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Libya's decision last December to renounce its unconventional weapons programs has been hailed as a "model" for other rogue states willing to come in from the cold. Indeed, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi--once scorned by President Ronald Reagan as "the mad dog of the Middle East"--today appears on the brink of international rehabilitation. But to embrace Tripoli is to embrace tyranny: Gaddafi's regime is among the most despotic in the region, as well as a significant source of instability and violence across Africa. If the Bush administration is serious about a "forward strategy of freedom" for the Muslim world, it cannot afford to turn a blind eye to Gaddafi's internal repression and international adventurism.
"It's a sign of our maturity."
That was the explanation offered by Giuma Abulkher, spokesman for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, after the Libyan strongman's announcement last December that he would abandon his ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction. "We don't need these programs. We have no bad intentions. We have looked around and calculated a new reality."[1]
A new reality, indeed. In the aftermath of the war in Iraq and in the face of the Bush administration's determination to aggressively pursue terrorist groups, their state sponsors, and proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, pariahs like Gaddafi are shifting their strategic calculus in order to survive. Libya's newfound "maturity" is, in fact, evidence of the extent to which assertive American power, operating in conjunction with our British allies, is transforming the political landscape in the Middle East.
In the case of Libya, the Gaddafi regime formally acknowledged and renounced its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs on December 19, 2003--nine months to the day after the start of the Iraq war. In addition, Tripoli pledged to open itself to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and limit its missile arsenal to a range no greater than three hundred kilometers. "Libya's belief," a statement from its foreign ministry read, "is that these arms do not serve its security nor the security of the region."[2]
President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are right to celebrate their victory in talking Libya off the nuclear ledge. Yet without further American and British pressure, it remains an open question whether the good news from Tripoli represents a tactical retreat or a more profound strategic reorientation. Indeed, the danger exists that the White House, facing a tough reelection battle in which the central question will concern the exercise of American power in the world, will be tempted to put Libya's WMD program on its trophy shelf and set aside the more fundamental problem posed by Gaddafi's authoritarian regime--and with it, President Bush's pledge to pursue a "forward strategy of freedom" in the Arab-Muslim world.
In the Pale Moonlight
Colonel Gaddafi's regime has been on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979, having supported a veritable "who's who" of violent extremist groups over the past three-and-a-half decades. Once dubbed "the Mad Dog of the Middle East" by President Ronald Reagan, Gaddafi's patrons have included the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization, the IRA, and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in West Africa, which gained notoriety in the late 1990s for indiscriminately hacking the limbs off noncombatants in Sierra Leone. Gaddafi has also orchestrated a range of terrorist attacks against Western targets, including the 1986 bombing of a Berlin discotheque that killed two U.S. servicemen; the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people; and, in 1989, the bombing of a French airliner over Niger, killing 170 people on board.
Nonetheless, since the late 1990s, Gaddafi has been making overtures to mend his relations with the West. Mostly, this has amounted to offering compensation packages to the families of the victims of Libyan terror, the expulsion of several Palestinian terrorists from his territory, and the surrender of Pan Am Flight 103 suspects to a special Scottish court convened in the Hague. Since the September 11 attacks, Gaddafi has also expressed a willingness to join the global war on terror, identifying Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda as a threat to his regime.[3]
Much of the foreign policy establishment has been eager to embrace Gaddafi and accept his conversion from terrorist recluse to reasonable autocrat at face value. Britain reestablished diplomatic relations with Tripoli in 1999, and last September, the United Nations voted to lift sanctions. Indeed, the conventional wisdom on Gaddafi had already turned on the basis of last fall's Lockerbie settlement, several months before the WMD deal was announced. Writing in the Washington Post in August 2003, Ray Takeyh, director of studies at the National Defense University's Near East and South Asia Center, placed the burden squarely on the Bush administration to accelerate Libya's rehabilitation:
Rather than perpetuating its policy beyond useful purpose, Washington should acknowledge that the U.S.-led campaign to change Libyan policy has accomplished its original aims. . . . [I]nstead of maintaining unilateral sanctions, Washington should propose the phased establishment of diplomatic and trade ties in exchange for Libya's full compliance with all nonproliferation treaties.[4]
A report issued in December 2003 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies similarly stressed the need to bring Libya back into the international fold:
The United States and Libya are presently ensnared in mutual ignorance and distrust that impede clear thinking. . . . It is difficult for either side to move beyond its current policies because of deep uncertainty of the outcomes and fear that stepping outside of well-worn habits might expose one to severe penalties.[5]
Since Gaddafi's WMD announcement in December, the impulse to resume diplomacy as usual with Tripoli has grown even stronger within the foreign policy establishment--and with it, the impulse to deny that the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies, particularly the war in Iraq, had anything to do with Gaddafi's change of heart. Writing in the New York Times, Flynt Leverett of the Brookings Institution, former senior director for Middle Eastern affairs at the National Security Council, argued that "to persuade a rogue regime to get out of the terrorism business and give up its weapons of mass destruction, we must not only apply pressure but also make clear the potential benefits of cooperation." Alas, Leverett laments, this "incontrovertible" lesson still remains anathema to "the neoconservative wing" in the White House, which--outrage!--"strongly opposes any offer of carrots to state sponsors of terrorism." Fortunately, in this retelling, "the neoconservatives at the Pentagon and in the shop of Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton were left out of the loop" on Libya.[6]
Other partisans have been reluctant to grant the Bush administration any credit at all for Gaddafi's decision. Noting that British diplomats played the role of interlocutor with Tripoli, Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment argued that, in dealing with rogue states, "it is Europe's diplomatic engagement strategy"--as opposed to America's militaristic approach--"that is now dominant." For such regimes, Cirincione stresses, "[I]t is money that matters." Thus, in the case of Libya, European soft power accomplished what American hard power could not.[7]
Triangulation in Tripoli
Unfortunately for members of the "soft power" school of thought, it hardly seems a coincidence that Gaddafi's intelligence chief, Moussa Kussa, opened the dialogue on WMDs in March 2003, immediately before the invasion of Iraq. Gaddafi's own testimony at the time reveals the extent to which America's sudden willingness to assert its power in the Middle East weighed heavily on him. "When Bush is finished with Iraq, we'll have a clear idea of where he's going," he told the French daily Le Figaro on the eve of the war. "It won't take long to find out if Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Libya will be targets as well."8 Likewise, in September 2003, a spokesman for Silvio Berlusconi told the Daily Telegraph that Gaddafi had confided to the Italian prime minister: "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."[9]
"Soft power" advocates also overlook the fact that negotiations with Gaddafi had been dragging on for years--a steady process of wooing and cajoling the dictator with offers of international acceptance and lucrative oil contracts, but with no conceivable end in sight. What ultimately shuttered the Libyans' secret WMD programs were not these blandishments but a more tangible reality: namely, they got caught.
In August 2003, the U.S. and British intelligence communities scored a remarkable coup, blowing open the vast nuclear black market operated by Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. As revealed this past month, the CIA infiltrated a factory in Malaysia that was manufacturing centrifuges for uranium enrichment, which were then shipped to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. There, they were repackaged as "used machinery" and loaded onto the BBC China, a German ship bound for Tripoli. As the BBC China passed through the Suez Canal, Washington ordered the vessel seized, thus securing ironclad proof of Libya's clandestine nuclear program.
According to U.S. officials, the shipments of machine parts suggest that the Libyans had hoped to acquire at least ten thousand centrifuges, which could have produced enough uranium for ten nuclear bombs a year. "Their goal was far-reaching," said a top European nuclear expert. "They had ordered this very large amount."[10]
Despite Gaddafi's years of high-flying oratory about "engagement" with the West and his strenuous denials about unconventional weapons--a mere nine months before the interdiction of the centrifuges, he insisted that nuclear weapons "are no use to us, and we don't have enough money to manufacture weapons of mass destruction"--it was only after the seizure of the BBC China that the behavior of his regime actually changed.[11] "The seizure showed them how much we know about the program," said one U.S. official. "Even though the Libyans said, 'You can come and look,' months went by and they didn't grant access. When the interdiction took place, they said, 'You can come in.'" [12]
The seizure of the centrifuges and the unraveling of Khan's nuclear network effectively left Gaddafi with little room to maneuver. In addition, Gaddafi has become "increasingly isolated at home," as "corruption, mismanagement, and unemployment have eroded support for the regime."[13]
In part, Gaddafi's internal weakness is a reflection of the fact that his brand of pan-Arab socialism is a spent force in the Middle East, leaving flimsy ideological justification for his continued rule. In part, it is also because Gaddafi presides over a basket-case command economy, which depends almost exclusively on oil revenues that have declined precipitously since the late 1970s.[14]
Gaddafi is thus trying to cobble together a new balance of power that will ensure his continued rule. The rhetoric of Libyan prime minister Shokri Ghanem reflects this pragmatic realization. "If stronger powers want us to end our atomic program, we have to do it," he told Washington Post reporter Daniel Williams. "We have other priorities."[15]
But as Williams concludes, this is the "language of realpolitik," not of a new domestic political consciousness. Indeed, Ghanem sounds like a North African Deng Xiao Ping, trying to modernize a stagnant economy while preserving a stagnant power structure. "We try to concentrate on improving the economy and relations with different countries," Ghanem explains. Moreover, he has "no guarantee all the reforms will be accepted. But the leader"--Gaddafi--"listens. He feels the economy needs improvement."[16]
Specifically, Gaddafi hopes that his new foreign policy will permit the return of U.S. oil companies, prompting a flood of cash that he can then use to prop up his regime. Libya is, indeed, a tempting prize, with proven reserves of 29.75 billion barrels of oil.[17] The major impediment to the return of U.S. oil companies is the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), which punishes firms that invest more than $20 million in either country. The American petroleum industry, and especially companies that had significant concessions in Libya prior to the imposition of sanctions in 1986, have long been lobbying to take the "L" out of "ILSA," which was last renewed in August 2001.[18] Gaddafi is clearly betting that his decision to renounce WMDs will prove the tipping point in overturning ILSA, whether by congressional vote or presidential waiver.
Tyrannus Delendus Est
Having lost the debate over Iraq, lovers of the status quo would like nothing better than to declare, as Ray Takeyh put it, that "a Libyan state that once served as a model of how to deal with rogue states can now serve as a model of how to deal with a revolutionary regime weary of its isolation and ostracism."[19] Flynt Leverett suggests, for instance, that a similar "grand bargain" might be struck with Iran, wherein "Tehran would trade off its ties to terrorist groups and pursuit of nuclear weapons for security guarantees, a lifting of sanctions, and normalized relations with Washington."[20]
There is significant basis, however, to be skeptical of embracing the "Libyan model" as it currently stands. Gaddafi's renunciation of his clandestine WMD programs is unquestionably a good thing for U.S. national security interests, but it is far from the sum total of Libya's offenses that demand redress.
Two issues in particular cannot be ignored by the United States as it contemplates to what extent it wishes to rehabilitate Libya. First, Gaddafi needs to stop meddling in African politics, where he is a deeply destabilizing force; second, and more importantly, fundamental political reforms are desperately needed in Tripoli.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has decried Gaddafi's "destructive role in perpetuating regional conflicts in Africa."[21] As one U.S. official explained, "If it were anywhere but Africa where he was meddling, we would scream bloody murder. Because it's Africa, we tend to shrug and let it go."[22] As the aforementioned report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies acknowledges:
Energetic Libyan diplomacy on the continent takes advantage of the fact that the cost of being a significant player in Africa is far less than in the Middle East. Weaker African governments are far more disposed toward a mixed strategy of engagement and containment than bald confrontation, making a dynamic Libyan policy all the more immediate and challenging to African interests.[23]
Gaddafi has provided training, funding, and support for many of Africa's most notorious dictators and thugs. In the midst of last summer's crisis in Liberia, Gaddafi dispatched a planeload of ammunition and arms in order to prop up his old ally, Liberian president Charles Taylor, in contravention of a UN Security Council resolution and as the United States and the international community labored to get Taylor out of power. According to press accounts, the re-supply included rocket-propelled grenades, missiles, mortars, and AK-47 ammunition. Libya had cultivated ties to Taylor since the late 1980s, when it was instrumental in fostering his insurgency against the Liberian government.[24]
Gaddafi also rushed to the rescue of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe in the summer of 2001, at a time when it appeared his brutish regime was finally tottering on the brink of collapse. With Mugabe battling domestic unrest, an increasingly dysfunctional economy, and international press attention focused on his "ethnic cleansing" of white farmers, Gaddafi contributed $1 million to the Zimbabwean's reelection coffers and negotiated a deal to provide the country--suffering from fuel shortages--$360 million a year in oil.[25]
Douglas Farah, one of the most astute observers of African politics, has neatly summarized Gaddafi's strategy on the continent:
In the 1980s, Gaddafi trained scores of African revolutionary leaders, including those whose names became synonymous with brutality and corruption: Taylor of Liberia, Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone, Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Idriss Deby of Chad, and Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso. Libyan training camps "became the Harvard and Yale of a whole generation of African revolutionaries."
[Gaddafi's] goal is to create a single state of non-Arab Africa, with no internal borders and one army, legislature, judicial system, and currency. His proposed capital of the new nation is Tripoli. His mantra, repeated at pan-African conferences and state visits, is "Africa for Africans. This land is ours. We are masters of our continent."[26]
The Bush administration must make it clear to Gaddafi that further African adventurism and hegemonic delusions on the continent will be viewed in Washington as a genuine national security problem--not merely a second order "humanitarian" concern. Not only has Gaddafi's support for bloodthirsty and corrupt dictators exacerbated Africa's own internecine struggles for power, it has helped create openings in the form of failed states that al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and other Islamic terrorists can and have eagerly exploited. Al Qaeda, for instance, reaped millions of dollars from the illicit sale of blood diamonds mined by RUF rebels in Sierra Leone and coordinated by Charles Taylor in Liberia--both allies of Gaddafi. A central figure in this trade has been Ibrahim Bah, a Senegalese revolutionary who trained in Libya under the protection of Gaddafi and fought with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, as well as with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[27]
The fact is, as the United States deepens its military commitments in the Arab heartland, terrorists are regrouping on the perimeters of the Islamic world--in Muslim-majority West Africa and Southeast Asia--where they can prey on weak states. Pursuing these terrorists to their far-flung redoubts is a key strategic corollary to the Bush Doctrine. The establishment of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, headquartered in Djibouti, is a testament to the Bush administration's commitment to expand the Pax Americana to East Africa; clamping down on Libya's destabilizing influence across the rest of the continent would go a long way toward supporting a truly global war against Islamist insurgents.
In addition to quashing Gaddafi's ambitions in Africa, there is the even more pressing problem of internal political conditions in Libya. Gaddafi's Libya is a dictatorship, governed by nothing more than the whims of a tyrant, devoid of elections, accountability, and transparency. The U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights describes a country in which torture, arbitrary arrest, violence against women, and "extra-governmental organizations . . . that exercise control over most aspects of citizens' lives" are the norm. Freedom in Libya is on a par with North Korea and Iran. Independent institutions do not exist; instead, Gaddafi's "green book" is the basis for society. According to Freedom House's most recent annual assessment of the country:
Political trials are held in secret, with no due process considerations. . . . The death penalty applies to a number of political offenses and "economic" crimes, including currency speculation. . . .
Libya actively abducts and kills political dissidents in exile. The public practice of law is illegal.
Hundreds of . . . political prisoners reportedly remain in prison. Some have been in jail for more than ten years without charge or trial.
The government does not allow prison visits by human rights monitors. . . .
Free media do not exist in Libya. Publication of opinions contrary to government policy is forbidden. The state owns and controls all media and thus controls reporting of domestic and international issues. . . .
Academic freedom is severely restricted. Elementary, middle, and high schools are subject to intensive political indoctrination. In December, the revolutionary committee of the department of politics and economics at Garyounis University in Benghazi "purified" the department of so-called subversive elements.[28]
Libya likewise flunks the Heritage/Wall Street Journal index of economic freedom, which ranks the socialist regime 154th out of 155 states in the world. (It is beaten only by North Korea.) According to the U.S. State Department, the Libyan government "dominate[s] the economy through complete control of the country's oil resource. . . . Much of the country's income [is] lost to waste, corruption, conventional armaments purchases, and attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction, as well as to large donations made to 'liberation' movements and developing countries in attempts to increase Gaddafi's influence in Africa and elsewhere."[29] The most recent edition of the CIA World Factbook adds:
[O]il revenues and a small population give Libya one of the highest per capita GDPs in Africa, but little of this income flows to the lower orders of society. Import restrictions and inefficient resource allocations have led to periodic shortages of basic goods and foodstuffs. . . . Libya imports 75 percent of its food.[30]
Many in the foreign policy establishment suggest that Libya's internal political repression and economic dysfunction should not impede the normalization of relations with Washington. As one congressman observed during a visit to Tripoli in January, the United States is, after all, allies with several authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.[31] Indeed, the very notion of a "forward strategy of freedom" in the region is perceived as poison not only by petty tyrants like Gaddafi but also by the world's bureaucrats, from whom "stability" and a "balance of power" are like oxygen.
The Bush Doctrine, however, offers nothing if not a sharp critique of this line of reasoning. As the president declared in his November 6, 2003, speech at the National Endowment for Democracy:
Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe-because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.[32]
The core truth behind the Bush Doctrine is that the character of a regime matters as much, if not more, than its armaments. Gaddafi's apparent willingness to suspend his WMD programs, while welcome, is not in itself grounds for concluding that Libya has become part of the "solution" to the problem of Islamist terror. To take President Bush's rhetoric at its word, regimes such as Gaddafi's are themselves the very source of the problem of Islamist terror.
Indeed, Libya wishes to join the ranks of other "status quo" governments in the Middle East like Egypt and Saudi Arabia that accept massive infusions of American money while balancing between quiet cooperation in the global war on terror and frantically deflecting the rage and frustration of their domestic population--the product of political tyranny, economic stagnation, and all-around corruption--outward toward the United States and the all-purpose boogeyman of Israel.
And let there be no doubt: American foreign investment in Libya is unlikely to create a prosperous, functional economy there if Gaddafi's past squandering of his oil wealth is any indication. Instead, the United States is likely to find itself complicit in yet another "oil-for-palaces" arrangement, subsidizing the lifestyle of a sclerotic regime and further implicating itself in the broader crisis of the Arab-Muslim world.
Libya's rehabilitation on such terms would communicate a devastating message to other "status quo" Arab governments that severely undercuts the Bush administration's incipient efforts to goad them toward internal reform. Does the United States really want to suggest that we are going easy on domestic reform in Libya, because it developed a nuclear program, but taking a hard line on Egypt, because it did not? The regime in Tripoli is weak--and showing deference to the weak will earn the United States nothing but contempt from the Arab-Muslim world.
To sweep Gaddafi's domestic outrages under the carpet would also undermine the forces of freedom in the rest of the Middle East, especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan who have partnered with us in an effort to create more just and humane political order. Indeed, from Mauritania to Indonesia, an embrace of Gaddafi would suggest hypocrisy on the part of the United States--that the Bush administration's recent rhetoric about democracy can be dismissed as a mere rhetorical fig leaf designed to cloak its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and justify its continued military presence there. It would also, perversely, reinforce the Democratic Party's claim that victory in the global war on terror can be divorced from the promise to liberalize the greater Middle East. Only by pressuring Libya to transform itself internally can President Bush make clear how his policies have diverged from those of his predecessors.[33]
In short, Gaddafi presents nothing less than a challenge to the president's credibility, both in the United States and internationally, as well as an important test case for the Bush Doctrine, in which the precedents and principles involved must be recognized as part and parcel of the broader strategic stakes.
Shortly after the announcement of Gaddafi's disarmament in December, a Washington Post reporter asked average Libyans gathered outside a grocery store in Tripoli their opinion about the possibility of rapprochement between their government and Washington. One man replied:
America, good. But the American government . . . I don't expect much from it. They talk in America about democracy in Iraq, but what about here? I haven't heard anything about that. Oil seems to be the important thing. We give up the atomic weapons, the Americans get oil, and what will change?[34]
This, in essence, captures America's strategic miscalculation in the Arab-Muslim world for the past sixty years. Speaking at the Whitehall Palace in London last November, the president unflinchingly identified this mistake:
We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. . . . Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold. . . . No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.[35]
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is a tyrant. To what extent should we tolerate him for the sake of stability? The president's rhetoric provides one answer. Our policies, unfortunately, may soon betray another.
Notes
1. Daniel Williams, "Possible Opening to West Stirs Hope in Libya," Washington Post, December 27, 2003, A13.
2. "Libyan Call Against Arms," Reuters, December 19, 2003. Accessed at http://www.nexis.com on February 12, 2004.
3. "Interview with Muammar Qaddafi," This Week with George Stephanopoulos, August 3, 2003.
4. Ray Takeyh, "Has Gaddafi Reformed?" Washington Post, August 19, 2003, A19.
5. Jon B. Alterman and J. Stephen Morrison, "Is It Time to Engage Libya?" Middle East Notes/Africa Notes, Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 2003, 3.
6. Flynt Leverett, "Why Libya Gave Up on the Bomb," New York Times, January 23, 2004, A23.
7. Joseph Cirincione, "The World Just Got Safer. Give Diplomacy the Credit," Washington Post, January 11, 2004, B4.
8. Quoted in Patrick E. Tyler, "Libyan Stagnation a Big Factor in Qaddafi Surprise," New York Times, January 8, 2004, A3.
9. Robin Gedye, "UN Should Fight for Rights, Says Berlusconi," Daily Telegraph, September 4, 2003.
10. William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, and Raymond Bonner, "A Tale of Nuclear Proliferation: How Pakistani Built His Network," New York Times, February 12, 2004, A1.
11. "On Saddam, Lockerbie, Bin Laden, and Peace," Washington Post, January 12, 2004, B01.
12. William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, and Raymond Bonner, "A Tale of Nuclear Proliferation: How Pakistani Built His Network," New York Times, February 12, 2004, A1.
13. "Libya," Freedom in the World 2003, Freedom House, 2003. Accessed on February 13, 2004.
14. Tyler, "Libyan Stagnation," A3.
15. Daniel Williams, "New Faces Herald Hopes for New Libya; Ministers Under Gaddafi Signal Reforms Meant to End Isolation," Washington Post, January 3, 2004, A14.
16. Ibid.
17. Simon Romero, "Oil Giants Look Anew at Libya," New York Times, December 24, 2003, W1.
18. For a fuller discussion, see Lawrence F. Kaplan, "Oil Spill; How the Oil Industry Finally Lost," New Republic, July 23, 2001, 18.
19. Takeyh, "Has Gaddafi Reformed?" A19.
20. Leverett, "Why Libya Gave Up on the Bomb," A23.
21. "Powell Says U.S. Will Continue Bilateral Sanctions on Libya," U.S. State Department Press Release, August 15, 2003. Accessed on February 13, 2004.
22. Douglas Farah, "Gaddafi 'Meddling' in Africa," Washington Post, August 16, 2003, A15.
23. Alterman and Morrison, "Is It Time to Engage Libya?" 3.
24. Karl Vick, "Taylor Went to Libya for Arms, Source Say," Washington Post, August 8, 2003, A11.
25. Farah, "Gaddafi 'Meddling' in Africa," A15.
26. Ibid.
27. Douglas Farah, "Al Qaeda Cash Tied to Diamond Trade; Sale of Gems From Sierra Leone Rebels Raised Millions, Sources Say," Washington Post, November 2, 2001, A1. For a more detailed treatment, see "For a Few Dollars More: How Al Qaeda Moved into the Diamond Trade," Global Witness, April 2003. Accessed at www.globalwitness.org on February 1, 2004.
28. "Libya," Freedom in the World 2003, Freedom House, 2003. Accessed on February 13, 2004.
29. "Libya," U.S. Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2002, March 31, 2003. Accessed at www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18283pf.htm on February 1, 2004.
30. "Libya," CIA World Factbook 2003. Accessed at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html on February 12, 2004.
31. Roula Khalaf, "Libya to Help Uncover Black Market Weapons Networks," Financial Times, January 27, 2004, 10.
32. George W. Bush, "Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy," Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Washington, D.C., November 6, 2003.
33. The silence on the question of Libyan human rights in the aftermath of Colonel Gaddafi's announcement is especially disturbing--a reminder of the extent to which there is no domestic political constituency for freedom in the Middle East. It is especially damning that "liberal" Democrats, who demonized the Bush administration's campaign to remove Saddam Hussein--a bloodstained, genocidal dictator whose human rights record was arguably among the worst in the world--as a "war for oil," have cheered at the prospect of rehabilitating a similarly thuggish regime-motivated by a narrowly conceived notion of "national interest" and rewarding Western oil interests at the expense of the Libyan people.
34. Daniel Williams, "Possible Opening to West Stirs Hope in Libya," Washington Post, December 27, 2003, A13.
35. George W. Bush, "President Bush Discusses Iraq Policy at Whitehall Palace in London," Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Washington, D.C., November 19, 2003.
Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow at AEI. Vance Serchuk is a research assistant at AEI.
