Radical Islamists are among the leaders of rebels who have toppled Tripoli and are hunting down Moammar Gadhafi but their influence can be blunted by the West before they gain power and pose a threat to Libyan democracy and to U.S. allies, foreign policy experts say.
Islamists represent about a fifth of the Libyan Transitional National Council, and Islamist militias have ransacked military weapons caches, controlling neighborhoods and taken over prisons and government offices, says Walid Phares, author of The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East and an adviser to the Anti-Terrorism Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If an Islamist movement akin to the Muslim Brotherhood succeeds in gaining dominance in Libya, it would divide Libyan society between male and female and block the media and educational system from creating a secular society that can integrate with the West, he says.
“They would create a bloc of regimes with other other Islamic regimes that would be against the (Israeli-Palestinian) peace process and mobilize militarily against Israel,” Phares says. “They would want to compete with and defeat the influence of the United States in the region and beyond.”
Several countries in the Middle East and North Africa are fighting off Islamist takeovers, agreeing to some of their demands or have become Muslim theocracies hostile to the West and Israel. Places like Saudi Arabia and Yemen have been dispatching fighters to Afghanistan and terrorists to Western capitals.
Ties to terrorism
Under Gadhafi, who has ruled for 42 years, Libya has voiced support for anti-Western causes and been accused of masterminding several terror acts, including the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin disco and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
After the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Gadhafi agreed to turn over his nuclear weapons components to the West for destruction, and he implemented an anti-radicalization program aimed at Islamist radicals.
Some experts say radical Islamists who want the country governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law will play a minor role in Libya’s future. “Libya is Muslim but not Islamist,” says Mansour El-Kikhia, Libyan-born chairman of the department of political science at the University of Texas-San Antonio. “What you’re seeing is a large number of people who want a secular system. They look at Iran and Saudi Arabia and say that’s not what we want.”
Experts say the United States and other Western nations can help blunt the strict Islamists’ influence through economic development, democratic expertise and military assistance. The State Department would not specifiy what concrete steps it has taken outside of discussing the matter with the Libyans.
The National Transitional Council “has assured us that it will take steps to prevent terrorist groups or individual terrorists from playing a role in Libya’s future,” State Department spokeswoman Heide Fulton says.
Abd al-Hakim Belhaj, one of the supposedly converted al-Qaeda terrorists introduced to reporters last year, led rebel troops who swept into the Libyan capital, Tripoli, last week, Omar Ashour, a visiting fellow in Brookings Doha Center, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine.
Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a rebel leader in eastern Libya, fought with al-Qaeda against U.S. forces in Afghanistan and has said he recruited about two dozen of his al-Qaeda comrades to join the fight in Libya. His hometown, Derna, was described in a 2008 diplomatic cable written by U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as providing a “disproportionately large number” of Libyans who attacked U.S. forces in Iraq with suicide bombings and other ways.
Suggestions to limit influence
British news media have reported that rebel recruits in the eastern city of Derna are being trained by Sufyan Bin Qumu, a Libyan who was apprehended in Afghanistan and held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for six years.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which operates in Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Chad and has kidnapped and beheaded European tourists from Italy and France, is likely to gain a foothold in the current chaos, says Michael Rubin, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School. “It’s not a risk — it’s a certainty,” Rubin says.
Rubin and others say there’s plenty the West can do to prevent a takeover by radicals. Foreign troops can train and advise the new Libyan military to fight al-Qaeda, Rubin says. British and French special operators have been coordinating with rebel forces in Libya, and Moroccan, Tunisian or Gulf Arab states may also agree to participate, he says.
Western diplomats can also advise the moderate majority in the National Transitional Council to block anti-democratic factions from the process of creating a new government, Rubin says. “If we’re too consumed with a democratic process in the transition, we may end up with less than democracy in the state we end up building.”
Phares says the West should instruct the National Transitional Council “to deny Islamic militias from controlling bases and ministries,” as happened with Islamist militias such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Mahdi Army in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Otherwise, “The next battle after mopping up the pro-Gadhafi remnants is going to be with the Islamic militias,” he says.
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