Jan 16, 2020
How Libya Became ‘Somalia on the Mediterranean.’
Slavery, terrorism and proxy conflict in what was once Africa’s most successful country.
The Disaster In The Background
The New Year started with news which would normally have sent the global media abuzz with speculation, the news being that Turkey’s state legislator had approved plans for sending the Turkish military into the North African state of Libya.
At any other time, something as significant as this would be front-page news across the world, but the assassination of Iran’s Qassam Solomeini the following day quickly drowned it out of the airwaves.
As the global press is focused with bated breath on the next phase of the deadly confrontation between Iran and the US, Turkey has begun a quiet movement of thousands of it’s soldiers into Libya with the aim of shoring up a fragile state government.
Just ten years ago, the thought of Turkish soldiers massing into an African country would be unthinkable. Libya had been ruled by a despot who enjoyed a degree of freedom to rule his country because he had aligned his state (his Jamahiriya, as it was called) with the global powers after initially resisting them.
Libya under Qaddafi was a state which fused Islamism and socialism and in which dissent was swiftly punished and thousands of opponents of the regime were ‘disappeared’ and tortured throughout the decades.
It was also the most successful country in Africa.
By every metric, be it GDP, the low child mortality or productivity, Libya was Africa’s economic success story. Libyans enjoyed rates of literacy and economic security which surpassed some Western nations, with a booming oil industry and an impressive industrial base.
These days, the oil has stopped flowing and the only industries which are thriving in the North African country are the modern slave trade and international drug smuggling.
The, admittedly brutal, strong arm of the Qaddafi-era state has been replaced with a proliferation of terrorists, criminals and bandits who stalk it’s southern deserts and the only thing that is being exported is more chaos as weapons from Qaddafi’s armoury have been looted and found themselves in the hands of extremists as far afield as Syria and Mali.
In less than ten years, Libya has become a black hole of instability which has already sucked outsiders into it’s vacuum. To understand how the situation deteriorated a such a rapid pace, we need to go back to Colonel Qaddafi’s original coup, and recount how he went from being a global dissident to a friend of the world order, to an enemy again, and it’s a story in which no one comes out clean.
Revolutionary Fervor
Qaddafi seized power in 1967 in a military coup which overthrew Libya’s monarch. People often forget that when he came to power, the younger Qaddafi was highly romanticized among the world’s revolutionaries. He marketed himself as a decisive square-jawed man of action who made no secret of his ambitions to overturn the global order and who spoke earnestly about his desire to improve the lot of his people. Quickly nationalising Libya’s oil wealth, he used the money to bolster Libya’s military and created vast public works which were aimed at developing Libya at a rapid pace.
The most impressive of this was the Great Man-Made River, an ambitious aquifer which would span the length and breadth of Libya with the aim of fertilising the entire country. While it never reached the great extent that Qaddafi had originally planned, the system was undoubtedly a success, bringing as it did water to some of Libya’s most isolated and desolate areas.
Throughout this all, Qaddafi spoke openly about his desire to export his revolution, and he made good on his promise. Libya’s oil wealth gave him ample means to sponsor guerrilla and revolutionary groups across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s if a communist group was fighting a western-aligned state throughout the global south there was a high chance that Libya was behind them.
Originally, the global order, particularly America, had regarded the Libyan strongman as little more than an irritant and Libya as an irrelevance. You see, Libya is a tiny country on the world stage, it’s geographic position was fairly isolated and it’s oil reserves, while large, paled in comparison to the oil from the America-aligned Arab Gulf states.
Among America’s enemies, Libya was nothing aswell. Compared to the populous Chinese, the resource rich and nuclear-armed Soviets or even the proximate Cubans, the United States had little time to concern it’s self with a desert country of five million or so inhabitants half the world away.
It’s entirely possible that Qaddafi could have gone ignored for much longer than he did if he focused on domestic issues and not drawn the ire of the United States, however when he began spreading his influence by arming groups to attack American allies, such as the IRA against the UK, or ETA against Spain, he began to have sanctions placed upon him to attempt a slow strangulation of his regime.
Throughout the 80’s Qaddafi continued to test American and Western resolve by continually pushing against their boundaries. This decade was marked by a series of skirmishes in the seas around Libya which resulted in the US Navy shooting down Libyan fighter planes in the Gulf of Sidra incident. Qaddafi responded to this by ordering the bombing of a nightclub in West Berlin popular with American soldiers stationed there, killing three and injuring close to eighty.
This tit-for-tat between the Libyan tyrant and America continued for some time, until one winter day in 1988 in a small town in central Scotland.
The people of the sleepy Scottish town of Lockerbie woke up to find themselves the site of one of the largest mass murders in British history. People described seeing a sky raining fire… and body parts.
To get his revenge on the US and demonstrate his reach, Qaddafi had ordered the bombing of a passenger jet going from Germany to New York. The bomb detonated and killed every unfortunate soul on board and several in the town below.
There was no way in which the US could not respond to such a provocation and they did so by unleashing a brutal barrage of rockets and missiles across Libyan cities and the countryside and placing further sanctions on the dictator’s regime. As an aside, they also sponsored various Islamist groups hostile to Qaddafi’s state, the pernicious results of which will be elucidated later in the article.
Throughout this time, Qaddafi had done much to isolate his nation on the international stage. His revolutionary zeal had lead him to attempt several unions of numerous Arab countries, all of which failed. He constantly attached himself to the cause of the Palestinians and marketed himself as their sole defender to gain prestige among the public of the Arab world (sometimes called the Arab Street) but this made him inflexible when other Arab nations, such as Egypt, inevitably made peace with Israel.
Towards the new millennium, Qaddafi had found himself alone in a hostile world. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the United States was the sole superpower and seemed intent to press their advantage.
‘Taming the Mad Dog’ — How Qaddafi Came In From The Cold
In many ways, 9/11 was the best gift Qaddafi could ask for. As George Bush Jr. made clear, you were with the US or you were against them. Qaddafi was sensitive to the fact that he had done more than enough to warrant an overthrow by the Americans. With decades of sanctions throttling his economy and the USA looking for any excuse to unleash their military upon resisters, he made a strategic decision to ally with the US-led world order and become one of it’s key pillars.
While it had taken some time to do so, Qaddafi had finally abandoned his revolutionary goals and settled into the reality of the world he found himself in (atleast outwardly, more on that later). In the parlance of International Relations, we say that he was ‘socialised’ into international society, just like the revolutionaries of the USSR, or the Islamic Republic and countless other revolutionaries before him.
As a show of good faith he surrendered all nuclear technology he had accumulated and publicly renounced any attempt to make a nuclear bomb, this allowed the US to claim some form of success in their international crusade since they had had no luck in finding Iraq’s much speculated nuclear arsenal.
Qaddafi also sold his services to the West as a kind of enforcer in North Africa, particularly against Al Qieda-aligned militants.
Like a mafia soldier who dirties his hands while his bosses remain clean, Qaddafi’s Libya became one of the War On Terror’s key torture sites. Euphemisms such as ‘extraordinary rendition’ disguise the fact that governments all across the world kidnapped and disappeared thousands of people suspected of being terrorists. Many of these people would find themselves in languishing in Libyan dungeons for more than a decade.
But Qaddafi wasn’t stupid, he knew that international relations is a mercenary business and that the West would prove a mercurial ally. Therefore, instead of the mass murder he was perfectly capable of, Qaddafi chose to keep these many Islamist prisoners alive in case as a means of pressuring the West. Diplomatic cables would often remark that Qaddafi would state that these men would be unleashed on the West if he should ever fall.
The Door to Europe
General Patten once referred to Italy as being the ‘soft underbelly of Europe,’ and this has certainly been demonstrated in recent years.
Italy is the European country which features most in the story of modern day Libya, the two countries are intimately tied by their parallel positions to one another on the map and the fact that modern Libya was born from Italy’s fledgling empire. After Greece, it is Italy which was most affected by the mass migration of 2016, something which destabilised it to such an extent that it allowed a coalition of insurgents from both the Left and Right of the countries political arena to seize power several years later.
Owing to it’s geographic position, Italy has always been a route into the hinterland of Europe. This is particularly true in a modern world where the majority of Europe is within the Schengen zone and the continent is spanned by a complex web of transport.
Qaddafi was intimately aware of the European fear of mass movement from the developing world and sought to exploit this fear for his own financial and political benefit. He marketed himself to the southern European countries, particularly Italy, as the only wall between them and the rapidly growing and youthful population of Africa.
Towards the end of the 2010’s Qaddafi and Italy signed a treaty of co-operation, the primary motivation of which was to stem migration from Africa onto the Italian peninsular. The Italian state would fund Qaddafi to the tune of billions of Euros aslong as he continued to act as Europe’s guard dog.
The deal would initially prove effective for Italy, with the numbers reaching Italian shores fall by two thirds after the signing of the deal.
However, Africa’s population continued it’s growth and the world continued it’s trend towards mobility. Libya was increasingly strained by the inflow and struggled to fund it’s attempts to house the migrants, even with the money from Europe. Qaddafi repeatedly complained that this money was insufficient and held Europe to ransom by demanding billions more.
The poorer nations in the EU were willing to pay Qaddafi to stave off more newcomers, seeing it as the lesser evil. This is partly why, when the Libyan revolution broke out in 2011, Italy and various other European powers were more ambivalent about it, fearing that toppling Qaddafi would result in a continuation of the mass movement.
After NATO approved the Libyan no-fly zone and began bombarding his forces, Qaddafi was incensed. He began plotting to flood Europe with migrants as an act of final revenge by sponsoring people-smugglers. How successful he was in this attempt is questionable, as it looks like Qaddafi was killed before his plans really came to fruition. However, his agreement with Italy and the long history of doing the dirty work of Europe meant that Libyan refugee camps were filled with migrants left in limbo between Africa and Europe. These poor souls bore the brunt of the chaos that arose when Qaddafi was toppled, and have been the primary victims of the rebirth of slavery which has occurred in the new Libya.
The French Connection — The Real Reason France Wanted Qaddafi Gone
Whereas Italy had shown doubt about the removal of the Libyan despot, France had been one of the first to argue for his overthrow when the local branch of the Middle East-wide Arab Spring began.
France had good reason to want Qaddafi gone and most of these were revealed in diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks.
I stated previously that France relies upon it’s dominant position in it’s former west African colonies, countries such as Mali or Niger, as a way of retaining both international cultural and diplomatic clout.
Primarily, however, France’s interest in Africa is economic. Fourteen French speaking West African countries use the French-controlled C/XFA Franc as their national currencies.
The currencies have been repeatedly criticised as being neo-colonial means of binding West Africa to French interests, because they are.
West African nations, up until this year, were required to keep half their foreign currency stocks in French banks and needed the approval of international boards dominated by the French state to enact serious monetary reform.
What does this have to do with Libya and Qaddafi? Well, remember I mentioned that Qaddafi had always had suspicions that the West would one day turn on him? It seems that Qaddafi had been quietly planning a coup by which Libya would take dominance of West Africa.
Throughout his time appearing as a Western ally, Qaddafi had been slowly building a stockpile of gold and other precious metals valued at over 7 billion dollars.
7 billion dollars is nothing compared to the wealth of the global powers, however, it is what he was planning to do with it which really scared France. Qaddafi had planned to use these precious metal reserves to create a pan-African currency which would rival and eventually replace the west-African Franc, thus guaranteeing Libya’s supremacy in the region.
The prospect of an Arab power displacing French influence in Francophone Africa is a serious fear in Paris. France is a power in decline and it could not afford to lose influence in West Africa to a considerably more financially independent state. It is this fear of displacement, not concerns about human rights or democracy, which was the main driver for France’s aggressive role in the campaign to topple Qaddafi.
The truth is that states are rarely motivated by the desire to preserve human dignity but instead they are primarily concerned with the quest to gain and protect power.
By ridding Libya of Qaddafi France has ensured it’s continued domination of it’s former colonies for the foreseeable future, however, the colonel’s ghost does appear to be haunting the French somewhat. By removing him, France has aided in damaging the entire system of French-speaking Africa, where we are seeing increasing Jihadism and mass migration. To assist it’s allies, the French state is slowly becoming sucked into a costly military campaign which it looks destined to lose. If France cannot extradite itself from West Africa, it may find itself facing a decade-long regional insurgency which will slowly sap it’s will and state coffers. It’s very likely that this would not be happening if Libya had not been pummeled in the manner that it was.
Somalia 2.0 — Fighting Among The Ruins
Ultimately, when Qaddafi’s overthrow was done, it was quick and merciless. The aged dictator has garnered enough enemies in his own country and abroad to make his situation untenable.
He died at the hands of an angry mob, his face bloodied and his body broken from explosive wounds, having been dragged from a drainage pipe he had tried to flee his captors in. The humiliating circumstances of his death were recorded by his captors on their mobile phones and video of him pleading for his life were circulated across the internet.
Qaddafi’s fall, almost immediately, revealed the same problem that has accompanied the removal of tyrants throughout the world. Libya had no alternative state structure outside of his own rule. Dictators, the world over, are paranoid people. They intentional ensure that there are no other sources of power from which they can be threatened. In Libya this manifested as Qaddafi keeping his army intentionally small and dispersed, and numerous tribes being placed in competing positions within the state structure.
This division was reflected in the opposition that overthrew Qaddafi, which was a diverse nexus of different groups of competing interests. There were former military officers who really just wanted him gone but wanted to retain the state structure, there were democrats who wanted a full Western-style system, there were a number of violent Islamist groups (including ISIS) and there were Tuereg tribesmen in Libya’s south, many of whom are culturally distinct from the north and wanted a degree of Independence.
While fighting Qaddafi, these groups had a common enemy and where held together under the control of the National Transitional Council but almost intermediately after achieving victory, the various factions turned on one another.
The geography of the country makes it difficult to maintain a unitary system and two rival power centres developed, one in the eastern oil-rich province Cyrenaica which holds the city of Benghazi, and one in the west where the Libyan capital Tripoli is situated.
To get between these two important cities requires a twelve hour drive, and this reflects a deeper geopolitical difference between the two centres. The internationally recognised Government of National Accord is based in the west and the capitol, however, they are on the back foot to the forces of the charismatic Mr Haftar, a Qaddafi-era general who has taken the vast majority of the country. Haftar is generally seen as a warlord among the international community, and an effective one at that, who has used his control of Qaddafi’s looted armoury and extraction of Libya’s oil resources to secure an impressive position.
While he bares all the hallmarks of a tyrant in the making, Haftar does have some geopolitical support, he has drawn funding and support from numerous Arab powers, including Egypt and the UAE, who see him as the best means of ensuring a degree of stability and uninterrupted flow of Libyan oil into world markets. Likewise, numerous Western powers have a degree of sympathy for him for his strident action against Libya’s franchise of ISIS.
Haftar’s armies have since stalled outside of Tripoli and have subjected the capital to an intense siege which has displaced some 50,000 people. It was this progress which has prompted Turkey to become more deeply involved in the conflict. There are numerous reasons for Turkey’s backing of the Libyan state against Haftar but the main one is primarily one of hegemony over the Mediterranean's energy resources. Erdogan’s Turkey has ambitions for taking a dominant role over the energy sources which exist beneath the ocean floor in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Thus far, they have met resistance from Cyprus and the Israelis but have been able to sign an agreement to access Libyan gas with the Tripoli government. If Haftar wins, however, Turkey could be met with a united front of states across the region determined to lock them out.
This is just one example of how international players are being dragged into the ongoing Libyan conflict. Egypt has repeatedly been threatened by Jihadist groups that have gained a foothold in the country and have been forced in engage in numerous bombing runs against these militant groups.
Countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and the northern region of Nigeria have become flush with weaponry (Qaddafi owned billions of dollars of weapons sold to him by the West), and since the collapse of the ISIS caliphate in the Middle East, are the global hot-spot for extremists to coalesce.
On the international stage, Qaddafi’s killing is said to have had a psychological effect on the numerous strongmen whom the West has dealings with. The fact that Qaddafi has previously been attempting a nuclear arsenal then surrendered these efforts has not been lost on the leaders of the supreme leaders of Iran and North Korea.
This complex web demonstrates the way that Libya has had a slow and pernicious effect on world stability. When the violence of the Syrian conflict was in full swing, the world would ignore Libya, however as that conflict winds down, Libya now looks set to play a more prominent role in the concerns of world powers. Going into the new decade, prepare to see Libya dominate the global news headlines once again.
