| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa: Horn |
| Libya and al-Qaeda: A complex relationship |
| 2005-04-05 |
| The United States, until recently, had a tendency to see Libya's Muammar Qadhafi and Osama bin Laden as ideological soul mates. While bin Laden aspired to cleanse Arabia and the Middle East of the infidel Christian and Jewish influence, Qadhafi aspired to be seen as a great revolutionary leader with a global audience. Far from being soul-mates, Qadhafi and bin Laden have long been at odds; it was Qadhafi who, in March 1998, issued the first Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden, a fact little known in the West. The warrant was issued in connection with the March 1994 murders of German anti-terrorism agents Silvan and Vera Becker, who were in charge of missions in Africa. Western intelligence agencies for a number of reasons chose to downplay and ignore the warrant; five months later the U.S. embassies in East Africa were bombed. Qadhafi's rehabilitation over the past year has been extraordinary, with Libya becoming the Bush administration's shining example of a country renouncing weapons of mass destruction. In the process, the West has chosen to overlook Qadhafi's past misdeeds. In 1979, the U.S. listed Libya as a state sponsoring terrorism, while in 1984 Britain broke diplomatic relations with Libya after a policewoman was shot to death outside the Libyan embassy in London. Two years later, the Reagan administration ordered strikes against Tripoli to avenge a Libyan bombing of a disco in Berlin frequented by U.S. servicemen. The event that really etched the image of Qadhafi into the Western consciousness as a master terrorist was the December 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. Ironically, the common thread running through Libya, bin Laden and the U.S. is the 1979-1988 Afghan war. Among the Arab volunteers were several thousand Libyans and in the early 1990s Libyan "Afghan vets" formed the shadowy Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG,) whose purpose was to overthrow Qadhafi and establish an Islamic state based on sharia law. The following year, they attempted to assassinate Qadhafi when an LIFG group led by Wadi al-Shateh threw a bomb beneath his motorcade. Qadhafi cracked down and many LIFG members fled to Europe and the Middle East. Another LIFG assassination attempt occurred in 1998 when Qadhafi's motorcade was attacked. The West's "master terrorist" was himself under terrorist attack. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |