Exit the Colonel (10 page)

Jelloud supposedly expressed his concerns to Gaddafi, who challenged him to draw up a national rescue plan. Jelloud set up a series of working groups to craft new policy solutions for the Libyan economy, culture, and youth education and five weeks later delivered a draft report to Gaddafi.
⁷¹
The Leader told Jelloud that he could not, in his capacity as a mere “adviser” to the Libyan people, approve the plan. In the spirit of the program of governance laid out in
The Green Book
, the rescue plan had to be put to the masses, via the General People's Congress and Basic People's Congress. When Gaddafi submitted the proposal, however, he framed it not as a national action plan, but as a set of separate concept papers. Jelloud's plan to rescue Libya died by committee, presumably just as Gaddafi had planned.

Perhaps bravely, Jelloud publicly voiced his disappointment. Subsequently, in a speech before the General People's Congress, he opined, “A true Revolutionary is before all a good patriot; a good patriot should know to manage the riches of the country rationally.”
⁷²
Gaddafi did not appreciate such criticism, though Jelloud seems to have managed a rare, peaceful exit from government. He was allowed to retreat to his residence in the upscale Tripoli neighborhood of Bin Ashur.

Even though he had dispensed with Jelloud's rescue plan without heeding its warnings, Gaddafi did make some changes in response to Libya's worsening outlook. In late 1990, he reshuffled the ministries, appointing the generally respected technocrat Buzaid Dorda as prime minister, and initiated a process of even more decentralized decision making, effectively circumventing part of the Byzantine budgetary drafting and approval process. The system he had previously created encompassed fifteen hundred self-governed communities, for whom all decisions, even relatively minor ones, could be made only after being funneled through the Basic People's Congresses, then up to the leader or his circle.

The regime later openly acknowledged the failings of its governing bodies. A 2002 document, the
National Report on Human Development
,
⁷³
produced by the Libyan government in consultation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) acknowledged an

Interestingly, according to this report, Benghazi, Derna, and environs are listed as being “above the national average” with respect to living conditions. The report refers to such regions as Derna, one of the most abjectly poor areas in Libya, as “super-endowed” with respect to quality-of-life indicators, such as education, population density, job opportunities, and the like. It does not so categorize Sirte, Gaddafi's hometown and the recipient of large infrastructure grants over the years.
⁷⁵

Gaddafi's piecemeal administrative reforms occurred in the midst of the growing threat of repercussions for Lockerbie. It remains unclear whether these reforms were the result of a fundamental change of strategy, due to internal conditions independent of Lockerbie, or an attempt to prepare for blowback from an eventual indictment. Given Gaddafi's demonstrated impulsiveness, it is possible that reform decisions and Lockerbie formed two separate calculations in Gaddafi's mind, and that he did not, or did not wish to comprehend, that Lockerbie, presumably his response to one set of actions (the US bombings of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986), would frustrate policy decisions made two years later. A direct parallel can be drawn with the attempted assassination of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah a decade later—the timing of which was also extremely inopportune, just as the US was about to lift the last of its bilateral sanctions from Libya.

A 1992 article in the Saudi-based
Al Wasat
alleged that verdicts in the Pan Am and UTA cases came as a “shock” to Gaddafi and his closest associates:

Perhaps Gaddafi had always expected a harsh international response, and this public “historic opportunity” was his vehicle for steeling the people against future hardship. Ali Maghbooshi, a member of the Tripoli People's Committee, described the Lockerbie indictment as a “strange electrical collision” that set off an internal campaign that Gaddafi himself referred to as a “year of big changes.”
⁷⁷

As consequences mounted, Gaddafi sprang into action. He emptied out the old storehouses of previously procured, substandard goods, closed many of the group supermarkets, and ordered $4 billion worth of new clothes and foodstuffs distributed to the populace as supplementary income, before March 14, 1993, the date on which the UN Security Council was to decide whether to extend sanctions.
⁷⁸
If this was intended to bolster his popularity, it did not achieve its aim: the vast majority of these goods never found their way to their target populations. Regime clients snapped up the bulk of Gaddafi's handouts, smuggling much of the largesse outside the country to sell at a markup. Matters grew worse once the UN sanctions against Libya started to take hold. Tripoli found itself physically and diplomatically completely isolated.

In 2004, stories still circulated in Benghazi regarding the “highly suspicious circumstances” surrounding a 1992 plane crash.
⁷⁹
The Libyan government story held that a passenger plane bound for Tripoli from Benghazi, with 157 on board, collided with a Libyan MiG-23 on approach. Libyan authorities reportedly did not allow any foreign investigation of the incident. In 2011, a credible Libyan source claimed that Gaddafi had planned to blow up the plane over the Gulf of Sirte as a sympathy play in advance of imposition of UN sanctions. The flight number had been changed from its previous designation to 1103 to create a not so subtle link with Pan Am 103; the date, December 22, was allegedly chosen for proximity to the date of the Pan Am bombing (December 21, 1988). Libyan security services showed up at Benina airport in advance of departure to prevent certain people (presumably friends of the regime) from boarding the flight.

The bomb apparently did not detonate as planned, so Gaddafi ordered jets to ram the plane several miles from Tripoli airport, lest it crash or explode close to Tripoli and create an international incident. An association of victims of this flight formed shortly after the 2011 revolution, and apparently the National Transitional Council has since opened an investigation.
⁸⁰
Ahmed Ibrahim Fagih's comment that it was often impossible to assign “normal logic” to Gaddafi's acts would certainly apply here. If the conspiracy
is ultimately confirmed, it would add another layer to the Gaddafi psychological profile and demonstrate that, whatever he had planned by changing political course in 1992, Lockerbie was certainly not far from his mind. Here was the concept of linkage, to an extreme never before seen.

Sanctions hit Libya like a bomb. Between 1992 and 1997, the consumer price index rose 200 percent, while salaries remained fixed by Law #15 of 1981 at between 150 and 500 Libyan dinars (about $100) per month.
⁸¹
From 1992 to 1999, Libya's economy grew, on average, a nugatory 0.8 percent.
⁸²

Unrest and rebellion were perhaps inevitable in such a climate. In 1993, members of the Warfalla tribe (one of four substantial tribes co-opted by the regime) launched a coup attempt. While it ended in failure, this attempt appeared to have greatly unsettled Gaddafi. Opposition groups abroad reported assassination attempts on Gaddafi in August 1995 and 1998, most perpetrated by activists within the increasingly restless Islamist opposition. Between 1995 and 1998, northern Cyrenaica, especially the cities of Derna, Al Marj, and Al Beida, frequent skirmishes took place between government security forces and members of the Islamic opposition. As of 1996, Derna was said to be in a “state of siege,” though there were few outsiders in a position to verify this.
⁸³
The Libyan government, loathe to give the locals any credit for the effectiveness of their disruptions, ascribed blame for the uprisings to infiltrators from Egypt and the Sudan.

The international pressure on Libya only increased through the 1990s. With UN sanctions already in place, in 1996, the US Congress instituted a secondary boycott of Libya, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA, also known as the D'Amato Act). ILSA imposed a range of punitive measures on companies that invested more than $40 million in Libyan hydrocarbon projects. Controversially, ILSA was aimed not only at discouraging US companies from investment in Libya, but at non-American corporations as well.

Under pressure from abroad and at home, Gaddafi's regime was struggling to cope. Gaddafi's playbook at this time contained no fundamentally new ideas, only composites of previous strategies. He alternately used carrots and sticks against the Islamic opposition, arresting, killing and beating some, while buying off or releasing less ideologically committed activists. In the late 1990s, he attempted to defray the effects of economic isolation by again turning to economic palliatives, such as allowing more consumables,
basic appliances and candy bars into the country. Nevertheless, the public was rejecting his policies in ever more public displays. Interestingly, soccer matches had become a popular venue for an odd kind of proxy war between the regime and its enemies.

Throughout the Middle East, soccer plays a unique role in politics. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak was known to fix games in favor of teams with regime backing in order to fortify his own popularity. Likewise, in Libya, soccer matches became a channeling mechanism for pro- and anti-Gaddafi elements.

The regime invested directly in several clubs, foremost among them Al Ahly Tripoli, which Gaddafi's soccer-playing son Saadi Gaddafi effectively owned. Time after time, loyalist teams benefited from unfair advantages, never losing a match. Yet the politicking wasn't restricted to the government's side. As popular resentment against the regime grew, games were marked by backlash from the crowd.

Conflict between fans and regime forces often sparked violence. On July 9, 1996, Saadi Gaddafi's bodyguards opened fire on a stadium crowd screaming anti-Gaddafi slogans. On July 20, 2000, in the eastern town of Al Marj, the questionable loss of Benghazi's Al Ahly to rival Al Akhdar of Al Beida (Al Akhdar was allegedly owned by Saadi's mother, whose family was from Al Beida), led bands of roving youth to shout anti-Gaddafi slogans and attack government property. The next day, Gaddafi responded by declaring Benghazi a “rebel city” and sent bulldozers to raze the tomb of Omar Al Mokhtar. This was an astonishing overreaction, even for Gaddafi, given the symbolic value of Mokhtar to all Libyans. In Gaddafi's first official visit to Italy after the reopening of the country in 2003, Gaddafi had worn an outsized button depicting Omar Al Mokhtar. Nevertheless, at that moment, Mokhtar represented to Gaddafi eastern defiance against his rule.
⁸⁴

In another incident, Al Ahly Benghazi fans booed Al Ahly Tripoli during a cup final, put Al Ahly Tripoli colors on a donkey, and led it into the stadium.
⁸⁵
In response, Gaddafi celebrated the Revolutionary Day in 2000 by demolishing the general headquarters of the Al Ahly Benghazi soccer club. Tripoli-based diplomats heard rumors in 2005 that Saadi had reacted to critical comments by the coach of Al Ahly Tripoli by shooting him dead in his (Saadi's) Gargaresh-street mansion in Tripoli.
⁸⁶

The soccer wars, while a significant release mechanism for the population at large, were something of a sideshow compared to the escalating conflict between Gaddafi and the eastern, Islamist opposition focused on an organization called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), many of
whose leaders had experience fighting with the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets. The LIFG suddenly arrived on the scene after an assassination attempt on Gaddafi in 1996, the details of which remain somewhat sketchy. The LIFG served as a model for the establishment and spread of yet other Islamic groups, many of which were supported by colleagues in Egypt.

By 1997, the situation in eastern Libya could be described as undeclared war. Between Benghazi and Derna, members of the LIFG imitated Omar Al Mokhtar's strategy against Italian invaders, using the cave-ridden Green Mountains as their redoubt for a series of guerrilla attacks against regime security forces in the east.
⁸⁷
The regime responded with napalm strikes against rebel targets that left swaths of denuded landscape, still evident. There were reports of the army battling with LIFG members using helicopter gunships, while the Islamists managed to kill scores of government security officers. Benghazi residents recall the presence of military men with machine guns at intersections, barricades managed by Revolutionary Guard members, all of which stood in stark contrast to the calm, controlled atmosphere in Tripoli.

After an extended series of counterattacks against suspected antiregime agents and their hideouts in the east during the following years, around 1999, Gaddafi announced he had decisively wiped out Islamic opposition, including all traces of the Muslim Brotherhood. It did not take long for events to belie these assertions. Libyan security arrested a number of nationals for planning a car bomb attack in the early 2000s; a couple of months later, a previously unknown group calling itself Al Qaeda in Eastern Libya claimed credit for a suicide bomb attack in Derna. In a way, this was good timing for Gaddafi, for as much as he wanted to believe he had crushed his Islamist enemies, it was becoming increasingly clear that the ability to cite an Al Qaeda threat and suggest some insight into the workings of its networks would be of great value to the Americans. The resilience of the Islamist networks—LIFG and the Muslim Brotherhood, for the most part—strongly suggested that the fighters were far better organized and had much more support within the general population than Gaddafi was ever willing to acknowledge publicly.