East. King Idris was deposed by young Army officers led by Col Muammar Qaddafi (Also spelled Gaddafi) in 1969 in a military coup when the king Idris was out of the country for medical treatment and his young son was having the reigns (1). He was put in prison after the coup. Thus monarchy was abolished in the country. Like most of the African and Middle East nations, Libya too fell to military dictatorship that is a hall mark in Islamic nations. Qaddafi rattled out anti west and American speeches and spew venom at USA for the next three decades. The only good point is that he kept Mullahs at bay and did not believe in Islamisation and building up of political parties in the country. However this no way reduced Libyan threat as a terrorist State and Libya did promote terrorist strikes on west.

After coming to power in 1969, Muammar Qaddafi, the absolute ruler established a Revolutionary State with Islam along with Arab nationalism and socialism. He turned into Anti American dictator. He distanced himself from West and introduced his own brand of a particular political system – the Jamahiriya (state of the masses) . He outlawed political parties and made it clear that he would not tolerate any organized politicized group, including those of an Islamic nature. "Political parties introduce evil in society and society goes corrupt," Qaddafi declared. "Any attempt at this needs to be got rid of." Parliamentary democracy is a fraud Qaddafi declared after assuming power. He claimed that his theory was the third theory, other two being Capitalism and Marxism. He believed in ancient ‘Athens’ type governing through committees every where. He dreamt of United States of Africa with wide roads linking all African nations. After the 1969 coup, Gaddafi closed American and British bases and partially nationalized foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya. He also played a key role in promoting oil embargoes as a political weapon for challenging the West, hoping that an oil price rise and embargo in 1973 would persuade the West, especially the United States, to end support for Israel. Gaddafi rejected both Eastern (Soviet) communism and Western (United States) capitalism and claimed he was charting a middle course for his government After the 1969 coup, Gaddafi closed American and British bases and partially nationalized foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya. He also played a key role in promoting oil embargoes as a political weapon for challenging the West, hoping that an oil price rise and embargo in 1973 would persuade the West, especially the United States, to end support for Israel His anti cleric policy made it impossible for political parties to build up that would have finally plagued the nation which is a common feature in today’s nations around the world. In a bid to rid his country of what he viewed as the corrupt practices of the former monarchy, that had derived much of its religious legitimacy through its links to the Senussi order – a Sufist movement that was established in Libya in the late 19th century – the new leader also implemented a series of Islamic reforms. However his unorthodox ideas about Islam soon drew criticism from the religious establishment that was inevitable. As a result, Qadhafi went after the authority of the Ulema (Religious clergy) with iron hand, prompting many to flee the country. Others who remained and continued to voice their criticisms of the regime, such as the highly popular Imam of Tripoli Sheikh al-Bishti, simply "disappeared" (Eliminated?) into air.

Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan Muslimeen), which first appeared in Libya in the 1950s, became the first target of the Qaddafi regime. The Libyan branch was founded by Dr. Ezadine Ibrahim and a number of other Egyptians who were given refuge by the former Libyan King Idris after fleeing persecution in Egypt. The King allowed them a relative degree of freedom to spread their ideology and the movement soon attracted a number of Libyan adherents. It gained further momentum through Egyptian teachers working in Libya. Qadhafi after assuming authority however, took a less accommodating stance and regarded the Brotherhood as a potential source of opposition. Soon after coming to power, he arrested a number of Egyptian brothers and forced them back to Egypt. In 1973, the security services arrested and tortured members of the Libyan Brotherhood, who, under pressure, agreed to dissolve the organization. Some fled the country, including Abdullah Busen, who was at one time imprisoned with the Egyptian Brotherhood ideologist, Sayid Qutb. As a result, the Brotherhood remained silent throughout the remainder of the 1970s.

The Brotherhood, renamed itself as the Libyan Islamic Group (Al-Jama'a al-Islamiya al-Libyia) and aspired to replace the existing regime with Shariat law through peaceful means gathered a following once again. The group was given a boost by a number of Libyan students who had gone abroad to study in the UK and the U.S., where they were exposed to a range of Islamist ideas. These students returned to Libya and began to spread the Brotherhood ideology. The movement operated covertly in groups of interlinked cells that were spread throughout the country. Much of the group's popular appeal was drawn from the fact that its members carried out charitable and welfare work. It attracted in particular members of the middle classes – primarily academics, students, engineers and those involved in commerce. The movement was especially strong in the east of the country in and around the city of Benghazi where the main tribes have traditionally opposed Qaddafi's rule. Moreover, the population in the east is particularly conservative and open to the type of ideology promoted by the Brotherhood.

The regime continued to take suppressive measures towards the movement and executed one of its members in Tripoli in 1983. In 1986, it arrested a group of nine Islamists, reportedly members of the Brotherhood, and they were hanged publicly in Benghazi stadium on the charge of killing a high ranking security official and these hangings were televised. Yet, the movement could not be suppressed.
During the 1980s, a group of jihadists began gathering around the leadership of Emir Awatha Al-Zuwawi who traveled around the country advocating jihad. It was a highly secretive movement, with no official name and it was spread across a number of Libyan cities. Unlike the Brotherhood, it advocated launching military operations against the regime in order to overthrow Qadhafi. It was an underground movement to acquire weapons and ammunition and according to one prominent Libyan Islamist, Abu Munder al-Saadi, its job was to "monitor and identify targets against which the organization could begin its military operations. These were well known people in the Libyan security services or the Revolutionary Committees. The group engaged in a long term preparation for its military campaign and as part of its strategy, many of its members seized the opportunity to go to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, where they and other Libyans set up their own camp and underwent military training. Many returned to Libya to launch attacks against the regime, but by 1989 the authorities had discovered the group's existence and they carried out a campaign to liquidate it. The regime arrested and imprisoned many of the group's members including Al-Zuwawi, devastating the organisation until its surviving members were able to reinvent it as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

In the 1980s, Libya increasingly distanced itself from the West, and was accused of committing mass acts of state sponsored terrorism. When evidence of Libyan complicity was discovered in the Berlin discotheque terrorist bombing that killed two American servicemen, the United States responded by launching an aerial bombing attack against targets near Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986. In 1991, two Libyan intelligence agents were indicted by federal prosecutors in the U.S. and Scotland for their involvement in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. Six other Libyans were put on trial in absentia for the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772. The UN Security Council demanded that Libya surrender the suspects, cooperate with the Pan Am 103 and UTA 772 investigations, pay compensation to the victims' families, and cease all support for terrorism. Libya's refusal to comply led to the approval of UNSC Resolution 748 on March 31, 1992, imposing sanctions on the state designed to bring about Libyan compliance. Continued Libyan defiance led to further sanctions by the UN against Libya in November 1993. Libya continued its programmes on Weapons of mass destruction and it was believed that if not threatened by USA, would have made the bombs much earlier than Iran. Libya’s involvement with policy on Israel was a factor of worry and added to the instability in the region.

It was in the 1990s however that political Islam really found a strong popular following in Libya. Despite its vast oil wealth, the country was suffering from chronic socio-economic problems brought about by a combination of economic mismanagement, falling oil prices and the international sanctions that were imposed in 1992 because of Qaddafi refusal to hand over the two Lockerbie suspects. With no other political alternative on the horizon, the population was ripe for the radical brand of political Islam that was sweeping the whole region. Not only did the Brotherhood garner more support, a number of new groups also sprang up. These included the Islamic Gathering (Harakat Atajamaa Alislami), founded by Mustafa Ali Al-Jihani. Its support base was almost entirely in the east of the country and its ideology was very similar to that of the Brotherhood. The Jama'at al-Tabligh also succeeded in drawing a following at this time, mainly in the western areas. However, they chose to distance themselves from politics, after a number of them had been arrested at the end of the 1980s and became co-opted by the regime, some of them being given posts as imams or speakers. It is rumored that they developed good connections with Saadi Qadhafi – one of Qaddafi's sons.
More militant groups appeared in 1990s, mostly made up from veterans of the war in Afghanistan. These included LIFG and the much smaller and slightly unknown groups that mostly consisted of an emir and a handful of followers, such as the Harakat al-Shuhada'a al-Islamiyah (Libyan Islamic Martyrs movement), headed by Al-Hami, and Ansar Allah (Supporters of Allah). LIFG tried to bring all of the militant groups under its wing to create a more united front against the regime. These groups came into open conflict with security services in the mid 1990s and also made a number of assassination attempts against Qadhafi, most notably in 1996 and 1998. The regime retaliated by launching a campaign to liquidate these movements once and for all. It employed brutal tactics, arresting and killing many of their members and suspected sympathizers who had not been able to flee the country. There was no way that Qadaafi was going to allow what had unfolded next door in Algeria to occur in Libya (2).

By the end of the 1990s, the regime had more or less wiped out its organized Islamic opposition inside the country. Qadhafi has been beefing up domestic security measures of late in the name of fighting terrorism, and continues to display his total intolerance to politicized Islamists of any persuasion that he refers to as Zanadiq (heretics).

In recent years, Libya has slowly been shedding its pariah status, a process that peaked with Tripoli’s dramatic decision to scrap its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programmes in late 2003. Libya was once considered a major threat to US interests and Col Qaddafi crossed swords with the super power and was pursuing production of weapons of mass destruction. However situation has changed now. There are critics who recommend going ahead carefully and not completely believing Libyan renunciation of programmes on WMD. The discovery of advanced uranium enrichment and other nuclear weapons-related activities in Libya have refocused attention on the weaknesses of the inspection and verification capabilities of the IAEA and other international agencies. In the absence of threats from the Bush administration, Libya and Iran would have continued to develop nuclear weapons. Therefore, the structure of the international non-proliferation regime and its verification procedures need to be examined and improved in order to establish credibility. However, after decades in which Qaddafi was directly involved in terrorism, and given Libya's long history of deception, particularly regarding production of chemical weapons at Rabta, the Libyan pledges must be viewed with some caution. After the U.S. threatened to bomb Rabta, the Libyans claimed that it was destroyed in a fire, while apparently moving production to another site. In addition, in the Arab League and other frameworks, Libya's anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric remains intense and rejectionist and its position on "the Palestinian issue" calls for the replacement of Israel with a binational state (3). Although Libya has abandoned the WMD programme, there are quarters in the world who advises the super power to be cautious and to be apprehensive of Libya in the new role. The State of Israel too is apprehensive of this fact that Libya can not be fully trusted. There is some lacking in the inspections of IAEA and there has to be firm guarantee about Libya that it would not clandestinely pursue the WMD programmes. Iran and Libya openly were threatening Israel. The worry of Israel is justified. Some more time has to pass before Libyan proclamations are accepted with credibility by Israel and western powers. What happens after Qaddafi? Will Libya continue to discard WMD programme? Most of the Islamic states harbor intense desire to possess WMD to pose threat to Israel and western interests. Therefore Libya has to be very closely monitored in this aspect.

With changed Libyan policy, the result is that officials and residents are still adapting to their new position in the world. American flags were freely burned in streets during the protests in Libya earlier and now Libyans are used mobile phones to snap pictures of an American flag hanging at a US stand. American stars and stripes are now much respected and befriended in the country. Libya has been removed from Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. Today, the country is gradually opening up, as illustrated by the foreign participation at the trade fair. Tripoli has engaged five international consultancies to develop an economic strategy, restructure the civil service and modernize outdated, poorly functioning health, education and banking sectors (4)

Now that Qaddafi has given up his nukes, paid for Lockerbie and come in from the cold, the good he has done to his country is easier to see. He was a driving force in the successful bid by Opec, back in 1973, to force Western oil companies to pay real money for oil, at a stroke multiplying the state's revenue many fold. This was an initiative that is still the great exemplar for all poor countries endowed with mineral wealth, and the great dread of those who plunder them. He oversaw the Great Man-Made River project, bringing millions of liters of "fossil water" a day from aquifers deep under the Sahara via four meter-wide pipes to the coastal belt where 90 per cent of Libya's nearly six million people live. He created an NHS-type health service, and raised the literacy rate from 17 per cent to 80. He threw open his nation's borders to Africa, to prove that his pan-Africa rhetoric was not just moonshine. As one man shouted as Qaddafi was speaking, "You are the one who struck the rock like Moses and made the rivers run!" But Qaddafi's heirs, Saif al-Islam in particular, look about them now and see fossil water (Oil) that Qaddafi made run pouring into the sand (5). Libya is undergoing a business boom. Many government-run industries are being privatized. Most US sanctions have been lifted; and as of May 2006, the remaining vestiges are scheduled for removal pending US Congressional approval. Many international oil companies have returned to the country, including oil giants Shell and Exxon Mobil. Tourism is on the rise, bringing increased demand for hotel accommodation and for capacity at airports such as Tripoli International. A multi-million dollar renovation of Libyan airports has recently been approved by the government to help meet such demands. At present 130,000 people visit the country annually; the Libyan government hopes to increase this figure to an ambitious 1,000,000 by 2015. Thus Libya that once was on the hit list of America has come out of dark days and is progressing rapidly and has won confidence of west. This should be a lesson to other nations who take anti West attitude and are sponsoring terrorism and also suffering internal terrorism. Such countries are groping in darkness, poverty, hatred and internal turmoil and instability. Their past time is only hatred to West, rattling anti west speeches and glorifying terrorists in the name of almighty that leads them no where as time progresses.

Bibliography.

1. Libya, Wikipedia, Free encyclopedia, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:rWdeM_rLrwMJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya+wikipedia-Libya&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

2. Political Islam in Libya, Terrorism monitor, Volume 3, Issue 6 (March 24, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:V2yxxzMM-kIJ:www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php

%3Fvolume_id%3D411%26issue_id%3D3275%26article_id%3D2369478+Libya+and+its+politics&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2

3. Gerald M. Steinberg, After Gaddafi's Declaration: the Impact of Changes in Libyan and Iranian WMD Policies on Israel and the Region, Vol 3, No. 12 22 December 2003, Jerusalem center of public affairs, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:khDW0Ect11UJ:jcpa.org/brief/brief3-12.htm+Libya+md+WMD&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

4. Andrew England in Tripoli, Libya embraces its new status, Published: April 24 2007 22:54 | last updated: April 24 2007 22:54, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:qvd-Qh7omDYJ:www.ft.com/cms/s/b40f8af2-f28a-11db-a454-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid

%3Dfc3334c0-2f7a-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html+Libya+and+its+politics&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

5. The Colonel who came in from the cold: Libya opens its doors to the West http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2328820.ece

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