The Topeka Capital-Journal (1/11/08) Minuteman Media
Few dictators in the world are sitting prettier in 2008 than Col.
Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. In a region full of potentates and presidents-for-life,
his reign is supreme. Having seized power in a 1969 coup, he has ruled
his country for longer than any other Arab head of state. And now,
as wintry January begins, the colonel has quietly completed his journey
back in from the cold.
For many years, of course, Libya resided on the US list of state sponsors
of terrorism, accused—most notoriously—of masterminding the December
1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 above Lockerbie, Scotland. In 1981, Qaddafi
was labeled by Newsweek as the “most dangerous man in the
world.” But in 2006 the US removed Libya from the list and opened
an embassy in Tripoli, and in early January the Libyan foreign minister
toured the White House, making the rapprochement official. What changed?
The Bush administration wants the world to think that Qaddafi was
scared straight by the regime-changing war in Iraq. In December 2003,
indeed, Libya did cancel its modest program for building weapons of
mass destruction. But the real impetus for that decision was the September
11, 2001 attacks: The only threat Qaddafi perceives to his rule is
that posed by homegrown radical Islamists, who reportedly have made
inroads into the Libyan army. Now that the colonel is “with us” in
the war on terrorism, he feels much more secure.
Perhaps the greatest irony in Libya's tale lies in equally quiet developments
in the Lockerbie case. In 2001, a special Scottish court in The Hague
convicted Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence
operative, of carrying out the bombing, which killed all 270 people
on board. (Al-Megrahi's co-defendant, also an erstwhile Libyan agent,
was acquitted.) The Libyan government, which long denied involvement,
has nevertheless been compelled by US-British pressure to pay $8 million
in punitive damages to each of the Lockerbie victims' families, with
$2 million each ostensibly yet to come. Now, however, it appears that
al-Megrahi is innocent.
There have always been questions about why investigators, in 1990,
abruptly shifted their focus from a tiny Palestinian faction to Libya.
In 2007, these questions arose anew when the Scottish newspaper The
Herald reported that the CIA had offered $2 million to a key
prosecution witness who has been publicly described by the lead prosecutor
as “an apple short of a picnic.” The evidence against al-Megrahi is
so weak, in fact, that the Scottish law professor who designed the
special tribunal calls the verdict “an absolute disgrace and outrage.”
Al-Megrahi is expected to win his second appeal.
Though Qaddafi's regime is credibly accused of support for other terrorist
acts in the 1980s, the Lockerbie incident was the main cause of its
international isolation. To get off the State Department's terrorism
list, Libya had to accept responsibility for the bombing, though it
did not accept guilt. Was the colonel's $2.7 billion pledge of restitution
for something he did not do the price of readmission to Washington's
good graces? If so, the price was likely worth it, for after US sanctions
were lifted, Libya sold $2.5 billion worth of oil to the American
market in 2006 alone.
The other benefit of the Iraq war, meanwhile, was to have been a democratic
domino effect in the Islamic world. But Qaddafi's one-man rule stands
undiminished. Law 71, which permits the death penalty for organizing
opposition to the principles of his 1969 “revolution,” is still on
the books. Human Rights Watch reports that political prisoners are
still “disappearing.” The colonel has learned from his neighbors in
Egypt and his fellow officers in Pakistan that enlisting in the war
on terrorism means that Washington turns down the volume of all that
talk about democracy.
The story of Col. Qaddafi's rehabilitation does not show the success
of any Bush doctrine intended to transform the Middle East. For all
its remarkable particulars, it's really just business as usual.
---
Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report , published
by the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a non-profit,
non-governmental organization based in Washington, DC, was established
in 1971. MERIP publishes the quarterly magazine Middle East Report
and maintains one of the most informative websites on Middle East
politics, culture and society. www.merip.org .
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Libya's Fat Cat The Topeka Capital-Journal January 11, 2008
Chris Toensing
Few
dictators in the world are sitting prettier in 2008 than Col.
Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. In a region full of potentates and presidents-for-life,
his reign is supreme. Having seized power in a 1969 coup, he has
ruled his country for longer than any other Arab head of state.
And now, as wintry January begins, the colonel has quietly completed
his journey back in from the cold. Full
Story>>
