NEAL CONAN, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.
Some know the geography of Libya from the names of battles fought there during the Second World War. Others know its leader as a charismatic colonel who supported terrorists and challenged the United States in the 1980s. Today, we read about a ruthless and now desperate dictator struggling to hold on to power.
But most of us know little about Libya's people, its tribes, its leadership and its politics. As pro- and anti-government forces exchange fire on several fronts, what do we need to know about the history of Libya to figure out how we got here and where we may be headed?
I want to hear from you. 800-989-8255 is the phone number. Email us, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Later in the program, the Opinion Page rounds up views on hearings in Congress later this week on American Muslims and homegrown terrorism. Is this a legitimate inquiry or a witch hunt? Send us an email now, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
But first to Libya, and we begin with George Joffe, a research fellow at the Center of International Studies at Cambridge University, and he joins us from a BBC studio there. Nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION, George.
Mr. GEORGE JOFFE (Research Fellow, Center of International Studies, Cambridge University): Thank you.
CONAN: And where do we start? Where should we begin if we want to understand the history of modern Libya?
Mr. JOFFE: Well, that's quite a tall question. Maybe we should begin with the original revolution, which happened in 1969. And that's important because, in a way, that conditioned what Libya was to become. Colonel Gadhafi led that revolution. He saw Libya becoming an Arab nationalist state. But within less than a decade, he had changed his mind and created instead an idiosyncratic political system known as direct popular democracy.
Now, it's that system that has dominated Libya ever since. And the malevolent aspect of it is that because he considered it to be a perfect system, any dissidence to it was seen by him as a form of treachery, and in fact, to try to form a political party in Libya has been a crime punishable by death ever since.
CONAN: When he took over in that revolution in 1969, 42 years ago, he was first among equals. There were others who participated in the coup.
Mr. JOFFE: There were indeed. They were a significant group. They came from a movement called the Movement to Free Officers. And the movement still exists. It's now really an honorary association.
But Colonel Gadhafi came to dominate it, and in the end, he was able to marginalize all those who had come to power with him and to create through his Jamahiriya, his state of the masses, in which direct popular democracy was practiced, a political system in which, although he has no formal role, he still dominates every aspect of it.
And that was achieved largely because in 1980, to make the system work, he created a second movement, the Revolutionary Committee Movement, that was used to activate the political system and to persecute those who opposed him.
CONAN: And we keep hearing that, as in other police states, there are overlapping security agencies who, among other things, investigate each other.
Mr. JOFFE: Well, there are indeed. It's more complex than that, though. First of all, the Revolutionary Committee Movement is the major agent of repression. But that, too, itself is an extension of something else, the tribal system in Libya, because its members, although they claim to be revolutionary in their ideology, are in fact members of the three tribes that actually back the regime.
Then alongside them, there are the formal security services, under one of Colonel Gadhafi's closest collaborators, Abdullah Senussi. And they've been used to intimidate the population and also particularly the army because the army was always seen by Colonel Gadhafi as a potential threat.
So you can see that these overlapping areas of authority, going right the way back to tribal support, were absolutely crucial to the political system that he developed.
CONAN: Well, you mentioned the three tribes. Are there others who are left out of the political spoils?
Mr. JOFFE: Yes, indeed. One of the ironies is that the Libyan political system is always derived from a tribal background. If you go back to the period before Colonel Gadhafi came to power, then the dominant tribes are those of Cyrenaica, the so-called Saadi tribes, from which religious order in the 19th century, the Senussi Order, had come.
And that order was important because from it came the monarchy that actually ruled Libya between 1951 and the revolution in 1969.
CONAN: Cyrenaica is the eastern part of Libya. The major city there would be Benghazi.
Mr. JOFFE: That's correct, yes. And the important point about that was that the tribes in the center of Libya, in Sirtica, which included Colonel Gadhafi's own tribe and the two tribes that now support him, the Magariha and the Warfalla, were subservient to the tribes of Cyrenaica.
So in one sense, the revolution was a reversal of a tribal balance of power, and that of course has caused considerable resentment in Cyrenaica ever since.
CONAN: And that's why it might make sense that the revolution, indeed unrest against the regime, has always been based in the eastern part of Libya, in what used to be Cyrenaica.
Mr. JOFFE: Well, yes and no. There's been unrest elsewhere. In 1993, for example, in the town of Bani Walid, which is in the west of Libya, there was an attempted coup against the colonel. And that was actually organized by members of his own tribe and from the Warfalla, too.
And they represented, in a sense, resentment at the way in which he had marginalized the army. The coup was unsuccessful. Its leaders were eventually executed. But out of that came a degree of resentment amongst some of the tribes that actually support him.
CONAN: Is Libya homogenous in its language, in its ethnicity and its peoples?
Mr. JOFFE: Well, by and large yes. Libyans are Arab. They speak Arabic in their vast majority. But there is a community of Berbers who are the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa, in reality people who didn't adopt Arabic as their main means of communication.
And they live just behind Tripoli in the Jabal Nafusah. And they represent, too, a potential area of dissidence, and they've been persecuted by the colonel, in fact, for many years now because he regards them as traitors to the Arab cause.
CONAN: Now, are all Libyans Sunni Muslims?
Mr. JOFFE: Yes indeed. The vast majority, except for a few of the Berbers who are Ibadi, are actually Sunni Muslims, and even the Ibadi really are Sunni Muslims, too. So in fact, in terms of religion, the country is really homogeneous.
It's only when you go into the deep dessert, and you come across some of the tribes such as the Tuareg, where religious observance become somewhat heterodox and where indeed you begin to move into an African domain.
CONAN: And the deep desert, the majority of the population - this is a huge country, but the majority of a rather sparse population is in these little enclaves dotted along the coast?
Mr. JOFFE: Yes, indeed, they have to be because the only really inhabitable areas of Libya are those areas around Benghazi, the Jabal al Akhdar and the area around Tripoli, the Jifara plain.
The result is that out of Libya's 6.5 million population, something like 2.5 million people live in the Tripoli region alone, and an equivalent number live around Benghazi. And that has one very interesting strategic consequence and partly explains the situation today. It is that in effect, if you control either of those two main towns, you control half the country.
CONAN: We're talking with George Joffe, a research fellow at the Center for International Studies at Cambridge University about Libya. And what do we need to know about the history of that country that will tell us what's going on in the civil war that's going on there today? 800-989-8255. Email us, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Josh(ph) is on the line from Montrose in Michigan.
JOSH (Caller): Hi, yeah, thanks for having me on today. I was just curious. Earlier in the show, we mentioned those World War II fronts. How did those - what kind of affect did those have on - in 1969 when Gadhafi came into power and today?
Mr. JOFFE: Well, basically what actually happened in the Second World War created a situation whereby Libya transferred from Italian control to British and French control, predominately British. And that of course meant that Colonel Gadhafi himself grew up in part under a British administration. And that certainly marked him.
But the Italian dimension is extremely important in Libya. No one in Libya has forgotten the Italian presence, largely because it was extremely repressive. It's estimated that up to half the population in Cyrenaica died during the Italian occupation.
And that still dominates. Indeed, you can see it in Libya's current relations with Italy, in fact. So the war in that sense still has a part to play.
CONAN: We also - those who have studied the war will remember how it moved back and forth along the coast of Libya, one time the Allies pushing all the way to the west and the other time Rommel and the Afrika Korps pushing them all the way back to the borders of Egypt, back and forth, back and forth, because the only important areas are those dotted lines across the coast.
Mr. JOFFE: That's correct, yes. And indeed, those areas eventually provided Libya, just after the war, with its main export, which was scrap metal from the battlefields because the battles had been so intense.
CONAN: Another legacy of the Second World War was an enormous American air base, Wheelus Air Force Base.
Mr. JOFFE: There were two air bases, actually. One American, Wheelus, just outside Tripoli, and another one, El Adem, just outside Benghazi in the east. And both of them formed part of the strategic overlay for the Mediterranean region at the beginning of the Cold War.
Colonel Gadhafi objected to both as a good Arab nationalist, and indeed, the United States was forced to abandon its air base shortly after the revolution took place, as was Britain in the east of Libya.
CONAN: Josh, thanks very much for the call.
JOSH: Yeah, no problem. That's very interesting what you said about the scrap metal, as well.
CONAN: And when did oil become the dominant part of the Libyan economy?
Mr. JOFFE: That really begins towards the end of the 1960. Just before the revolution, in fact, Libyan oil begins to be developed. It was developed not by the great seven major oil companies but by a series of independent companies.
And that gave the Libyan oil industry a particular cast because after Colonel Gadhafi came to power, just two years later, in 1971, he was able to begin the process of forcing up oil prices and grabbing control of setting oil prices from the seven major companies who had controlled it up to then and taking it into the hands of the producing states.
Now that, if you like, marked the beginning of the oil price crisis of the 1970s.
CONAN: And an important part in the rise of OPEC but also because Libya's oil is, well, not only close to Europe but especially easy to refine.
Mr. JOFFE: Well, it's not so much that it's easy to refine. It's a fairly sweet crude. But the really important point was that European refineries, particularly in Germany and Italy, and also in Switzerland incidentally, were designed to handle Libyan crude. And that means that those countries were thereby tied to Libya in terms of their oil provision.
CONAN: We're talking with George Joffe, a research fellow at the Center for International Studies at Cambridge University. And we want to know what you think is important to understand about Libya as civil war rages there and debate rages in this country about the wisdom and feasibility of a no-fly zone. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, coming up right after the news.
(Soundbite of music)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan.
Libyan aircraft launched multiple strikes earlier today at anti-government forces at an oil port on the country's Mediterranean coast. Meanwhile, President Obama spoke from the Oval Office today: I want to send a very clear message to those who are around Colonel Gadhafi, he said. They will be held accountable for whatever violence continues to take place there.
The U.S. and its NATO allies are considering a military response, including a no-fly zone, and U.N. aid officials warn of a growing need for emergency aid for foreign workers and others trapped in Libya.
So what do we need to know about the history of this country to figure out how we got here and where we may be headed? 800-989-8255 is the phone number. Email us: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Our guest is George Joffe, a research fellow at the Center of International Studies at Cambridge University.
Let's go next to Michael, and Michael's on the line from Oakland.
MICHAEL (Caller): Hi. Yes, my question is this: All the forces that are being unleashed by Gadhafi against the opposition, are those forces mostly made up of his tribe? And if that's the case, is this conflict then taking on a sort of tribe-against-tribe flavor?
Mr. JOFFE: Well, yes and no. There's a certain truth in that, that it's certainly people from his own tribal backing and those tribes that are allied with them that have helped to support his regime.
But actually, the majority of those who - who are now currently defending the regime come from a particular unit inside the Libyan army, the so-called Deterrent Battalion, the 32nd Brigade. And this was constructed and trained simply to deal with domestic unrest, and it's been very effective at doing that.
Now, the recruits for it aren't necessarily from his own tribe. They're really there because they're extremely well-paid. But they're -alongside them, there's a militia that's been formed. And the militia is recruited largely from migrants who moved into Libya after Libya declared itself to be part of Africa rather than part of the Arab world. And they've been recruited deliberately to protect the regime.
They have no loyalty to the country at all, and as a result, they stand or fall with the regime. And they perhaps are the most dangerous element of the forces that Colonel Gadhafi is now using.
CONAN: Wait a minute, George Joffe. Africa - Libya started considering itself part of Africa rather than - isn't it still a member of the Arab League?
Mr. JOFFE: Oh, it's still a member of the Arab League. But in terms of its regional identity, in 1997, when the sanctions began to be removed after the Lockerby crisis, Colonel Gadhafi had been extremely irritated with the behavior of the Arab world towards Libya.
And he therefore began to emphasize Libya's African identity rather than its Arab identity. At the same time, he began to try to reconstruct the major regional organization in Africa, the Organization of African Unity, replacing it by the African Union.
And that meant that ever since then, Africa has been the dominant theme in his statement about Libya's regional location rather than the Middle East and the Arab League.
CONAN: Michael, thanks very much for the call. Let's go next to - this is Ken, Ken with us from East Lansing.
KEN (Caller): Hi. This is actually a follow-up on that last question. I've been trying to determine the nature of the mercenaries and so-called mercenaries whom Gadhafi has recruited or is using.
I've heard reports that they included Acholi people from Uganda, people from Kenya, especially Chad and Niger has been cited and even mercenaries from South Africa. Is that - do you have anything concrete on that?
And the other side of that is that, of course, the minute it's a black person, they're assuming is a sub-Saharan African rather than those who come from southern Libya. So I wonder if these attributions of mercenaries are - you know, how accurate they are.
Mr. JOFFE: Well, it's actually a very complicated question. Thanks for asking it. Let me see if I can try to bring some light to bear on it.
This goes back to something else, way back in 1972, when Colonel Gadhafi declared that Libya was an open state for any Muslim to come and settle in. And the converse of that was that he began to recruit what was called the Islamic Legion as a special militia, working, as it were, for Libya as the head of - as Colonel Gadhafi liked to see it - the Arab world and the Muslim world, to be used in Africa. And they were used in Uganda and in Tanzania.
Now, that tradition continued, but it's been revived since the beginning of the last decade, and now it brings in people who've migrated into Libya - hence the issue of the sub-Saharan Africans - because Colonel Gadhafi opened Libya's borders to Africans when he declared Libya's African destiny.
And there's been up to a million migrants inside Libya who've been used as a recruiting base for the forces that are now the mercenaries that Colonel Gadhafi is using.
Alongside them are forces recruited from southern Libya, particularly from the Tuareg tribes. They've been offered very large amounts of money to come and work as mercenaries for the Libyan regime, and that swelled the ranks of those who now support him.
No one knows exactly how big the mercenary force is, but it's certainly very large, and it can be very brutal.
CONAN: And we've also heard that Arab Libyans are attacking, or at least isolating some of these - the rebels - black Africans, identifying them immediately as supporters of Colonel Gadhafi. Is that fair?
Mr. JOFFE: Well, that's true. And that goes back to something else. When, in fact, the borders were opened at the end of the 1990s, up to two million Africans poured into Libya looking for work, and also for the opportunity to migrate into Europe.
And by September 2000, that had caused enormous social tensions, with a result that in that month, in September 2000, there were a series of very violent race riots in the Jifara Plain around Tripoli. And as a result, up to a million people actually left Libya in the aftermath of that, and some people were very severely punished for it - where I think, if I recall correctly, 300 death sentences meted out for the riots.
But that left Libyans with a profound prejudice. And so, of course, today, they tend to associate anyone who's black with the idea of being a mercenary for the regime, whether that be true or not.
KEN: And are the reports of white mercenaries from South Africa specious?
Mr. JOFFE: I think they are specious. I've seen no evidence to support that, although South Africa - partly because of Nelson Mandela's remembrance of Libya's support for the ANC - has been quite close to the Gadhafi regime. I'm not aware that there have been white mercenaries recruited by the Gadhafi regime in Libya at all.
CONAN: Thanks very much, Ken.
And George Joffe, one final question for you. There were - of course, everybody remembers that in the last few years, Libya renounced its nuclear weapons program and its weapons of mass destruction, as well. We're pretty clear that they turned over nuclear materials that they got from AQ Khan in Pakistan and other places. But what about the poison gas?
Mr. JOFFE: Well, as far as we know, they did turn over the poison gas, because inspectors went into the main plant at Rabta - which is in the Jabal Nafusa behind Tripoli - and they identified very large quantities of poison gas that had been made way back in the 1980s, and the program had been basically idle since then.
However, it has to be said that in the recent events, there have been rumors that the colonel is prepared to use poison gas, and that suggests that there were some supplies hidden elsewhere that weren't discovered. But my information is that all the supplies of poison gas that he created were indeed identified and have since been destroyed.
CONAN: George Joffe, we know you've got to go off and do something unimportant like teach class or something. So we appreciate your time today.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. JOFFE: Thank you very much.
CONAN: George Joffe, a research fellow at the Center of International Studies at Cambridge. He joined us from the BBC studios there, and we thank him for his time. Also with us today is Chuck Cecil, former U.S. Liaison officer in Libya who spent eight months working toward the creation of an embassy in Tripoli in 2006 and 2007, that period of rapprochement between Libya and the West.
And Chuck Cecil, nice to have you with us today.
Mr. CHUCK CECIL (Former U.S. Liaison Officer in Libya): Thanks, Neal. It's good to be with you.
CONAN: And you obviously dealt very closely with the Gadhafi government. What were they like to deal with?
Mr. CECIL: I spent eight months there, and it was the 10th assignment I had in our Foreign Service over a period of 36 years. I was actually brought back from retirement to go out to Tripoli to do that.
It was certainly the most difficult of the 10 governments to deal with that I ever had to deal with.
CONAN: How come?
Mr. CECIL: The main reason is everyone in the government is afraid to make a decision on any important issue unless they know that it's okay with the leader, as they call him, Moammar Gadhafi. There's no reward for initiative or creativity. There's only risk.
If you present the government with a difficult question or a controversial one, no one will make a decision. If it's really a difficult question, no one is anxious to take it to the leader, either. So large periods of time, weeks, even months, can go by while you wait for an answer. And someone who is brave enough or close enough to raise the issue with Gadhafi can then get an answer, and then finally you'll get a decision.
CONAN: And does that stand - is that true of his sons, as well? Did you deal with them?
Mr. CECIL: They wouldn't deal with me during my time. I was a mere charge d'affaires, and I think they preferred to deal with higher-level people. We didn't have an ambassador, of course, at that time.
I did try to see Saif al-Islam, but he would never give me an appointment. I read his speeches very closely and carefully during my time there, and I've read one or two afterwards. He shows some of the same traits of his father in that his speeches are not always internally consistent, sometimes contradictory. And he has a habit of promising things that he does not deliver on.
CONAN: We hear descriptions of Colonel Gadhafi in sometimes colorful language describing his mental state. Would you have any opinion on how coherent he is?
Mr. CECIL: Well, I should probably leave that to people who are more expert in evaluating mental states. I was with Colonel Gadhafi on two occasions, and those were not private meetings. They were occasions in which he was - let's say officiating, or giving speeches on each case - in each case.
The first thing that struck me was that he was not a charismatic speaker. He mumbles, and perhaps it would leave the impression he might be under some medication. Seeing him recently on television, he certainly wasn't mumbling. He was shouting and waving his fists and ranting, but you do sometimes wonder if he's on some kind of medication, just because of the way he speaks and the way his ideas flow.
CONAN: We see him dressed in various elaborate uniforms, sometimes in tribal clothes. Is he a vainglorious person?
Mr. CECIL: Well, I've noticed lots of leaders of African nations in particular that are very much into clothing. I think it often goes with the personality. Vainglorious, I'm not sure. He certainly does see himself as the leader of his nation and of his people. And as we've recently seen when he told us all how his people love him, it makes you wonder just how in touch he is, how much of a cocoon is he living in and how much does he really know.
CONAN: Libya was established by the United Nations as a state in Christmas Eve 1951. The kingdom was established. That was overthrown by Colonel Gadhafi and the Officers Movement, the Free Officers Movement, in 1969, 42 years ago. We're talking with former charge d'affaires Chuck Cecil, who served in Libya, among other places in his tour as a U.S. foreign service officer, about what we need to know about the history of Libya. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION coming to you from NPR News.
And let's see if we can get another caller in. This is Michak(ph). Michak with us from South Bend.
MICHAK (Caller): Hi.
CONAN: Go ahead, please.
MICHAK: Yes. I like the show, but I have a question that I wanted to ask concerning Colonel Gadhafi, who was president for the A.U. for two years.
CONAN: Mm-hmm.
MICHAK: And I was wondering because he established a lot of relationships with the tribal leaders and stuff(ph), and African leaders too. Are we going to see this civil war in Libya going - becoming a full-scale African war, just like the one we had in Congo, where a couple of countries went in to fight in order to keep the president in power?
CONAN: And when Michak mentions the A.U., of course he means the African Union, the organization that Colonel Gadhafi was instrumental in creating.
Chuck Cecil, any thoughts on that?
Mr. CECIL: I'd be happy to comment on that. We've heard in recent days a lot about the idea of a civil war breaking out in Libya. I would say that if Moammar Gadhafi and his family would withdraw - in other words, if they would leave the country - there's absolutely no reason for the eastern part of Libya to be in rebellion against the western part of Libya, or vice versa. All parts of the country have a lot to gain from working together and maintaining the unity of the nation. I think it's only the presence of Moammar Gadhafi and his family that spurs the military effort that's underway right now to defeat the rebels.
CONAN: You think - he was also asking, though, about African leaders. We've seen plenty of denunciations of Colonel Gadhafi from many places in the world, but not from Africa.
Mr. CECIL: That's probably true. Although I must say I don't follow it by the hour, but within Moammar Gadhafi's quiver of diplomatic tools, he created in the mid-'90s, I believe it was, an organization called Sen-Sad, that's based on two Arabic letters in the Arabic alphabet. It's not an acronym. But Sen-Sad is now a group of about 24 African nations. Moammar Gadhafi uses that organization to dispense economic assistance to the countries that are closest to him in Africa. It started originally with, I think, five or six members, those neighbors immediately to the south, and he's gradually expanded it.
CONAN: Following that up, here's Ahmed(ph) in Savannah, who wants to know what's the role of Gadhafi in support and harboring rebel movements from other neighboring countries, in particular rebels from the Darfur region in Sudan, and how would that conflict be affected by Gadhafi's departure?
Mr. CECIL: Well, certainly during my time - and I think it's still true, Libya was in a way harboring rebels from other countries. In fact, they were working very much to end rebellions in neighboring countries. They worked hard and they cooperated with us to try to end the genocide in Sudan, in Darfur.
During my time there, they also mediated a peace settlement between the government of the Central African Republic and the rebel faction. They brought the president of the CAR and the leader of the rebels to Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown, and signed a peace accord there. That was the second occasion in which I was present with Gadhafi in fairly close proximity, because he invited representatives of the five members of the U.N. Security Council to come and witness the signing.
Libya has played a rather responsible role in trying to establish and maintain stability in its neighboring countries. Libya does not want to be in an unstable neighborhood.
CONAN: In recent years, in the past, that was not always true.
Mr. CECIL: During earlier years, before he came in from the cold, of course, he was doing things like even providing funds to the Irish Republican Army, I guess, in Northern Ireland. That's true.
CONAN: All right. Chuck Cecil, thank you very much for your time today.
Mr. CECIL: You're very welcome, Neal. My pleasure.
CONAN: Chuck Cecil is a former U.S. liaison officer in Libya. He joined us from his home in Alexandria, Virginia.
