In March 1998, Qaddafi’s Libya became the first country to issue an Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden. The warrant was studiously ignored by American and British intelligence, according to French journalist Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac. Five months later, Al Qaeda struck the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (Among the participants in the attack were al-Libi and Ali Abdelsoud Mohammed, a spy for Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri who had entered the US on a CIA-approved visa and managed to rise to the rank of corporal at the John F. Kennedy School of Special Warfare at Ft. Bragg, where he smuggled special forces training manuals out to Al Qaeda cadres.) [...]
A secret 2008 US embassy cable described Qaddafi’s government as a bulwark against the spread of Islamist militancy. “Libya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent,” the cable read. “Muammar al-Qadhafi’s criticism of Saudi Arabia for perceived support of Wahabi extremism, a source of continuing Libya-Saudi tension, reflects broader Libyan concern about the threat of extremism. Worried that fighters returning from Afghanistan and Iraq could destabilize the regime, the [government of Libya] has aggressive pursued operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry, and blunt the ideological appeal of radical Islam.” [...]
When the Libyan uprising broke out in March 2011, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates immediately pumped arms and logistical support into the armed opposition. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saw the insurgency as an opportunity for America to assert its influence amidst the tumult of the Arab Spring. She advocated arming the rebels on the grounds that Washington could get “skin in the game,” according to her Middle East advisor, Dennis Ross. [...]
Libya today is a failed state, its public coffers and oil reserves looted by the foreign powers that oversaw the war of regime change in 2011. Its shores are a main disembarkation point for migrants, where women fleeing conflict and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa are beaten, raped and starved in “living hellholes,” according to UNICEF. The United Nations International Organization for Migration has recorded testimony of open air slave markets in Libya where migrants from West Africa are bought and sold. The refugee crisis has propelled the rise of the far-right in Europe, fueling the demagogic politics of figures from Nigel Farage to Marine Le Pen that blame the victims of the West’s catastrophic interventions.
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