An abandoned hot spring resort in Waddan, Libya. Photo by Brian Conley
Libya’s Impotent New Government
A sense of entropy lingers here. Some state employees have gone without salaries for a year, and Mr. Shamis acknowledged that the government had no idea how to channel enough money into the economy so that it would be felt in the streets. Tripoli residents complain about a lack of transparency in government decisions. Ministries still seem paralyzed by the tendency, instilled during the dictatorship, to defer every decision to the top.
“They’re sitting on their chairs, they’re drinking coffee and they’re drafting projects that stay in the realm of their imagination,” said Israa Ahwass, a 20-year-old pharmacy student at Tripoli University, which was guarded by a knot of militiamen.
How can you change people overnight?” interrupted her friend, Naima Mohammed, who is also studying pharmacy. “It’s been 42 years of ignorance.”
“They’re not doing a single thing,” Ms. Ahwass replied.
Al Jazeera Listening Post: Bahrain - a small kingdom cracking down on the media in a big way.
Photojournalist Christopher Anderson talks about his friend Tim Hetherington on GRITtv with Laura Flanders.
Some of them are fighting because of weird conspiracy theories. One of the rebels told me today he’s fighting because he thinks Qaddafi is Jewish.
MSNBC correspondent in Libya, just now, on the Rachel Maddow Show. (via spiegelman)
Awesome. We’re providing armed backup for the Libyan Tea Party.
Of all the nutty arguments made by secretary of state Clinton for the new war in Libya was that the Arab League had signed on. We were told that military forces flying Arab flags would be at the center of the coalition. Now, we find that there are no such military forces. Worse, even the paper tiger of the Arab League has now bolted the mission, ripping the fig leaf of legitimacy off Obama’s privates. It took the Arab League less than a day to do this. And yet this was apparently Clinton’s trump card in her internal argument.
In 2006 the Security Council passed a resolution, which was also endorsed by the U.N. General Assembly, accepting that all governments have a responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and grave and systematic war crimes and that if they fail in that responsibility the international community has the right to intervene. This was an enormous normative step forward, akin to an international Magna Carta, even if it will take decades to elaborate and implement. It is the state corollary to the recognition of individual human rights with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949 and subsequent more specific treaties. For would-be members of the Security Council, a willingness to stand up for this principle is a true test of leadership, the kind of leadership that a great power must be willing to exercise. By that metric, Germany, Brazil, and India just failed.
In short, while we believe we are ready to “do something” in Libya, we are having a debate over what tactics we find acceptable, rather than what strategy will succeed. This actually plays into Qaddafi’s hands. Now he knows that the air option is out. But he also knows that Western powers will be unwilling to send in troops — the only thing that would assure he is removed from power. The message he’ll take away is to go hard on the ground war.
Arizona Senator John McCain on This Week:
“Again, by a no-fly zone, by declaring our support for a provisional government, perhaps, which is being formed up now - there is a lot of steps we can take.”
House Chief of Staff Bill Daley on Meet The Press:
“Well, you know, lots of people throw around phrases of ‘no-fly zone,’ and they talk about it as though it’s just a game on a video game or something, and some people who throw, throw that line out have no idea what they’re talking about.”
I don’t know if Daley is talking specifically about McCain, but it sure sounds like he’s referring to someone who’s nonchalance about war brought us such hits as “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”.
Libya’s ambassador to the US just took down the current Libyan flag and raised the pre-Qaddafi flag in its place.
U.S. Companies Lobbied To Keep Libyan Market Open For Business
On October 5, 2008 U.S. and Libyan business leaders met with Department of Commerce Assistant Secretary Israel Hernandez as he opened a new Foreign Commercial Service office in Tripoli. In the same year, more companies and trade associations than ever before disclosed that they were lobbying the U.S. government in Washington to keep the newly opened African nation open for business. Much of that lobbying aided in the growing U.S.-Libyan business connection that led to the opening of the office.
According to lobbying disclosure reports, fifteen companies and two trade associations listed Libyan issues on their lobbying disclosure forms since President George W. Bush lifted economic sanctions on Libya in 2004. Libya’s large oil reserves, the biggest of any African nation, were the main focus of the lobbying efforts in Washington.
These companies include a who’s who of international oil companies including ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, Shell, and Hess Corporation. The non-energy firms lobbying on Libya include Boeing, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, Fluor Corporation, Halliburton, Motorola, and Raytheon. All of these companies have been engaged in business deals or attempted to enter the Libyan market over the past six years.
The current revolution in Libya has upended the recent engagement between the Government of Libya, the foreign oil companies, and the other corporations that have worked to enter the country’s market.
Lobbying was a regular feature as these companies sought to protect their new investments and get the U.S. government to smooth out business problems with the erratic regime. One issue that combined both of these lobbying topics came about from one amendment proposed to deal with state sponsors of terrorism.
According to diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks, an amendment added to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008, known as the Lautenberg amendment, made it easier for plaintiffs in terrorism lawsuits to seize foreign government-owned assets from state sponsors of terrorism. This proved problematic for companies that had already entered into business arrangements with Libya as the government had not finished making payments to plaintiffs in the Lockerbie bombing case.
In 1988, terrorists blew up a passenger airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland at the behest of the government of Libya. In total, 270 people were killed. In 2002, Libya announced that it would pay the victim’s families $2.7 billion and paid it back in part as sanctions were lifted from the country and the country was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. This initial payment led to further discussion to repay victim’s families for other terrorist attacks that Libya undertook in the past. The passage of the Lautenberg amendment occurred in the context of these new negotiations.
The cables show that the Libyan government told the U.S. oil companies that “it is “their problem” to solve, and has begun requiring U.S. and other companies to conduct all operations in non-dollar denominations.” This meant that the companies would have to face the consequences of any future settlements that occurred under the Lautenberg amendment.
For the large part of 2008, the fifteen companies lobbying then focused on the repeal of the Lautenberg amendment. On August 4, 2008, they were successful. The resolution, known as the Libyan Claims Resolution Act, exempted Libya from the Lautenberg amendment barring the country settle for the victims of the other four terrorist attacks. On August 14, 2008, the United States approved a $1.8 billion settlement for the victims and the companies no longer faced the possibility of asset forfeiture.
These companies did not just rely on lobbying to their benefit over the years, but also created a non-lobbying advocacy organization to influence public opinion. The US-Libya Business Association was founded by many of the companies that lobbied Washington on Libyan issues in the 2000s along with White & Case, the law firm retained by the Government of Libya as registered foreign lobbyists.
In 2009, the US-Libya Business Association ceded all of its advocacy work to the National Foreign Trade Council, a long-standing free trade group operating in Washington. According to a press release, “The association will remain a separate entity but will be co-located with the NFTC.” With the present turmoil in Libya, the future prospects of the companies that have lobbied to protect their stake in the country are unclear. Some companies have evacuated employees while others have stated that their operations can still continue. The political response from the United States government may be equally worrying.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said that the crackdown “beyond despicable” and called for American and international businesses to cease operations immediately and for the Obama Administration to re-impose sanctions lifted by President Bush. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen echoed Kerry’s call for a re-imposition of sanctions.
As the revolution continues unabated, these companies may wind up needing their lobbyists more than ever.
A Libyan dissident burns his passport outside the Libyan Embassy in London.
by Pete Riches
