Exit the Colonel (23 page)

Given the central role
The Green Book
played in Gaddafi's nonrule-ruling narrative, any significant makeover had to address the blazing inconsistencies between Gaddafi's quasi-conversion to capitalism, and the references to adulterated Islam and Communism that appear throughout his three-part manifesto, which formed the basis of decades of thick internal propaganda.

In late 2002, these reconciliation duties fell to Yusuf Sawani, then general director for the Green Book Center. “Only Sawani,” one foreign consultant assisting with the NES said, “could read something intelligent into
The Green Book
, making it sound like a perhaps imperfect expression of profound truth.”
⁴⁹
Indeed, since 2003, Sawani had been behind a series of Green Book Center treatises explaining or reinterpreting statements within
The Green Book
in light of the more aggressive economic opening. One entitled “The Principles of Economic Competitiveness and the Green Book” sets out
specifically to establish the “compatibility of Porter's framework” with Gaddafi's treatise: “The competitiveness framework and the Green Book share essential principles: Bottom up approach to competitiveness-building, a commitment to the idea that Libyans control their own economic needs; and a unique model that is ‘neutral to state or private ownership.'”
⁵⁰

In an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper
Asharq Al Awsat
after the revolution, Sawani claimed that he had been wary of the assignment and that, in effect, it “had never occurred to him that he would wind up at an institution like the Green Book Center,” as he had wanted to devote time to academic matters. Moreover, he had been warned against any direct contact with the Gaddafis, as they were “a fire that burns those who get too close.”
⁵¹
Nevertheless, he had been won over by another Saif associate, who “explained [to me] that the country was in need of reform and change, and training, for which the existing administration was neither appropriate nor acceptable.”
⁵²
Others with reformist inclinations, including Gaddafi's cousin, Salma Al Gaeer Al Gaddafi, a pharmacologist with a PhD, who was not herself an unequivocal supporter of the regime, wound up at the Green Book Center in supporting roles. Al Gaeer became a Green Book Center ambassador to the US, in which capacity she criticized both some of the excesses of the Gaddafi regime and contradictory US policies toward Libya.
⁵³
Prior to this appointment, Al Gaeer had been one of the first recipients of a prestigious US Department of State International Visitors (IV) Fellowship, which brought her in contact with leading health practitioners and academics in the US.

Sawani, who later became the executive director of the Green Book Center and oversaw a number of revisions and commentaries on Gaddafi's manifesto, says he rejected an earlier offer to assist Saif during his LSE studies (further confirming various LSE concerns that Saif was getting undue outside help). Sawani was instrumental in the creation, late in 2007, of another institution, the Center for Democracy Studies, whose stated aim was to facilitate “research which aided in the deepening of the understanding of democracy and human rights and the leadership of law and its practical application in Libya, and the development of the political institutions capable of achieving these goals.”
⁵⁴
Sawani claims the idea for the Center came from discussions with Saif and others in his circle about the possibility of “broadening political participation,” and correcting the “failure of a number of initiatives connected with political reform, and based in the political leadership.”
⁵⁵
Sawani described Saif as being absolutely “intoxicated”
with the idea of unraveling the traditional structure of power and upsetting the traditional balance of power. In early December 2007, Saif, through Sawani, oversaw a series of town hall meetings,
manabir
(literally, podiums), collecting citizens from various Libyan cities to debate reform and constitutional forms. According to Sawani, the idea was to reassure Gaddafi and the revolutionary committees that these various efforts would not replace or circumvent the People's Congresses: “There was strategy to attempt to clothe the idea in theoretical terms, so as not to provoke the ire either of Gaddafi or the revolutionary committees.”

Sawani suggested that one of Saif's intentions was to orchestrate a realignment of power away from the Revolutionary Committees: “For that, he had the idea to introduce new levers in the political [scene], all of which were tied to his reform agenda and political ambitions.”
⁵⁶
The permit for the center itself, Sawani says, was obtained through subterfuge and over internal security objections while Gaddafi was out of the country. Gaddafi, it seems, was still very much not on board with these efforts.

All this raises a delicious question, given all that came later: How committed, really, was Saif to reform? How committed were his deputies? While Sawani and others would claim Saif was weak and irresolute, in this regard, the appearance is of a more active hand, even if Saif did see himself as the long-term political beneficiary of a process that took power from his father.

Perhaps the two most interesting things to emerge from the above activities are, first, the degree to which the West, so long keen to punish Gaddafi for his past acts, actively facilitated the appearance, if not substance, of reform. Second, while there are many reasons to question the depth and sincerity of much of the process, it appeared to have made some impression on Saif Al Islam. The reform measures seemed to motivate him to assemble a group of people who would ultimately be in positions to take the process forward farther than he was able or willing to do, given the realities of his situation. As of 2011, those most embarrassed would be the politicians, political appointees, multinational companies, and agencies that stumbled over themselves to help make Libya look almost pristine—something even senior Libyan officials were willing to admit it was not.

CHAPTER 6

Unfinished Business

W
ith the spinning of Libya's transformative narrative and removal from the terror list, Gaddafi wasted no time returning to previous form. The West would soon see the consequences of not making explicit its expectations regarding Gaddafi's behavior, and the penalties he could expect for crossing those lines. The agreement between Libyan state lawyers and lawyers for the Pan Am families (to which the US government was not a formal party) was key to future West-Libya relations and the rapprochement, as it turned Gaddafi's most vocal opponents—the Lockerbie families—into a powerful lobby.

Because no effective,
comprehensive
mechanism of commitment had been negotiated before the rapprochement, Gaddafi was able systematically to subvert various related transactions to his own advantage, and with highly deleterious consequences for all parties concerned (including, ultimately, Gaddafi). A perfect example is the Bulgarian medics case.

Five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor (collectively known as “the medics”) had been detained and incarcerated in 1999 for allegedly infecting 453 children in a Benghazi hospital with HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS. A Libyan court sentenced them to death in 2004 (six years after their arrest). The international medical community concluded that the pattern of infection did not suggest a deliberate act
¹
and was most likely the result of extremely poor hygiene and procedures within the hospital. The case was highly symbolic and emotional, as it involved so many innocent children, an illness for which there is probably no greater taboo in the Middle East; and Benghazi, whose people already felt highly persecuted and underserved by the Libyan regime. The families wanted someone to pay for what they saw as a deliberate crime—and fast.

The matter was left effectively dormant for almost four years, with neither the EU nor the US taking any serious action until 2003–2004 when the issue of dispensing with the remaining US sanctions and normalization of European Union–Libya relations became a more pressing issue. Six years after the jailing of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor, the European Union announced to Gaddafi that it was beginning its new dialogue with him according to a series of principles and specific policy objectives: a policy of active engagement, promotion of human rights, an end to illegal immigration, and a resolution of the Benghazi nurses affair. Written communications with Gaddafi made it “clear” that there would be no “true normalization” without a solution to the latter; yet simultaneously, and without further condition, the EU proceeded with other agreements which contradicted or undermined these principles, such as lifting a key remaining constraint on Libya, the EU Arms Embargo.
²

Gaddafi complained continuously that various EU officials had come to plead for the release of the nurses, yet no one was concerned with the fate of the infected children.
³
Gaddafi explicitly linked the fate of the children, who were treated like “terrorists” to that of Abdelbasset al Megrahi, who, he pointed out, had to remain in a Scottish prison for life.
⁴
EU representatives meanwhile attempted to deal with Gaddafi at face value, seemingly blind to the ruses Gaddafi was deploying against them.

Marc Pierini, a senior EU diplomat who assisted with the resolution of the nurses case, describes one early such trap, set during a meeting on May 24, 2005, between European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner and the president of the Basic People's Congress. The latter took them to an auditorium filled with hundreds of victims' family members holding banners denouncing the “criminal acts” of the foreign medics. Pierini said, “The trap was clear: to show to the Libyan public that the foreign visitor had been put before her responsibilities.”
⁵

To resolve the financial aspects of the nurses issue, the EU created the International Fund for Benghazi, whose administrative council, headed by Marc Pierini, was composed of delegates from the Benghazi Center for Infectious Diseases; the Libyan Red Crescent Society; a Bulgarian nongovernmental organization assisting contact with the families; Baylor College of Medicine from Houston, Texas; and the EU Action Plan for Benghazi.

The Libyans initially asked for €10 million in compensation per victim, the exact amount Libya had agreed to pay each of the Lockerbie families but ultimately “settled” at US$1 million, the amount paid the French victims of the UTA bombing.
⁶
Pierini was not blind to what was going on:

Gaddafi, seeing the obvious eagerness of the EU to resolve the issue and open the way to commercial deals, stated his own objective, precisely what the EU had wished to avoid: resolution would be contingent upon Libya's return to the international community, and not the reverse.
⁸
Gaddafi backed up this point with a not so veiled threat in April 2007, with the reversal of a moratorium (when instituted) on executions, which had been lifted a few years before in order to demonstrate Libya's commitment to human rights.
⁹

Regardless of its provenance, the issue of the infections themselves become for Gaddafi an added political liability, less apparently with respect to the West than the regime's relationship with the residents of Benghazi. They understandably wanted to see someone held accountable, however murky the situation appeared to many of them (once again, reminiscent of Lockerbie). One of the more shocking aspects of the case was how little attention it garnered in the international press, within senior levels of the European Union, and even in the Bulgarian diplomatic community, until 2003 when the issue of accelerating bilateral and multilateral relations with Libya (and Bulgaria's application for entry into the EU, which occurred in 2006) made its existence too important to ignore. Indeed, Valya Chervenyashka, one of the captive nurses, in a book published in 2010, alleged that Gaddafi singled out as scapegoats the nationals of countries he was sure would not take a strong stand in favor of their own people. (She also intimates that
lower-level Bulgarian diplomats were taking bribes, and that the families of the few local Bulgarian diplomats who came to their defense early on may have been targets of assassination.)
¹⁰

Anthony Layden, UK ambassador to Libya, devised a plan, something vaguely akin to Professor Robert Black's formula for trial of the Lockerbie suspects in The Hague. A “no fault” fund would be established by the EU Commission to provide international assistance focused on technical aid and HIV treatments unavailable in Libya. Soon enough, the Libyans managed to insert conditions whereby the fund would also be used to pay “compensation.” Originally, the idea was that no cash compensation would be paid by the West or Bulgaria—if Libya wanted to do this, it was up to the Libyan government; if Libya wanted to solicit voluntary contributions to the fund from a range of public and private sources, this was also acceptable. Gaddafi, however, requested, effectively, that the foreign and Libyan funds for technical assistance and “compensation” be commingled, thereby allowing Gaddafi to say that compensation was coming from this EU-backed fund, and thus that he had forced the West to pay compensation, which was tantamount to an admission that the West (i.e., the nurses) was guilty. While the argument was ludicrous, Gaddafi managed to exploit moments of inattention on the part of the EU to create a “Lockerbie in reverse” and to serve his propaganda purposes in Benghazi.