Muammar el-Qaddafi

It has been over 40 years since Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi came to power in Libya — and for nearly as long the West has watched his every move. The financier of an eclectic array of guerrilla groups around the globe, he was responsible, according to Western intelligence, for many of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the mid-80s, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270.

In February 2011, rebellion erupted in Libya, the latest and bloodiest the uprisings that swept across the Arab world. Colonel Qaddafi lashed out with a level of violence unseen in the other uprisings, but the rebels fought back and seized the eastern half of the country. Momentum seemed to shift in March, as the superior Qaddafi forces sought to retake several eastern oil cities that had slipped from the government’s control in the first days of the uprising, and the rebels faced the prospect of being outgunned and outnumbered in what increasingly looked like a mismatched civil war. With the government forces closing in on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, the United Nations Security Council authorized the use of force to protect civilians.

On March 19, American and European forces began a broad campaign of airstrikes against the government of Colonel Qaddafi, unleashing warplanes and missiles in a military intervention on a scale not seen in the Arab world since the Iraq war.

Colonel Qaddafi remained defiant. On May 31, he rebuffed a mediation effort by South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma, saying he would fight on. His words appeared to reflect a deepening sense of isolation, brought on by 10 weeks of NATO bombing, rebel advances, Western leaders’ recent reaffirmation of demands for Colonel Qaddafi to quit, and the fact that Russia, an old ally of Libya, had joined those demands.

On June 27, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Colonel Qaddafi, his son Seif al-Islam and his chief of intelligence, Abdullah Senussi, on charges of crimes against humanity, including murder and persecution, stemming from the first two weeks of the uprising. The presiding judge said there were “reasonable grounds” to hold the three men criminally responsible for killing, wounding and imprisoning hundreds of civilians.

Recent Developments

In a sudden breakthrough at the end of August after six months of fighting, rebels swept through Libya's capital, Tripoli, declaring victory. Colonel Qaddafi’s whereabouts remained unknown, and news reports said loyalist forces still held pockets of the city, stubbornly resisting the rebel advance. On August 23, rebel fighters flooded Colonel Qadaffi’s sprawling headquarters compound, overwhelming what remained of its defenses.

As rebels sought to strengthen their control of Tripoli, they placed a nearly $2 million bounty on Colonel Qaddafi’s head and dispatched fighters toward one of his last bastions of support, his tribal hometown of Surt. Colonel Qaddafi said in a radio broadcast that his retreat from the Bab al-Aziziya compound was only a tactical maneuver. He blamed months of NATO airstrikes for bringing down his government and vowed “martyrdom” or victory in his battle against the alliance. Urging Libyan tribes across the land to march on the capital, he said: “I call on all Tripoli residents, with all its young, old and armed brigades, to defend the city, to cleanse it, to put an end to the traitors and kick them out of our city.”

Background

The United States withdrew its ambassador from Libya in 1972 after Colonel Qaddafi renounced agreements with the West and repeatedly inveighed against the United States in speeches and public statements.

After a mob sacked and burned the American Embassy in 1979, the United States cut off relations. But the relationship did not reach its nadir until 1986, when the Reagan administration accused Libya of ordering the bombing of a German discothèque that killed three people. In response, the United States bombed targets in Tripoli and Benghazi.

The most notorious of Libya's actions was the bombing in 1988 of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. Libya later accepted responsibility, turned over suspects and paid families of victims more than $2 billion.

After a surprise decision to renounce terrorism in 2003, Colonel Qaddafi re-established diplomatic and economic ties throughout Europe. He had also changed with regard to Israel. The man who once called for pushing the ''Zionists'' into the sea advocated the forming of one nation where Jews and Palestinians would live together in peace.

Rather than trying to destabilize his Arab neighbors, he founded a pan-African confederation modeled along the lines of the European Union. On Feb. 2, 2009, Colonel Qaddafi was named chairman of the African Union. His election, however, caused some unease among some of the group's 53-member nations as well as among diplomats and analysts. The colonel, who has ruled Libya with an iron hand, was a stark change from the succession of recent leaders from democratic countries like Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria.

The most significant changes had been the overtures Colonel Qaddafi has made toward the United States. He was among the first Arab leaders to denounce the Sept. 11 attacks, and he lent tacit approval to the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. To the astonishment of other Arab leaders, he reportedly shared his intelligence files on Al Qaeda with the United States to aid in the hunt for its international operatives. He had also cooperated with the United States and Europe on nuclear weapons, terrorism and immigration issues.

In August 2009, Colonel Qaddafi embarrassed the British government and drew criticism from President Obama with his triumphant reaction to the release from prison of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Mr. Megrahi was given a hero's welcome when he arrived in Libya, and Colonel Qaddafi thanked British and Scottish officials for releasing Mr. Megrahi at a time that they were trying to distance themselves from the action.

Colonel Qaddafi, born in 1942, is the father of many sons who are now jockeying to succeed him. Experts say his eldest, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, is the current leader. Educated in Britain, well-dressed and fluent in English, he has been a bridge between the Libya power centers and the West.

The Uprising Begins

In February 2011, protests broke out in several parts of Libya on a so-called Day of Rage to challenge Colonel Qaddafi's 41-year-old iron rule — the region’s longest. Thousands turned out in the restive city of Benghazi; in Tripoli; and at three other locations, according to Human Rights Watch. The state media, though, showed Libyans waving green flags and shouting in support of Colonel Qaddafi.

Trying to demonstrate that he was still in control, Colonel Qaddafi appeared on television on Feb. 22, 2011, speaking from his residence on the grounds of an army barracks in Tripoli that still showed scars from when the United States bombed it in 1986.

In the long, rambling address, he blamed the unrest on “foreign hands,” a small group of people distributing pills, brainwashing, and the naïve desire of young people to imitate the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Without acknowledging the gravity of the crisis in the streets of the capital, he described himself in sweeping, megalomaniacal terms. “Muammar Qaddafi is history, resistance, liberty, glory, revolution,” he declared.

The Colonel's Security Forces

Colonel Qaddafi, who took power in a military coup, has always kept the Libyan military too weak and divided to rebel against him. About half of Libya's relatively small 50,000-member army is made up of poorly trained and unreliable conscripts, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Many of its battalions are organized along tribal lines, ensuring their loyalty to their own clan rather than to top military commanders — a pattern evident in the defection of portions of the army to help protesters take the eastern city of Benghazi. Some Libyans and scholars outside the country say this system of tribal alliances, long Colonel Qaddafi’s most potent weapon, could emerge as perhaps a potential vulnerability. His own clan dominates the air force and the upper level of army officers, and they are believed to have remained loyal to him, in part because his clan has the most to lose from his ouster.

Distrustful of his own generals, he built up an elaborate paramilitary force — accompanied by special segments of the regular army that report primarily to his family. It is designed to check the army and in part to subdue his own population. At the top of that structure is his roughly 3,000-member revolutionary guard corps, which mainly guards him personally.

A Culture of Corruption

Libyan culture had become rife with corruption, kickbacks, strong-arm tactics and political patronage since the United States reopened trade with Colonel Qaddafi’s government in 2004.

With an agreement on a settlement over Libya’s role in the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, finally reached in 2008, officials at the United States Commerce Department began to serve as self-described matchmakers for American businesses, including Boeing, Raytheon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Caterpillar and Halliburton.

Colonel Qaddafi, the State Department has said, was personally involved in many business decisions. He also learned how to hide money and investments in case sanctions were ever imposed again, as they have been in 2011.

As American and international oil companies, telecommunications firms and contractors moved into the Libyan market, they discovered that Colonel Qaddafi or his loyalists often sought to extract millions of dollars in “signing bonuses” and “consultancy contracts” — or insisted that the strongman’s sons get a piece of the action through shotgun partnerships.

The wealth that Colonel Qaddafi’s family and his government accumulated with the help of international corporations in the years since the lifting of economic sanctions by the West helped fortify his hold on his country.

While the outcome of the military intervention under way by the United States and allied countries is uncertain, Colonel Qaddafi’s huge cash deposits, which have been stored at the Libyan Central Bank and other banks around the Libyan capital in recent years, allow him to pay his troops, African mercenaries and political supporters in the face of a determined uprising, and have, at least temporarily, diminished the impact of economic sanctions.

The Ongoing Conflict

On Feb. 25, security forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi used gunfire to try to disperse thousands of protesters who streamed out of mosques after prayers to mount their first major challenge to the government’s crackdown in Tripoli. Rebel leaders said they were sending forces from nearby cities and other parts of the country to join the fight.

A bold play by Colonel Qaddafi to prove that he was firmly in control of Libya appeared to backfire as foreign journalists he invited to the capital discovered blocks of the city in open defiance. Witnesses described snipers and antiaircraft guns firing at unarmed civilians, and security forces were removing the dead and wounded from streets and hospitals, apparently in an effort to hide the mounting toll.

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to impose sanctions on Colonel Qaddafi and his inner circle of advisers, and called for an international war crimes investigation into “widespread and systemic attacks” against Libyan citizens.

Air power proved to be Colonel Qaddafi’s biggest advantage, and rebels were unable to use bases and planes they captured in the east. Planes and helicopters gave the Qaddafi forces an additional advantage in moving ammunition and supplies, a crucial factor given the length of the Libyan coast between the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and Tripoli.

As Colonel Qaddafi’s forces tried to retake a series of strategic oil towns on the east coast of the country, which fell early in the rebellion to antigovernment rebels, the West continued to debate what actions to take, including the creation of a possible no-flight zone to ground Libyan warplanes.

On March 12, the Arab League asked the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-flight zone over Libya in hopes of halting Colonel Qaddafi’s attacks on his own people, providing the rebels a tincture of hope even as they were driven back from a long stretch of road and towns they had captured in the three-week war. That request appeared to tip the balance for President Obama and a majority of the Security Council, paving the way for a resolution allowing the use of force to protect civilians in Libya, a mandate that NATO countries interpreted broadly, launching strikes against Colonel Qaddafi's ground forces as well as destroying his air force.

Western Involvement

After days of often acrimonious debate played out against a desperate clock, the Security Council authorized member nations to take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, diplomatic code words calling for military action. Benghazi erupted in celebration at news of the resolution’s passage.

A military campaign against Colonel Qaddafi, under British and French leadership, was launched less than 48 hours later. American forces mounted a campaign to knock out Libya’s air defense systems, firing volley after volley of Tomahawk missiles from nearby ships against missile, radar and communications centers. Within a week allied air strikes had averted a rout by Colonel Qaddafi of Benghazi and established a no-fly zone over Libya.

The campaign, however, was dogged by friction over who should command the operation, with the United States eventually handing off its lead role to NATO, and by uncertainty over its ultimate goal. Western leaders acknowledged that there was no endgame beyond the immediate United Nations authorization to protect Libyan civilians, and it was uncertain whether even military strikes would force Colonel Qaddafi from power.

In a nationally televised speech March 28, President Obama defended the American-led military assault, emphasizing that it would be limited and insisting that America had the responsibility and the international backing to stop what he characterized as a looming genocide. At the same time, he said, directing American troops to forcibly remove Colonel Qaddafi from power would be a step too far, and would “splinter” the international coalition that has moved against the Libyan government.

The Endgame

Six months of inconclusive fighting gave way within a matter of days to an assault on Tripoli that unfolded at a breakneck pace. By the night of August 21st, 2011, rebels surged into the city, meeting only sporadic resistance and setting off raucous street celebrations by residents hailing the end of his 42 years in power. Expectations grew that Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on power was crumbling, but confusion reigned as the outcome remained inconclusive and fighting continued.

It was not clear whether the rebel gains were the beginnings of a decisive victory or the start of potentially prolonged street fighting for control of the capital.

[Source : topics.nytimes.com]