However, a large portion of the purchased equipment was defective. Many of the centrifuges were missing rotors, and a key part of the schematics provided by the A. Q. Khan network was missing. These details highlight Libya's principal failure with respect to any WMD effortsâits significant deficit in the human capital required to complete the nuclear weapons jigsaw.
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A number of nuclear policy analysts claim the United States was so eager to access Libyan intelligence that it overstated the prospects of the WMD program. Wyn Bowen, author of a monograph on Gaddafi's WMD program, notes that “the Libyan experience highlights the importance of not automatically equating the ability to buy parts and materials with the capability to establish an effective nuclear weapon programme.”
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A well-known French military affairs analyst characterized Libya's 2003 declaration a “pseudo renouncement . . . the exchange of failing or obsolete proliferation programs against the reinsertion of the country in the concert of nations.”
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Elliott Abrams quoted Saif Al Islam, in conversations with US officials, as saying that Libya's WMD were “not that great a threat.” A US intelligence estimate around the time of the invasion of Iraq predicted that Libya would have enough enriched uranium to develop a bomb by 2007; this reading was subsequently deemed “very largely overestimated,” and Libya's stocks of chemical weapons “far less than thought.”
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Mohammed El Baradei, then secretary general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), claims not only that the Bush administration exaggerated Libya's progress toward WMD, but that the State Department actively withheld information from the IAEA on the progress of this program: “The Americans were unhappy that I characterized the Libyan nuclear program, at first glance, as ânascent.' The intelligence coup would have seemed more significant if it had been larger or closer to producing a weapon.”
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Baradei says his assessment was confirmed by IAEA inspections in the following months, and accused Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham of staging an “exclusive media show” at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the temporary storage depot for remains of Libya's WMD program, when the materials first arrived.
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The Bush administration fought back against the dissenting opinions of experts. It argued vehemently that Gaddafi had indeed managed to pull together a sophisticated WMD program, that it did pose an “eminent threat,” if not to any specific state, then to the nonproliferation regime in general. A US intelligence assessment released about the same time suggested that Libya may have had enough enriched uranium to create a nuclear bomb.
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During a 2004 visit to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, President Bush announced, “These materials are the sobering evidence of a great danger.... Every potential adversary now knows that terrorism and proliferation carry serious consequences, and that the wise course is to abandon those pursuits.”
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However, the case for “averted disaster” was much more compelling within the context of biological and chemical weapons than nuclear capacity. Prior to the 2003 deal on WMD, the US and Western intelligence agencies and the IAEA appeared to have some knowledge about Libya's chemical weapons capacity: Libya had indeed managed to accumulate significant amounts of materials required to make biological weapons, including one ton of the neurotoxin tabun, twenty-four tons of yperite, and thirty-five hundred unarmed aerial bombs, useful in the delivery of chemical and biological weapons. In 1988, the CIA expressed concern that the complex at Rabta (which the Libyans claimed was a plant manufacturing insecticides) had the capacity to become “the most important factory of chemical weapons in the third world.”
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Since it had been set up, the factory had produced an estimated one hundred tons of chemical agents.
Nevertheless, debate revolved around the handling of nuclear WMD. Writing in 2011, Baradei was particularly critical of the CIA for holding back information on the activities of A. Q. Khan's network, including that relevant to Libya negotiations, for the better part of a decade. The CIA did so on the grounds that revealing its findings might have compromised efforts to root out other portions of the network. Baradei recalled his reaction to this news: “âCan you explain what was gained?' I wanted to shout. âWhere were all the bigger fish who should now be ready for the catch?'”
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Still, though he did not agree with the way the Libya conversation had been handled, Baradei ultimately felt the agreement with Gaddafi had been positive in the cause for nuclear nonproliferation. For their part, partisans and former members of the Bush administration continue to argue that liberal analysts and the IAEA purposely downplayed the
significance of the administration's achievement on Libyan WMD to serve narrow political ends.
In the context of the war on terror, and as Gaddafi expected, Libya's extended overtures took on a new light for many within the administration, who saw an interesting potential for collaborationâafter all, Gaddafi had been fighting (or supporting) Islamic extremists for decades, and surely had much information to share. Others felt Libya should be rewarded for its newfound “realism,” if only so that other rogue statesâIran and North Korea, to name but twoâwould see the advantages of following suit. This sentiment was echoed by other senior figures within the US government, who took the Welch-Indyk line that there would be no “model,” unless the US was able and willing to take yes for an answer. As Meghan O'Sullivan, author of a Brookings Institute study on the effectiveness of sanctions on rogue states, wrote: “By not adjusting U.S. policy in the slightest way to new realities, the United States risks undermining its own sanctions as well as its efforts to encourage other ârogue' regimes to reform their behavior.”
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On the other hand, prominent neoconservativesâthose most enthusiastically pushing the US invasion of Iraq (particularly Wolfowitz and Bolton, then undersecretary for arms control)âwere highly dubious of any benefit deriving from dialogue with Libya. Wolfowitz said, “Look, I think we needed to give some acknowledgment to the fact that he handed over his nuclear weapons program, but it was an illegal program.... I thought we were giving him a lot by, in effect, saying you won't suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein. I don't think we had to go nearly as far as we went.”
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Bolton further believed a Gaddafi engagement would undermine the message of change and the prospect of the demolition of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East by domino effect.
Even so, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated a second look at the relationship with Libya. Both saw benefits to probing the merits of a relationship with Libya that might produce useful intelligence on groups such as Al Qaeda. The neocons essentially felt that “halfway measures” were not worth undertaking. With the upper echelons of the Bush White House leaning strongly toward engagement, the deal seemed to be done.
Even as the US and its allies contemplated and implemented a strategy to release Gaddafi into the wider world, some question whether the West fully appreciated the degree of leverage in its hands, with respect to changing the behavior of the Libyan regime, if not Gaddafi personallyâor really cared if it did. (This was, in fact, one of the neocons' pointsâif one has leverage, one should use it to the maximum.) UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, when asked about this very point on the eve of lifting the EU arms embargo in October 2004, said, “[T]his is a very good day . . . for peace and security across the world. [We have not lost leverage over Gaddafi.] In fact, we have gained leverage.”
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It is difficult to see that the EU would have lifted its arms sanctions if the US were not in agreement. This point was important because the lifting of this particular set of sanctions enabled Libya to go on a buying spree over the next few years, with a focus on small arms and gear that was particularly useful in quashing any form of civil disobedience. Britain, France, and Italy were among the powers that sold weapons of all kinds to Libya, until the early days of 2011.
The Bush doctrine that emerged post-9/11 and after the commencement of the Iraq War held that the US would support the cause of “democracy against tyranny.” Iraq was intended to be the cornerstone of a hoped-for wave of regime changes. A key talking point became the somewhat indeterminate concept of “transformational democracy,” according to which diplomatic and economic rewards (trade agreements, such as TIFAs, for example
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) would be offered to regimes that pursued change from within, particularly with respect to building democratic institutions and respect for human rights. The British articulated a virtually identical version of this doctrine with trade and engagement linked to responsible international behavior.
In Libya's case, it was hard for many to imagine how human rights could
not
be a central issue in any discussion of rapprochement. Despite the urgency behind the broader policy narrative for re-engagement with Libya, there were senior individuals within the White House, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense (DOD) who felt that Libya still had much to address in the area of human rights before full normalization could be contemplated. Congress saw little incentive for getting involved with Libya, apart from advocating for
compensation for the Lockerbie victims, on one hand, and the interests of US oil companies on the other (but, as we will see, as the US-Libya dialogue continued, those factors would become increasingly important). Many within the State Department remained highly skeptical of any prospect of meaningful reform, especially in the area of human rights, as long as Gaddafi remained at the helm. Congress saw little incentive for getting involved with Libya, apart from advocating for compensation for the Lockerbie victims, on one hand, and the interests of US oil companies on the other.
Those in favor of proceeding with Libya included the White House, the CIA, and key individuals at the State Department. They had come to the conclusion that intelligence gains, countering nuclear proliferation, and something that might be called the salubrious impact of Iraq operations on other dictatorships trumped internal Libyan human rights concerns. Those opposed had difficulty mounting an effective countercase because of the profound lack of readily available information about what was actually happening within Libya. Senior State Department officials said they could not remember any discussions of the Abu Selim prison massacre, for example, let alone the Zawiya revolt.
Even without these data, some prominent administration officials opposed any rapprochement. Elliott Abrams, senior director for democracy, human rights, and international operations at the National Security Council for the first half of George W. Bush's first term, and deputy national security adviser for global democracy in his second term, was one of several who felt it was too early to reward Gaddafi. According to Abrams, the Bush administration calculated it was better to be realistic in terms of what one could expect from Libya, take what was possible, and hope that, basically, any contact with the outside world could only work in line with the aspiration of the Libyan people for freedom. (One might call this a
War of the Worlds
argument, after Orson Welles's famous radio play, a hoax live broadcast of an alien invasion of Earth. The aliens, on the verge of vanquishing the human race, begin to die off, are felled by the bacteria that causes the common cold to which the creatures had no resistance.) There were many in Washington, within the departments of State and Defense, and at the National Security Council, who still believed Gaddafi's conversion was about as likely as sticky, three-fingered aliens landing on the White House lawn. Abrams later said, we “won two and failed on the third.”
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By this he meant that the US, in dealings with Gaddafi, scored successes in
counterproliferation and counterterrorism policy, but did very little to have an impact on the human rights situation in Libya. As one analyst put it, “The domestic behavior of Qadhafi's [sic] regime was seen as the least urgent issue surrounding Libya.”
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When human rights concerns did come up in negotiations with Libya, almost inevitably they were focused on Libyan dissident Fathi Al Jahmi. Arrested on October 19, 2002, for calling publicly for free elections, a free press, and the release of political prisoners, Jahmi was originally sentenced to five years in prison on the charge of trying to overthrow the government and insulting Gaddafi personally. He was released on March 12, 2004, largely through the personal intermediation of then Senator Joseph Biden. Hours after being released, Jahmi gave an interview with US-backed Al Hurra TV in which he repeated his previous calls and said famously, “[A]ll that is left for [Gaddafi] to do is hand us a prayer carpet and ask us to bow before his picture and worship him.” By upping the ante and making the attack against Gaddafi personal, Jahmi sealed his fate. Very few ever got away with insulting the Leader. Jahmi remained in Libyan custody for almost seven years, from his initial arrest until he fell into a coma in April 2009 and was flown to Jordan for treatment. He died less than a month later.
Former senior State Department officials blamed the brouhaha over Jahmi largely on Gaddafi's misunderstanding of what was good for him, and on Jahmi's brother Mohamed al Jahmy, a US resident, who did his best to keep his brother's situation in front of the media. Assistant Secretary Welch said he repeatedly told the Libyans that their best interests would be served by simply releasing Jahmi or transfering him to a hospital outside Libya (as was eventually done), rather than turning him into a cause célèbre.
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Natan Sharansky, the famous Soviet Jewish dissident, an ardent supporter of Bush's Iraq policy, recognizes Jahmi in his 2004 book,
The Case for Democracy
, as a dissident deserving of the West's attention.
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