Gaddafi: An Arab Robin Hood who pays the rich!

The overwhelming success of his revolution in the initial days convinced Colonel Gaddafi that the Arabs were wandering aimlessly in search of a hero and he would be the best person to fit the role. The oil price boom of the 1970s added fuel to his consummating ambition. To take on "the arch enemies of Arabs" Gaddafi felt the need for nuclear weapons, but also knew that neither the West nor the Soviet Union would supply him the much-needed arsenal.

Gaddafi's quest for nuclear weapon turned him to look to the other nuclear power that had welcomed his revolutionary regime. His fall-back position, therefore, was the sister revolutionary country -- the Peoples' Republic of China. Gaddafi sent his second-in-command, Major Jalloud, on nuclear shopping spree to China. Jalloud saw the Chinese premier Chou En-Lai, who explained courteously that "atomic bombs were not on sale in China." Frustrated but undaunted Gaddafi invested Libya's enormous oil revenues to develop biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in secret and inaccessible locations in the mountains and desert.

Since Libya had no expertise and strategic resources he indulged in unauthorised procurement at a prohibitive cost and relied on foreign experts to develop his 'dream machine'. As it happens with alien sources and experts, most of Gaddafi's moves were leaked out from time to time. He consistently and forcefully rejected those as rumours and imperialist and Zionist propaganda to destabilise Libya. After squandering billions of dollars in this way, why should Gaddafi all of a sudden surprise the world on December 19, 2003 by giving up his WMD ambitions? And why not in early 2003 before the Iraqi invasion?

His apparent 'dramatic' disclosure, however, failed to amuse America and Britain who were doggedly observing his nuclear aspirations and much less the Tripoli based diplomats who had a glimpse of the Rabta plant in late 1996. This writer was one of the 70 ambassadors who were taken to a state-guided tour to report to their governments that the nearly half kilometer long Rabta factory was producing aspirin, dispirin and couph syrup in the mountain! A short recalling of Anglo-US and Libya relations will be helpful to refresh memories of the readers for better appreciation of the predicament of Gaddafi.

Libya's relations with the US had started deteriorating from day one of the Reagan Administration. In January 1981 President Reagan made it plain that the US objected to Libya's presence in neighbouring Chad, and accused Gaddafi of "directing subversive plots in a number of African countries." Later, in August, US fighter aircraft shot down two Libyan jets that had intercepted them over the Gulf of Sirte, which Gaddafi laid claim as his territorial waters, and America contested as international waters. In December1985 a dispute over navigational rights provoked another clash between Libya and the US. Col. Gaddafi drew a notional "line of death" across the Gulf of Sirte, which US and other foreign ships were warned not to cross. At the end of January 1986, the US Navy deployed its Sixth Fleet off the Libyan coast. In March, Libya fired missiles at US fighter aircraft flying over the Gulf of Sirte disregarding the "line of death." US fighters in retaliatory actions destroyed missiles and radar installations on the coast of Sirte and sank four Libyan patrol boats in the Gulf of Sirte.

Gaddafi's alleged involvement in international terrorism and harbouring and training of guerrillas contributed to a further serious worsening of relations between the US and Libya. In January 1986, Reagan ordered severance of all economic and commercial relations with Libya and froze Libyan assets running into several billion dollars in the US.

Meanwhile, despite lucrative trade for UK, her political relations with Libya came under severe strain, following a series of bomb attacks in Britain, believed to be aimed at Libyan dissidents who Gaddafi called "stray dogs." Equally intolerable for the British government was Gaddafi's arms and cash flow to the IRA that the UK had declared a terrorist organisation. An infuriated Margaret Thatcher severed diplomatic relations with Libya in April 1984 at the killing of woman police constable Yvonne Fletcher who fell victim to a burst of machine-gun fire coming from the Libyan Embassy. Yvonne was on duty in front of the Libyan Bureau at St. James Square in London while an anti-Gaddafi demonstration was fired upon from window of the mission. Gaddafi hotly denied the charge and instead blamed the CIA for the murderous burst, which he said had come from an adjacent building, to drum up British support to take on Libya. In fact, Gaddafi later paid a staggering amount to British Channel 4 that produced a documentary implicating the CIA in the killing of Yvonne Fletcher.

In April 1986, a Berlin discotheque bombing, which claimed one US marine's life and those of several other nationalities, provided the necessary pretext for an Anglo-American raid on Tripoli and Benghazi. US jets took off from a British air base and bombed Gaddafi's living quarters at Azizia barrack, suspected terrorists training camps, and communication centres. The raids claimed the lives of Gaddafi's adopted daughter Hanna and about 101 civilians. A call from Maltese Premier Mintoff helped Gaddafi to escape barely a few seconds before the air attack.

In 1988, it was leaked to the western press that Libya was producing chemical weapons with the collaboration of a West German company at Rabta Mountain, some 75 kilometres southwest of Tripoli. Reagan threatened to bomb the suspected plant. In March 1990, the West German government stated that it would halt production of chemical weapons at Rabta, in accordance with international law. The US did not discount future military attacks on Libya unless it wound up the factories at Rabta and at Tarhuna 50 kilometres south of Tripoli. In the later half of the 1990s, the US accused Gaddafi of storing strategic assets at the diverted section of 14-foot diameter tunnels of 25 billion dollars under-construction Man-Made-River project. US threatened to bomb the tunnel that ran from 600 miles south in the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast in the north, pumping fresh water from an underground reservoir.

The downing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988 and of a French UTA flight over Niger on September 19, 1989 was squarely blamed on Gaddafi. The Anglo-US alliance tightened the noose around his neck by imposing wide-ranging UN sanctions on Libya March 31, 1992. However, an embargo on oil was excluded to ensure European supply.

After seven years of defiance, Gaddafi had to eat the humble pie in a bid to get rid of the UN sanctions. Nelson Mandela and the Saudi ambassador to the US negotiated handing over of two Libyan suspects to UN for trial at the Scottish court arranged for this purpose in the Netherlands in 1999. In January 2001, the Lockerbie trial court convicted Libyan intelligence officer Abdul Basset Ali-Megrahi to life sentence while his co-accused Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima was acquitted.

America demanded $7 billion compensation for the victims' families and owning responsibility by Gaddafi for the murder of 270 passengers as a pre-condition to lifting sanctions on Libya. Gaddafi stubbornly refused to meet both the conditions. Libya paid $31 million as compensation to 170 UTA victims' families in 1999 on a compromise deal with France. Gaddafi paid about $10 million to the family of Yvonne Fletcher and a host of concessions to the UK to restore diplomatic relations. The British ambassador returned to Tripoli in 1999. To display a benevolent face, Gaddafi paid $6 million to South Philippine insurgents to free six western hostages and flew them to Tripoli to a hero's welcome while Libyans watched the spectacle from the breadline! He kept his people in complete darkness about the squandered billions of Libyan oil.

United Nations sanctions were removed on September 12, 2003 after Libya's transferring from Swiss account of $2.7 billion at the rate of $10 million per passenger's family of Pan Am flight as well as Gaddafi's owning responsibility for downing the plane.

The French agreed to waive veto to lift UN sanction on Libya's undertaking to pay an additional amount probably at the same rate of US passengers to UTA flight. Once revolutionary, Gaddafi gradually turned into an Arab Robin Hood to part with Libya's billion to enrich the purse of the rich West to cover up his adventures.

US bilateral sanction, however, continues on Libya to meet other conditions including dismantling WMD, giving up terrorism and payment of balance amount of $7 billion.

While ending of UN sanctions restored Libya's access to the world's markets and airports, it would not meet her need for aircraft and oil field equipment which only the US can provide. Libya has "standstill" agreements reserving rights of American companies to return. Since the US companies are way ahead of Europe in technology, especially in the enhancement of depleted oil fields, Libya needs their return. Gaddafi's paramount objective is not just the removal of UN sanction but the American embargo too.

Probably Gaddafi could still carry on as he did for 35 years brutalising Libyans until the Anglo-US invasion of Iraq. Iraq became a turning point in convincing the Libyan maverick that he needs to pay a heavy price in cash and kind in return for US' blessing to continue in power. Therefore, to save his dynasty he "gave up" WMD in a melodrama. In doing so he exposed to the West, the countries and experts that supplied him with strategic assets and expertise for WMD. The fallout started falling on Pakistan, Iran and North Korea.

M. Shafiullah was Bangladesh ambassador to Libya, 1995-2000.