NATO's Failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa

The Execution of Gaddafi

117 Horace Campbell The Execution of Gaddafi Gaddafi’s escape from Tripoli The details of the escape of Colonel Gaddafi from Tripoli and the bombing of the convoy ferrying Gaddafi from Sirte have been provided for posterity by Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, an aide to Gaddafi who survived the NATO attack on the convoy. Dhao, who was then the head of the People’s Guard, was with Gaddafi during his final days and told Human Rights Watch officials on Saturday, October 23 how he was wounded and Gaddafi was killed. According to Dhao, [T]he decision for Gaddafi to stay in Sirte was based on Muatassim, the colonel’s son. … Gaddafi’s son and the military entourage had reasoned that the city, long known as an important pro-Qaddafi stronghold and under frequent bombardment by NATO airstrikes, was the last place anyone would look. It was further revealed that: The colonel traveled with about 10 people, including close aides and guards. Muatassim, who commanded the loyalist forces, traveled separately from his father, fearing that his own satellite phone was being tracked. Apart from a phone, which the colonel used to make frequent statements to a Syrian television station that became his official outlet, Colonel Qaddafi was largely cut off from the world. It was this satellite phone that was tracked, so that when Sirte was bombed to smithereens, there was only one option left for Gaddafi, and that was to make a run to escape. After August 21, 2001, British newspapers The Telegraph and The Independent had been reporting that British SAS forces and US special forces had been scouring the Sirte area for Gaddafi, unable to find him. According to these reports, when the resistance continued for two months, the British and US special forces on the ground, disguised as Libyan NTC fighters, had been coordinating the bombing campaign of Sirte. These forces synchronised the bombing, and one or two weeks before the execution, 118 Africa Institute of South Africa NATO’s failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa ‘NATO had pinpointed Gaddafi’s position after an intelligence breakthrough’. Once the SAS and the coordinating forces confirmed Gaddafi’s position, ‘an American drone and an array of NATO eavesdropping aircraft had been trained on his Sirte stronghold to ensure he could not escape’. The possibility of escape had been uppermost in the minds of Africans who had followed the Libyan support for Idi Amin of Uganda in the 1978/79 Kagera war. When the Tanzanian army had taken control of most of the cities in Uganda, the Tanzanian military left the road to Jinja open so that Idi Amin and the Libyans who supported him could escape. Amin used this route to leave Uganda and died peacefully in his sleep in Saudi Arabia 24 years later. Tanzania was not fighting against Idi Amin personally, but against the reign of terror that he had brought on Uganda. Gaddafi had supported Idi Amin but he did not learn the major lessons of that Libyan intervention and the Kagera war. We know that Gaddafi escaped to Sirte. Reports in the international media are that some of the security officials around Gaddafi engaged private security firms through a British security outfit in Kenya. These international reports stated that a team of South African mercenaries had helped Muammar Gaddafi’s family out of the war zone of Tripoli, to hide out in Algeria. After this operation, a second team was supposed to have gone to Libya to assist the escape of Gaddafi. However, newspapers knowledgeable about the historic operations of British intelligence in Africa stated that, ‘intelligence sources believe there were agents among the mercenaries, or in some of the security companies, who were spying for the transitional government and reporting the mercenaries’ movements.’ This information on the role of the double agents, some of whom were killed in the attack on the convoy on the morning of October 20, will assist the reader in understanding the debates, within the National Security Council of the Obama administration, on what to do with Gaddafi once he was caught.223 According to The New York Times, There were sharp divisions within Libya’s Transitional National Council about what to do with Colonel Qaddafi, according to American officials. Some argued that he should be tried in the country; others said it would impose too big a burden on an interim administration dealing with so many other problems. The ambivalence was mirrored on the American side, with some in the...