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Gadding with
Gaddafi
By Ehsan Ahrari
Muammar al-Gaddafi - the erstwhile bad boy of
North Africa and the rehabilitated gadfly of 1970s
transnational terrorism - has been much in the news
recently. Although it is Iraq, not Libya, that is about
to be invaded by the United States, Libya and the US are
still at odds - even though Gaddafi is reported to have
supplied intelligence on al-Qaeda terrorist group to
Washington.
Gaddafi's main problem with the US
in the coming months will be his potential to integrate
his chemical weapons capabilities with
short-to-middle-range Scud missiles that are already
part of Libyan arsenal. Another important issue is what
is he going to do with those capabilities: pursue his
newly-found pan-African aspirations, or his previous
love affair with pan-Arabism any time in the near
future.
In the West, Gaddafi has been given all
sorts of pejorative labels in the past. Ronald Reagan
referred to him as "the mad dog of Middle East" in the
mid-1980s. Even in some Arab circles he is vilified as
an oddball, and a megalomaniac. Reading Gaddafi's
biography from a variety of sources, one gets the notion
that he was born during a wrong era. He grew up admiring
the pan-Arabism of Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, by the
time Gaddafi came to power in 1969, pan-Arabism had
already met its Waterloo in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war,
and had grown politically passe.
A committed
pan-Arabist
Gaddafi did not care. He pursued the
notion of pan-Arab union with Egypt and Tunisia, even
though an earlier union between Egypt and Syria - which
resulted in the formation of the UAR - imploded in 1961.
However, when he did not succeed in materializing that
dream, Gaddafi even tried to bring about his own version
of "regime change" through abortive coups or
conspiracies.
As a young man who grew up hating
colonialism because of what it had done to his own
country, Gaddafi entangled himself with a number of
international terrorist movements, which he regarded as
a part of the then-ongoing struggle against the former
colonial masters of Europe. He is suspected to have
supported a whole slew of them: the Basque group ETA in
Spain, leftist guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique, the
IRA in Northern Ireland, the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front in the Philippines, West Germany's Baader-Meinhof
gang, to name a few. But when his agents were accused of
masterminding the 1986 La Belle disco bombing in West
Berlin - which resulted in the deaths of two Americans
and a Turkish woman - the US bombed Libya.
That
incident is generally regarded as a turning point in his
decision to keep a low profile, until the blowing up of
the 1988 Pan Flight 103 over the Scottish village of
Lockerbie. That terrorist act resulted in 259 deaths.
Libya was accused to be responsible for it.
As a
result of these incidents, Libya was slapped with a US
and then a UN embargo which eventually forced it to hand
over two Libyan agents who were accused of being
responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. Even though only
one of those agents was convicted, the Lockerbie bombing
remains a source of controversy and litigation between
Libya and the US. That issue is still facing an impasse
over the continued refusal of Libya to accept the
responsibility for it. The financial aspects of it,
though they involve compensations of around US$2
billion, might be resolved comparatively easily. Libya's
major problem with the US in the post-September 11 era
involves weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
A
capability-based threat assessment
Given the fact
that Washington is so focused on the "capability-based"
analysis of potential adversaries these days, Libya has
plenty to worry about. Provided below is an overview of
its WMD capabilities.
Libya is signatory to the
nuclear nonproliferation treaty, but not the
comprehensive test ban treaty. It was reported to be in
the market to purchase nuclear weapons in the early
1970s. That desire itself puts it under constant
suspicion of the nonproliferation community. The good
news is that its indigenous nuclear capabilities remain,
at best, rudimentary.
Regarding chemical
weapons, Libya is suspected to have underground
production capabilities at Tarhunah and Rabta. During
the Clinton era, the US became overly concerned about
the activities at those facilities, and sent warnings
through the good offices of President Hosni Mubarak of
Egypt of a potential US targeting of those facilities.
Libya has a record of using small quantities of mustard
agent against Chadian troops in 1987, and is not a
signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Libya's biological weapons capabilities are
reported to be limited to research and development
programs. It has demonstrated no evidence of
capabilities to produce biological weapons, and has
ratified the biological weapons convention. However,
given the availability of qualified personnel on the
international market who are willing to sell their
services to a prospective buyer, Libya might be tempted
to acquire the expert service, as it attempted to
purchase nuclear weapons in an earlier era.
Washington's chief source of worry involving
Libya is its ballistic and cruise missile capabilities.
At the present time, it has Scud-C variant (550
kilometer range and 500 kilogram payload), and over 100
Scud-B missiles (300 kilometer range and 985 kilogram
payload). Of these, the Scud-Bs may pose a regional
tactical threat, while the Scud-Cs are capable of
reaching Sicily and southern Greece. Libya also has a
15-year-old program to develop al-Fatah missile (950
kilometer range and 500 kilogram payload), and a variety
of cruise missiles in its inventory.
Given these
capabilities, the question is what is the purpose of
Libya's acquisition of WMD capabilities. There is no
regional threat to its security; only the usual regional
tensions and rivalries with Tunisia, Algeria and
Morocco. Given that its neighbors do not have such WMD
capabilities, the fact that Libya does makes one wonder
about the reasons for acquiring these weapons. One
reason might be that they represent a holdover from
Libya's past aspirations to lead the pan-Arabist
movement. Or perhaps they reflect a newly found desire
to become a leader of the pan-African movement.
As an old-style pan-Arabist, Gaddafi was sorely
disappointed when his fellow Arab leaders did not come
to his rescue when he was slapped with the US-UN
sanctions in the 1980s. The African leaders, on the
contrary, offered only moral support. This is something
that Gaddafi often mentions to his visitors. His recent
venturesome engagements in pan-African activities are
reported to be in response to overtures from sub-Saharan
Africa. Another variable may be the fact that his
pan-Arabist overtures went unanswered in the past. In
the coming years, the chances are even slimmer that he
would be perceived as a credible pan-Arabist leader. But
Libya has very little in common with sub-Saharan African
states, except for the fact that both are part of the
same continent, and most African countries, like Libya,
are examples of bad government and violation of human
dignity and rights.
Whether Libya ultimately
returns to the Arab fold or remains interested in
leading the pan-Africanist movement, the most
significant issue is whether it would abandon its WMD
capabilities. If not, it can very easily become a target
of regime change that the Bush administration has
incorporated as part of US national security strategy.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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