Follow The Leader
Former 'mad dog' Muammar Qadhafi is taking Libya in a surprising new direction
TRIPOLI, LIBYA--The old embassy on Mohamed Thabit Street stands deserted now. The windows are punched out, and the interior is shrouded in dust. Plastic garbage bags that have snagged on barbed wire atop the roof flutter in the winds blowing off the Mediterranean. Inside are the time-frozen signs of a hasty exit: unemptied trash cans, cups stained with dried coffee left alongside manual typewriters. And up on the roof, a dirty American flag is bunched up at the base of a flagpole--likely an oversight in the evacuation of diplomats when the embassy was sacked and burned in December 1979.
The decaying U.S. Embassy in the center of Libya's capital remains a symbol of a quarter century of hostility and threats, of deadly plots and punishing sanctions, between the United States and Libya. For a time, Libya's radical leader, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, was a poster boy of sorts for international terrorism. But with Libya shedding its rogue pursuits, most notably this year abandoning its nuclear and chemical weapons programs, change is coming rapidly here. The Bush administration has lifted a travel ban and most economic sanctions. A restoration of full diplomatic ties--unthinkable a year ago--is in the offing.
The change is so swift that it can be a little disorienting. A few miles from the old embassy, my taxi is stopped in traffic, and we are looking at yet another portrait of Qadhafi. His jaw-jutting visage, usually sporting mirrored shades, pops up all over Libya--on billboards at desert crossroads, on portraits draped from the sides of buildings, in pictures hung in offices, stores, and teahouses. The message on this one reads: "The people are with our Leader in challenging America." My driver seems embarrassed. "That's old," he shrugs. "Americans are welcome."
Indeed, at Tripoli's Sea Breeze Golf Course, a dusty nine-hole track adjacent to the former Wheelus Air Base, a strategic U.S. military hub in the 1950s and '60s, the regulars are happy to see an American drop by. If more come, they're thinking, maybe the Americans will bring money to rehabilitate what was once an 18-hole course built by U.S. servicemen. "We used to play with the Americans. We beat them, and sometimes they beat us," recalls Mufta Hussein, 64, a retiree who caddied at the course as a youth. "They were very kind with us," says his golfing buddy, Amer Magader, 50. "I hope they will come back." On the coast 75 miles east of Tripoli, at the ruins of Leptis Magna, one of the world's best-preserved Roman cities, tour guide Miftah Mansour points to the areas excavated in the 1960s by University of Pennsylvania archaeologists and is hopeful that Americans will come back to help Libyans with some new digs.
In the upscale Tripoli neighborhood of Gargarsh, crowded with spiffy stores selling clothes and electronic wares, a member of the new generation of Libyan businessmen, Adel Alfadly, is trying to arrange a trade mission to Tripoli by American food and pharmaceutical companies in September. "Libyans are very interested in American movies and cars--the luxury life of America," he says. At Tripoli's only five-star hotel, the Corinthia Bab Africa, an executive in the Libyan oil industry is lounging in the spa's frothy Jacuzzi. He anticipates that American technology will revive flagging oil production: "There's no one like the Americans when it comes to oil." Reflecting the mood, Mansur Swedan, the general manager of the Rising Sun travel agency, is beaming over the prospect of the Americans--tourists and business people--returning to this once pariah nation in North Africa. " Inshallah [God willing]," he says over sweet, thick Arabic coffee, "we'll do good business."
Let bygones be bygones?
Making money is exactly Libya's aim in breaking out of its isolation. "We are looking to the future. . . . We want to concentrate on our economic development," Shokri Ghanem, the prime minister and leading government reformer, said in an interview with U.S.News .
Focusing on the future of U.S.-Libyan relations is almost certain to be more fruitful than the past, for the past is tortured indeed. After dethroning Libya's king in a 1969 coup, Qadhafi kicked the Americans out of Wheelus Air Base (but kept on U.S. oil companies). He championed the causes of radical revolution the world over. Libya was accused of harboring terrorists who set off explosions at airports in Vienna and Rome and of sending agents to bomb a Berlin disco crowded with U.S. military personnel, triggering American airstrikes in 1986 against Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city. But the raids, which seemed aimed at getting the man President Reagan labeled the "mad dog of the Middle East," instead killed 37 people, mostly civilians and including Qadhafi's adopted daughter. The United States intensified sanctions that forced the remaining American companies to withdraw.
Worse would follow. Libyan agents orchestrated two of the deadliest acts of modern terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001: the bombings of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people in December 1988, and a French UTA airliner nine months later, in which 171 people perished. The United Nations punished Libya by imposing broad sanctions--which were lifted only last September once Libya acknowledged responsibility for the Pan Am 103 attack and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families. Washington, though, stuck with its sanctions out of worry that Tripoli--by then apparently out of the terrorism business--was still seeking a nuclear and chemical arsenal.
Just days before the United States and allies invaded Iraq in March 2003, Tripoli quietly moved to break its stalemate with the West. Libyan intelligence officials approached their British counterparts about ridding Libya of unconventional weapons if it would lead to diplomatic relations, trade, and investment with the United States. The Bush administration joined the secret talks, culminating in Libya's surprise announcement last December 19 that it would abandon its drive for weapons of mass destruction.
The Libyans have fulfilled their disarmament pledge with "amazing" speed, as a senior State Department official puts it. Atomic bomb designs, tons of centrifuge parts, tanks of uranium hexafluoride gas, and sundry other nuclear gear are now under lock and key in U.S. government warehouses in Tennessee. Some 3,300 munitions designed to hold chemical agents have been crushed and 26 tons of mustard gas secured for future disposal. A chemical factory at Rabta, south of Tripoli, will be converted solely to pharmaceutical production. "The Libyans could not have been more cooperative," exults one official. "It is absolutely unprecedented."
The Libyans have handed over information on the Pakistani-based nuclear supply network they relied on. They have disclosed previously secret weapons facilities. At one chemical site, a senior U.S. official tells U.S. News , a U.S.-British team was blocked by "crossed rifles." The team waited for a few hours, then word came from on-high: "Let them in." Whenever obstacles emerged, the Libyans took action: They opened one site by swinging a sledgehammer at a lock; at another, a truck dragged off a chain barring entry. Qadhafi's reversal on weapons prompted some "opposition and rancor" within Libya's military, says the U.S. official, but in every case arms materiel was hauled away or secured. The administration rushed out the most sensitive items first, worried Qadhafi might change his mind. The first available airplane--a nearly empty 747--was used to fly out a foot-wide box holding the engineering plans for a nuclear weapon.
The administration is taking a cautious approach to peeling off the remaining sanctions and upgrading diplomatic ties. The goal is to leverage Libya's thirst for American technology and investment into further concessions. Washington wants Tripoli to improve its woeful human rights behavior, sever any remaining contacts with terrorist groups, and "quit mucking around in Africa," says a senior official.
The "Libyan model" has been a godsend for the administration. Bush misses few opportunities to portray Libya as a dividend from toppling Saddam Hussein, though in fact Libyan envoys had been signaling a possible change of course for several years. Still, diplomats in Tripoli believe that Qadhafi and his minions were indeed fearful of being next in Bush's gun sights. Just five days before Libya announced its disarmament, Saddam was captured by U.S. troops. By then, the secret talks in London were already nearing a conclusion, but Saddam's capture may have helped close the deal. Says Rosemary Hollis, head of Middle East studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, "There's a psychological impact of seeing Saddam in a hole." Qadhafi, it seems, would rather play the role of a leader feted at European Union headquarters in Brussels, as he was recently, than a fugitive pulled from a hole in Surt, his desert abode.
With Bush known best for waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya offers a counterexample of peaceful disarmament and voluntary moderation--even if it means the survival of the Qadhafi regime. U.S. officials assume that Iran, Syria, and North Korea are watching closely. "It's very important that we get this right," says one senior U.S. adviser. "It's a demonstration that anyone who surrenders weapons of mass destruction will be rewarded and rewarded well."
Dawn of a 'new era'
Libya's shift represents, above all, a triumph of pragmatism: Qadhafi's transformation from an eccentric and lethal revolutionary to a more familiar type of Arab autocrat concerned with easing economic discontent and passing on his rule to kin. His journey to this remarkable point has been paved with disappointments: He offered himself as a pan-Arab leader, only to be ridiculed by his compatriots; he portrayed himself as leader of a united Africa, but the Africans took his oil money and not his ideas. As he persisted in hard-line support of militants, the militants themselves made peace--or at least tried to. The Palestine Liberation Organization negotiated with Israel, the Irish Republican Army with Britain, and the African National Congress with its apartheid-era oppressors in South Africa. Qadhafi cohorts like Yasser Arafat, Gerry Adams, and Nelson Mandela were welcomed to the White House. For its stubborn defiance, Libya's isolation grew and its economy sagged.
On March 2, Qadhafi gave what amounts to a coming-out announcement for his "new era." He declared before his General People's Congress that "the world has changed" and Libya must adapt to "the new realities." He admitted that "it is Libya that isolated itself for the sake of others," and he asked whether Libya should persist in being "more Palestinian than the Palestinians" or "more Irish than the Irish." He said Libya's quest for chemical and nuclear weapons had brought "danger," not security. Says Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, "I put it down to a kind of growing-up process. I think he decided that many of the causes he supported were just hot air."
Few Libyans believe--or want to admit--that their government was complicit in the terror over Lockerbie or elsewhere. Ghanem told the BBC this year that he couldn't serve as prime minister if he really thought Libya had downed Pan Am 103. His government was later pressured to repudiate his remarks, though his views are routine here. "In general, people think we are not guilty," explains Mohamed Lutfi Farhat, a former planning minister who is the president of Al-Fateh University in Tripoli. "I myself cannot believe it." Ghanem, says a western diplomat, has argued privately that with sanctions costing Libya perhaps $8 billion annually, the $2.7 billion Lockerbie settlement was a good deal if it bought peace. "This is their approach," says the diplomat. "They don't even admit there are car accidents in Libya. They are not repenters." But actions matter more than motives, says a senior State Department official. "So what? We're not going to be blown up by a Libyan bomb. Qadhafi's heart I could care less about," he says.
Libya under Qadhafi has been a country unusually preoccupied with ideology. He fancies himself a philosopher with a grand political vision. In his Green Book, Qadhafi lays out a "Third Universal Theory" --an odd stew of socialism, Arab nationalism, and populism--that envisions a stateless world run by liberated masses. Now that he has turned away from liberation struggles, you can almost hear the ideological gears grinding out reinterpretations. Miloud Mehadbi, director of foreign relations at Tripoli's World Center for the Studies and Researches of the Green Book, concedes that Libyans have "a feeling of failure in some areas." But the failures, he quickly adds, stem from "good ideas applied badly." Qadhafi, says Abdulgader Elkhair, the minister of economy and trade, never ordered the near eradication of private enterprise, which was the case until the late 1990s. Instead, officials mistook the Green Book 's teachings for "tools and not goals." The state-owned firms, he says, "are not efficiently run. . . . We cannot continue with these losses, with this drain." Now, the policy chatter in Tripoli sounds like the standard World Bank/IMF playbook: tax cuts, tax holidays, exemptions from customs duties, privatization, a stock market, and incentives for foreign trade, investment, and technology transfer. In Greenspeak, privatization is the "enlargement of people's ownership," a reform in "people's capitalism."
By any name, the implication is that Qadhafi did just fine but was badly served. In fact, Libya's staggering economy seems to be the central reason for Qadhafi's shift. With unemployment around 25 percent (higher for the burgeoning youth population), a decaying infrastructure, rubble-strewn neighborhoods, and oil production sliced in half since the Americans left, Libya is hurting. Its oil and gas riches combined with a sparse population of 5.8 million should make this desert nation comparatively rich. Aside from certain neighborhoods in Tripoli and Benghazi, it does not feel that way. A western diplomat warns of growing tensions: "There is steam in the kettle."
Opening up ... to a point
Tripoli has many of the trappings of a freewheeling society. Satellite television dishes sprout from roofs and balconies. Friends has been popular. Mobile phones are common, and Libyans have cheap access to the Internet. At the Dakar Internet Cafe, where the rock band Nirvana is blasting from speakers, 20- and 30-somethings occupy most of the 36 computer terminals. They pay one dinar, about 75 cents, an hour to surf the Web.
Despite signs of openness, few people dare to talk openly about Qadhafi. "Don't ask me about politics," says a shopkeeper in Tripoli's hardscrabble medina, or old city. Nervously, his eyes dart left and right. But a joke circulating among Libyans reveals despair: A team of American inspectors comes to search for weapons of mass destruction. They look everywhere, then report back to President Bush: "Mr. President," they say, "we couldn't find any weapons of mass destruction. But we did find plenty of mass destruction."
Though the changes in foreign policy and economics are breathtaking, this is still the colonel's Libya. It is evident that people here are uncomfortable even uttering his name; he is known instead as the Leader of the Revolution, or just the Leader. At 62, he has maintained a tight grip on power for nearly 35 years, and Libya's exit from pariah status could have come only on his say-so. "He is the prime mover of this, or at least he supports it," says Ghanem. "Without his support, of course . . ." Ghanem's voice trails off. He doesn't finish the thought.
Some foreign diplomats here worry that Qadhafi is still wavering and needs occasional bucking up by reformers like Ghanem, an economist educated at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Scorned by hard-line apparatchiks, including some close to the Leader's tent, Ghanem and his fellow technocrats are accused of undermining the revolution.
Ghanem, though, has a key ally in one of Qadhafi's sons, Saif al-Islam Qadhafi. Urbane and fluent in English, Saif, 31, is studying for a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. While his father dons woolen brown robes, Saif prefers a well-tailored English suit. Widely presumed to be Qadhafi's heir apparent, he has surfaced at key junctures in Libya's fence mending: in energizing the London disarmament talks and in providing a legal mechanism for the Lockerbie settlement. His Qadhafi International Foundation for Charity Associations is the Libyan conduit for paying victims' families up to $2.7 billion. More than a year ago, he wrote an essay for the Middle East Policy Council disclosing "an accord on a secure intelligence channel" between Tripoli and Washington. He boasted about Libyan infiltration of terrorist groups and said that intelligence sharing with Washington had begun before September 11. Saif said that his father was the target of an attack in Sabha, a city in southern Libya, by Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda. He went on to say that Libya "recognizes America's special role as a superpower."
Yet for all the newfound pragmatism, there are no signs that the new era will mean an end to dictatorship. The Libyan elite seems to envision a Chinese-style evolution: Open up the economy, but hold on tight to political power. The conceit of the Libyan system is that it already offers "direct democracy" in which local "people's committees" make the basic decisions that form policy. Aside from colonel, Qadhafi holds no formal title in the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Loosely translated, "Jamahiriya" means "state of the masses." Explaining the Libyan system, Farhat, the university head, says, "We think this is the best form of democracy." Across town, Mohammed Jerary, director of the Libyan Jihad Center for Historical Studies, is also talking about democracy--broadly, in the Arab world. Educated at the University of Wisconsin, he says, "We want democracy--but with your assistance, not your force."
Officials, with no hint of irony, tout Libya's political order as a plus for westerners contemplating investments. "There are no parties or factions here," offers Jamah Balkheir, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. "It's the most stable regime in the area," says Rajab Shiglabu, head of the Libyan Foreign Investment Board. The only recent challenge appears to have come from Islamists in eastern Libya. A government campaign against them four years ago apparently succeeded. One can see the scorched mountaintops overlooking the Mediterranean near Ras al-Hillal, a future vacation spot, where Libyan Air Force planes bombed Islamist encampments.
A ban on political parties does not mean that all dissent has been stifled. After Saddam was nabbed, graffiti appeared in Tripoli: "Today, Saddam. Tomorrow, Qadhafi." After the U.S. Army rolled into Baghdad, one of the Leader's sons, a soccer player named Saadi, was taunted by fans at a match in Tripoli. "Saadi, don't think you're a big guy," they chanted. "Your destiny will be like Uday's" --a reference to one of Saddam's slain sons. On the streets of Tripoli, complaints about the million-plus migrants from sub-Saharan Africa fly freely. An editor of a government newspaper was fired for having the audacity to write--with obsequious delicacy, no less--that Qadhafi should become Libya's president and that "the time has come for the warrior knight who led the revolution to dismount and begin to build the state."
One middle-aged professional vented his anger as long as he would not be identified. "If you say something against the government, they put you in prison," says the man. "People are sick of Qadhafi's family. Who appointed them to rule our country?" He also argued that the United States needs to "put pressure on the government on human rights. Otherwise, they won't change."
Surveillance by security services is presumed to be commonplace. Libyan guests at an embassy dinner party were reprimanded for attending without permission and told to write reports about their conversations. One told his hosts, "I will still have the memory of a wonderful evening even after I'm punished." Amnesty International and the State Department report that Qadhafi's jails still hold hundreds of political prisoners. Some have disappeared, they say, and torture is still in use. But Qadhafi may be relenting a bit on human rights. This winter he met with an investigative team from AI, the first such visit in 15 years. In April, Qadhafi called for abolishing revolution-era special courts that forbid appeals, ending the practice of arrests without warrants, and ratifying international antitorture conventions.
But progress is patchy. Under U.S. pressure, a dissident named Fathi Eljahmi was released in March. He had been jailed for 18 months after condemning the regime as undemocratic and calling for a constitution and free speech at a public meeting. He repeated his criticism in an interview with U.S.-based al Hurra television, and afterwards a pro-government mob besieged his house. He is now in government custody, say Libyan dissidents. In the new Libya, so far, freedom to make money doesn't mean freedom to speak your mind.
Libya map labels
AFRICA
LIBYA
Benghazi
Tripoli
Surt
Sabha
Population: 5.8 million
Life expectancy: 76 years
Religion: 97 pct. Sunni Muslim
Per capita GDP: $6,200
Unemployment rate: 25 pct.
Oil production: 1.429 million barrels a day
Source: CIA's The World Factbook 2003
USN&WR
This story appears in the June 7, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.