Muammar Qaddafi

Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will trek to New York City this week to participate in the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) – his first appearance at UNGA in his forty year rule of Libya. Columnists have been speculating for weeks, especially after the return of the Lockerbie bomber, on what the ever-enigmatic Qaddafi will say during his address and whose hands he will (be allowed to) shake.  Despite causing a controversy almost every time he speaks about African or Middle East politics, his about-face in 2003 on weapons of mass destruction restored his good graces in Washington and the allure of Libyan oil contracts assures his amenability to most European leaders.

Libya’s involvement in Sudanese affairs, and the Darfur crisis particularly, rarely make much news in the American press.  There is a possibility of course that Qaddafi will say something truly outrageous about Sudan during his UN address that will make headlines.  Speaking on the same day as President Obama and Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the threshold though for significant news coverage will be high.  Then again, claiming as he did last month that Israel is behind all of Africa’s conflicts – including Darfur – may grab him some serious ink.

While many see such a ludicrous statement as Qaddafi just being his regular abhorrent anti-Semite self, other previous comments by the Libyan leader on Darfur begin to reveal a much more sinister role for the Libyan leader.  Two years ago, for instance, speaking at the opening of a short-lived round of negotiations in Tripoli between the Sudanese government and the Darfuri rebels, Qaddafi said:

“You might laugh if I say that the main reason of this issue [Darfur] is a camel…Africa has thousands of issues – they are about water, about grass – and Africa is divided into 50 countries, and the tribes are divided amongst so many countries, although they belong to each other.  The problem we are having now is that we politicize such problems between tribes.”

His seemingly innocent remarks actually affirm President Omar al-Bashir’s standard excuse that the Darfur crisis is merely a tribal conflict that escalated because of foreign intervention.  Perhaps we should expect this message-consistency from two authoritarian leaders (and neighbors) who collectively have tightly held their grips on power for sixty years as of this summer.   But there is more that Qaddafi hides from these remarks and his other comments on Darfur and the politics of Sudan.

To start, Qaddafi serves as an originator of the guns and ideology of the janjaweed.  As Alex de Waal has written:

In the 1980s, Colonel Qaddafi dreamed of an ‘Arab belt’ across Sahelian Africa. The keystone was to gain control of Chad, starting with the Aouzou strip in the north of the country. He mounted a succession of military adventures in Chad, and from 1987 to 1989, Chadian factions backed by Libya used Darfur as a rear base, provisioning themselves freely from the crops and cattle of local villagers….Many of the guns in Darfur came from those factions. Qaddafi’s formula for war was expansive: he collected discontented Sahelian Arabs and Tuaregs, armed them, and formed them into an Islamic Legion that served as the spearhead of his offensives. Among the legionnaires were Arabs from western Sudan, many of them followers of the Mahdist Ansar sect, who had been forced into exile in 1970 by President Nimeiri. The Libyans were defeated by a nimble Chadian force at Ouadi Doum in 1988, and Qaddafi abandoned his irredentist dreams. He began dismantling the Islamic Legion, but its members, armed, trained and – most significant of all – possessed of a virulent Arab supremacism, did not vanish. The legacy of the Islamic Legion lives on in Darfur: Janjawiid leaders are among those said to have been trained in Libya.

…In 1987, returnees from Libya took the lead in forming a political bloc known as the Arab Alliance. At one level, the Alliance was simply a political coalition that aimed to protect the interests of a disadvantaged group in western Sudan, but it also became a vehicle for a new racist ideology. The politically insignificant racist epithets of earlier times began to take on an alarming tinge in Darfur. The Alliance also latched onto the dominant ideology of the Sudanese state, the very different Arabism of Nile Valley. The war in Darfur at the end of the 1980s was more than a conflict over land: it was the first step in constructing a new Arab ideology in Sudan.

While Qaddafi introduced weaponry and ideology to Darfur in the 1980s, President Bashir and his National Congress Party were the ones to seize upon these assets and set Darfur ablaze in 2003.  One might, given his history in Darfur, expect that Qaddafi subsequently supported the genocidal counterinsurgency coordinated by Khartoum.  But the motives and objectives behind Libya’s policies towards Sudan since 2003 have been much more difficult to interpret and understand.

On the face of it, Qaddafi has presented himself as a peacemaker.  As the International Crisis Group writes, “While consistently opposing an international force in Darfur, it has hosted at times Darfur rebel and tribal leaders as well as government delegations.”  Rumors also abound that Qaddafi has provided Darfuri rebels with critical supplies of arms and financing.  Another ICG report concludes:

Libya has played a highly significant, albeit inconsistent, role in Darfur since the conflict began, culminating in its function as host of the peace talks. At various times it has shown a significant ability to influence all rebel groups and push them toward participation in a broader political process. Simultaneously it has given the NCP diplomatic cover to resist international pressure and efforts to strengthen the peacekeeping operation. As elsewhere in Africa, Libyan actions have been motivated in part by Qaddafi’s desire to be a powerful regional player and mediator but the proximity of the conflicts in Chad and Darfur and their domestic impact have triggered a more sustained effort than elsewhere.

And with the reunification of six Darfuri rebel groups in Tripoloi last month, Qaddafi is once again deeply involved in the currently stalled peace process.  For these efforts, U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration even publicly praised Libya’s contributions to the peace process recently.

Given this history, if Qaddafi does mention Darfur or Sudan in his address to UNGA, be sure to consider the historical context.  The U.S. has no choice but to engage Libyan officials as it pushes for the resumption of peace talks in Doha.  As a neighbor to Sudan and with significant clout over certain rebel leaders, Libya will be involved one way or another.  At the same time, the international community should not count on the mercurial Qaddafi to support unwaveringly a push for peace.  The AU/UN Chief mediator Djibril Bassolé, supported by the U.S. and other key countries, should claim this responsibility.

And if Qaddafi – with his trademark, megalomaniacal righteousness – does choose again to place all the blame for Darfur on external forces, someone should ask him:

• Who supported a coup attempt against the Sudanese government in 1976?
• Who funded the Southern Sudanese rebels against Khartoum from 1983 to 1985?
• Who switched sides and supported a new government brought to power via coup in 1985?
• And then who began talks about unification plans (Sudan and Libya) with Bashir after the Sudanese leader seized power in his own coup in 1989?

The answer, of course, to these stories for another day is the one and only Colonel Qaddafi.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.

Tags: Darfur, gration, janjaweed, libya, Peace Process, qaddafi, Sudan, UNGA

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 1:32 pm and is filed under United Nations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.