WMD Threats and Security Challenges in Libya: Comparing the Qaddafi and the Post-Qaddafi Periods

Abstract

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 38, 3-4, 2013 © The Maghreb Review 2013 This publication is printed on longlife paper WMD THREATS AND SECURITY CHALLENGES IN LIBYA: COMPARING THE QADDAFI AND THE POST-QADDAFI PERIODS YEHUDIT RONEN* INTRODUCTION Armed with anti-aircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as rabidly anti-American zeal, Libyan Islamist militants affiliated with the global jihadi community attacked the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi and killed the American ambassador Christopher J. Stevens and three other members of the diplomatic staff on 11 September 2012. Coinciding with the 11th anniversary of al-Qaida’s mega-terrorist attack in the United States, the tragic Benghazi incident testified, among other things, to the chaotically violent security conditions dominating post-Qaddafi Libya since the downfall of the regime on 20 August 2011. The lawless postwar scene in Libya has been marked by the burgeoning of heavily armed militia groups, struggling to promote their religious-political power and ideological convictions, as they also bolster their tribal and ethnic identity and interests. Outfitted with an abundance of sophisticated weapons and intoxicated by the unprecedented power created by the dramatic opening of a window of opportunity after 42 years of oppression under one of the toughest dictatorial regimes at the turn of the 21st century, the armed militias did everything they could to maximize their advantage in the vacuum that had been created. With many of the militias consisting of ex-military men, including high-ranking officers who had deserted the army for the rebel camp during the Arab Spring war of 2011, they had access to Muammar al-Qaddafi’s huge arsenals of the most up-to-date weaponry. Also possessing left-overs of the sophisticated weapons that foreign powers had supplied the rebels with during the fighting against Qaddafi, these militias have become more powerful than the state, now bereft of any effective police force or national army. Some of these heavily armed militias are affiliated with the global jihadi community and are led by veteran mujahidin who fought against the ‘vicious’, ‘infidel’ West in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, each of these militias – whatever its own interests and vision of postwar Libya – has become engaged in a tough uncompromising endeavour to conquer key power positions in the newly created political and security void in the war-torn state. Paradoxically internalizing the patterns of behaviour successfully adopted for more than four decades by the deposed regime in order to impose its ideological and political control over Libya’s tribally and ethnically diverse society, the armed militias have adopted a similarly ruthless approach, perceiving it as the optimal means to achieve their goals, whatever the price for the country. * Bar-Ilan University, Israel 244 YEHUDIT RONEN This scenario would not have been possible without the post-Qaddafi proliferation of weapons, including SAM-7 missiles and man-portable airdefence systems (MANPADS) all across Libya, as well as beyond its borders, both in its adjacent geo-strategic environs and in areas of conflict further away in the Middle East and Africa. The unbeatable ease of access to weapons from the state’s arms depots and consequent arms-trafficking boom in Libya and its geographic surroundings, as well as the massive transfer of weapons by exQaddafi Touareg fighters, who fled from Libya after the fall of the regime and returned to their countries of origin in the Sahel, mainly to Mali, have provided non-state elements in Libya and beyond with unprecedented military-political strength. As the legacy of Qaddafi’s rule (1969–2011), Libya’s immense stockpiles of weapons, including chemical weapons, notwithstanding the 2003 commitment to destroy them, provide ample testimony of Qaddafi’s obsession to obtain military armaments, with the possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) foremost.1 Qaddafi was convinced that this incessant arms race would secure his grip on power, while enhancing his grand ideological vision, while advancing his political ambitions in the Arab world and Africa, and so Libya under his leadership became a huge catchment basin of weapons, including chemical warfare materials and a nuclear program. Libya’s conventional and non-conventional weapons have become a major player in informing post-Qaddafi...