The Great Game: Dictators, Democracy and Deception

Written by Karima Hamdan

This week has seen the situation in Libya become increasingly tense. Following the imposition of a no-fly zone, a Libyan jet has been shot down and the rhetoric on both sides has been escalating. Gaddafi seems increasingly like one of those crazed drunks one sees wandering shambolically through the rundown city centres of former northern mining towns: dishevelled, with peculiar facial hair, and muttering suspiciously to himself until, without warning, he begins to bellow incoherently before shuffling off again.

As Gaddafi stands there, alone and ludicrously defiant, it is easy almost to feel a twinge of pity for him - until, that is, one is reminded of history, which shows him to be an utterly merciless mass murderer. Even in the crowded field of western-backed Middle Eastern despots, he outperforms the others in the "remorseless inhumanity" stakes. During his reign, he has plumbed the depths of depravity, oppressing of his own people and torturing those who dissent in the most unspeakable ways.

Despite adorning himself with the rhetoric of the Intifada, he was the one who expelled 30,000 Palestinian refugees from Libya. Despite attempting to be the personification of the plucky Muslim leader standing up to the west, he has demonstrated that he has no respect for Islam. His Green Book – a contemptible cobbling together of communism and Islam inspired by Chairman Mao's Red Book – is regarded by many ulama to be kufr. Not that this would give Gaddafi pause for thought: there is strong anecdotal evidence that he sent assassins on the Hajj to murder ulama who pronounced fataawa against him, with the assassin carrying out his vile act on the Day of Arafat, the holiest day of the Hajj pilgrimage.

And yet despite this, it is difficult to feel totally at ease with the imposition of the no-fly zone when one hears reports of the crazed colonel sending young, demoralised, troops out to fight, handcuffed to their tanks or in planes without parachutes. Rebels have also reportedly found the bodies of 13 of Gaddafi's soldiers who appeared to have been executed, possibly for defying orders. 

However, whilst we can all agree that there would have been an even greater massacre in Benghazi had the no-fly zone not been imposed, there is a wider issue which the West needs to address. For all their talk about protecting the Libyan public from Gaddafi, Britain, the US, France and the other "allies", as some of the more excitable news reporters are dubbing those signatories to UN resolution 1973, did not seem to recall these tender feelings when they were buying Gadaffi's oil and hosting his disreputable personage, tent and all, up and down Europe since he was ushered in from the cold by our own Tony Blair in 2004.

Blair in fact has a very close relationship with the Libyan leader. He used his last official prime ministerial visit to Libya in 2007 to sign an accord for the UK to exchange information about defence structures and technology, and to co-operate "in the training of specialised military units, special forces and border security units". They also agreed to "exchanges of information on NATO and EU military and civil security organisations".

Since leaving office, Blair has cashed in on this special relationship, acting as an advisor to several multinationals involved in relieving Libya of its massive oil resources. Although Blair has denied the claim made by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi that the former prime minister has secured a consultancy role with the £65bn sovereign fund that manages the country's oil wealth, given Blair's altogether fleeting relationship with the finer aspects of veracity, some may take his denial with a substantial pinch of salt.

This history could all be explained away as past wrongs that have now been righted given Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy's apparent commitment to spreading democracy. But with what face can these leaders speak about democracy, when the world knows that the same countries, currently waxing lyrical about Libyan self-determination, were propping up Gaddafi only a few months ago?

Whether it was training and advising the Libyan police (not to mention the police of Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – but that's another story) via the National Policing Improvement Agency, or authorising the export of tear gas, crowd-control ammunition, small-arms ammunition, water cannon and door-breaching projectile launchers, Britain was at the vanguard of the retail therapy rehabilitation of Libya. And it wasn't just arms sales. In a deal brokered in 2007 by Tony Blair, BP signed a £560m exploration agreement allowing it to search for oil and gas, offshore and onshore, in a joint venture with the Libya Investment Corporation. In a scrabble to capitalise on the country with the largest oil reserves in Africa, Shell and a gaggle of other European and American oil companies have signed deals to do business with Gaddafi.

Watching Europe capitalise on Libya's virgin markets after European sanctions were lifted in 2004, US multinationals became increasingly anxious that they were missing the boat. A cabal of high profile US companies (including then US Vice President's company, Halliburton) set up the US-Libya Business Association to lobby for US sanctions to be lifted. One of those lobbying was the Prince of Darkness himself, Richard Pearle, a former Reagan-era US Defense Department official and George W. Bush-era chair of the US Defense Policy Board.

According to US political reporter Lauren Rozen, Pearle travelled to Libya to meet with Gaddafi as part of the "Project to Enhance the Profile of Libya and Muammar Gaddafi". Other high profile figures in the delegation included historian Francis Fukuyama, prominent US journalist David Frost, and MIT media lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, the brother of the former US deputy secretary of state and director of national intelligence, John Negroponte. Whatever they did, it worked: sanctions were lifted and US multinationals rolled in, a process made all the more easy by Gaddafi privatising 110 state-owned companies – an unusual act for a man who based his revolution on nationalising Libya's oil companies.

Again, Western governments have excused this sort of behaviour with a sheepish shrug and murmured platitudes about lessons learned, but as they publicly declare their admiration for the bravery of the rebels in Benghazi for standing up to a dictator, they remain tucked up cosily in bed with such charming characters as Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan.

The West's attraction to Karimov is his strategically important Karshi Khanabad airbase and his status as a solid partner in the War on Terror. This is despite Karimov's love of barbaric punishments for political dissidents, including boiling them alive (warning: link contains graphic images). It is worth noting that to qualify as a political dissident in Uzbekistan, one needs to engage in the wholly anarchic activity of growing a beard or practising Islam in a way that is not sanctioned by the state.

Karimov's government was awarded $500m in aid from the Bush administration in 2002. The SNB (Uzbekistan's security service) received $79m of this sum. However, even though Karimov evicted the US from his airbase with much fanfare in 2005, in 2009 the US again clasped Karimov to their bosom and quietly re-established a presence there.

So given this reality of Western double standards, is it so unnatural for my chest not to swell with with pride when the prime minister gives self-congratulatory speeches about UN Resolution 1973? We are told that "we simply cannot stand back and let a dictator whose people have rejected him, kill his people indiscriminately", when it is perfectly clear that this is exactly what the UK and others are doing with so many other "strategically important" partners in the War on Terror.

What I hope has become apparent is that there is a larger political game at play, the details of which we mere citizens can never be allowed to be privy to.

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who resigned in disgust when faced with Karimov's brutal regime, broke the news last week saying, "A senior diplomat in a western mission to the UN in New York, who I have known over ten years and trust, has told me for sure that Hillary Clinton agreed to the cross-border use of troops to crush democracy in the Gulf, as a quid pro quo for the Arab League calling for Western intervention in Libya."

Murray makes the point that the King of Bahrain calling for troops from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait to come into his country and viciously oppress pro-democracy protestors would be like Gaddafi calling in the armies of Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso to attack the rebels in Benghazi. With the US fifth fleet already stationed in Bahrain, it wouldn't be too taxing to arrange a "no-drive zone" around Pearl Square at short notice, but somehow I doubt that there will be a UN Resolution 1974 about Bahrain any time soon.

Noam Chomsky recently wrote in the Guardian: "A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism."

Other Middle East analysts have commented that whilst there is a great deal of rage and fury spouted about these demonstrations, once the figurehead despot is toppled, he is quietly replaced by someone just as bad and, in some cases, even worse.

Patrick Cockburn writing in the Independent opines that "the degree of change is still unclear. Elites that got rid of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt and possibly, in the next few weeks, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, are doing so in order to make sure that uprisings do not turn into real revolutions."

Interestingly, the military operation in Libya has been codenamed "Operation Odyssey Dawn" by the US military, an apparently meaningless name chosen after the random letters O-D were assigned to this mission. Despite some quipping that a more appropriate name could have been "Obvious Disaster", or "Oil Deposits", Odyssey Dawn was nevertheless selected.

The Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. It follows the story of Odysseus' (called Ulysses by the Romans) long journey home after the fall of Troy in the Trojan War. I won't relate the whole 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter but it suffices to say that it relates to the tale of a warrior attempting to return home from another war who leads his men into a prolonged adventure in the Mediterranean. One by one they all die, and it takes him a decade to get home. All the while, Odysseus' lot is made more difficult by the machinations of the venal, bickering Greek gods and demigods.

As we watch another "adventure" in the Mediterranean unfold, one can't help but wonder if this modern day Odyssey will follow its ancient namesake: what started out as an apparently simple task may involve many years of wading through quagmire and may be subject to the great game played out behind the scenes by another cohort of modern day false gods and demigods.

Know that the life of this world is but amusement and diversion and adornment and boasting to one another and competition in increase of wealth and children - like the example of a rain whose [resulting] plant growth pleases the tillers; then it dries and you see it turned yellow; then it becomes [scattered] debris. And in the Hereafter is severe punishment and forgiveness from Allah and approval. And what is the worldly life except the enjoyment of delusion?

Race toward forgiveness from your Lord and a Garden whose width is like the width of the heavens and earth, prepared for those who believed in Allah and His messengers. That is the bounty of Allah which He gives to whom He wills, and Allah is the possessor of great bounty.

No disaster strikes upon the earth or among yourselves except that it is in a register before We bring it into being - indeed that, for Allah, is easy -

In order that you not despair over what has eluded you and not exult [in pride] over what He has given you. And Allah does not like everyone self-deluded and boastful -

[Those] who are stingy and enjoin stinginess upon people. And whoever turns away - then indeed, Allah is free of need, the Praiseworthy.
We have already sent Our messengers with clear evidences and sent down with them the Scripture and the balance that the people may maintain [their affairs] in justice. And We sent down iron, wherein is great military might and benefits for the people, so that Allah may make evident those who support Him and His messengers unseen. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Exalted in Might.

Al-Quran: Surah Hadid, 20-25