by Brandon Webb
The Garamantes were the indigenous peoples who occupied present-day Libya as far back as 1,000BCE. An agrarian society, the Garamantes also worked as merchants and engaged in the salt trade with the ancient West African empires. Later, the Phoenicians extended their commercial trade network across North Africa, absorbing the three-city region called Tripolis on the Libyan coast from which the modern capital, Tripoli, draws its name. The ancient Greeks then created a colony in Libya, welcoming Alexander the Great in 331BCE.
As the Roman Empire was coming into the picture, multiple trade routes were emerging that crisscrossed the desert. Libya was thus linked to Sudan, and Algeria linked to the Niger River bend, via a Mauritanian corridor suitable for grazing in the months of October through May. A third major route came into existence, connecting Sudan with Egypt. A complex series of oases acted as waypoints through the desert as the caravans could go as long as eight to ten days without water. By 74BCE, Libya had voluntarily become a Roman province.
Tripoli continued to grow into a commercial hub under Roman protection until the empire declined and the Vandal barbarian hordes swept through North Africa in the 5th century BCE. The Romans attempted to reassert themselves in the region, but their empire was overextended, causing Roman infrastructure and culture to wither away until the spread of Islam came to fill the power vacuum.
For centuries, control of Libya was up for grabs among the Berber tribes, the Byzantines, and various Arab invaders, including the Caliphate of Ummayad of Syria. The burgeoning trade in gold brought the precious metal to the Mediterranean coast from the Wangara clan of modern-day Mali and Ghana. Heavy caravans of several thousand camels flowed across the desert once a year, while light caravans consisting of a hundred camels were more frequent.
By the 16th century, Libya had fallen under Ottoman control, while favorable political conditions in Mali had allowed for extensive trade networks to develop (mostly) unhindered by bandits and thieves. The spread of Islam had a profound effect on North Africa, developing a civil society connected by religious ties that stretched across nations and empires. Literacy, promoted by the Muslim faith to allow followers to read the Koran, led Muslim caravanners to create a system of credit and other legal documents, such as contracts.
While the trans-Atlantic slave trade picked up pace, Arab slavers also began engaging in the practice of raiding European coastal cities to procure Christian slaves. Arabs also captured black African slaves from sub-Saharan Africa, but even combining these two slave networks, the number of people sold into slavery by Arabs was perhaps 1.5 million on the outside, a mere drop in the bucket compared to the European trade in black slaves. However, the Barbary slavers were prolific enough to cause entire stretches of Mediterranean coastline to be abandoned in Spain, France, Italy, and elsewhere, while the pirates raided as far as Iceland and Ireland.
Previously, historians believed that, with the increase in maritime trade, the trans-Saharan routes fell into disuse, however, recent analysis shows that quite the opposite happened. The Ottoman Empire’s presence in Libya opened up new markets for goods flowing across the north-south trade routes from places like Bornu and Timbuktu, according to a French doctor held in Libya during the 1680s.
The 1700s found Libya sliding into a chaotic time of coups and counter-coups. European nations paid tributes to the Barbary pirates to prevent them from seizing their merchant ships and enslaving their sailors. Ships originating in colonial America were protected as British-flagged ships, but, after the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson stayed true to his principled ideals and refused to engage in paying tributes and becoming entangled in complicated foreign affairs. With American ships now under siege by North African pirates, the first of the Barbary wars kicked off.
In 1784, the first American merchant ship was seized by pirates from the Barbary Coast, which included the shores of Morocco, Algeria, and Libya. Acting as the American Ambassador to France at the time, Jefferson negotiated a treaty with the Moroccans but was much less successful in dealing with the two other Barbary states. Pirates from Algeria and Libya continued to capture American ships, motivating the US government to establish a Navy in the year of 1798 as a response to the Barbary threat. All the while, American sailors were sold into slavery and a life of hard labor while the pirate states attempted to ransom them back to the US government along with their impounded vessels.
Throughout this ordeal, Jefferson stuck to his guns in regard to not paying ransoms and tributes, using the rationale that paying off the pirates would only incentivize them to capture more ships and ransom off more American sailors. This, unfortunately, was a lesson that had to be relearned in the 1980s by Oliver North and his crew as they traded missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon.
The US government did compromise by paying some ransoms in order to stall for time until an adequate naval force could be stood up, but Jefferson remained adamant about ceasing the payments altogether, believing that America’s future lay in westward expansion rather than in cramping future Americans in cities like Boston and New York, which could very well come to be filled with the urban poor and resemble the destitute slums of London and Paris. Old Word entanglements did not sit well with him.
Sworn in as President in 1801, Jefferson ceased paying any form of ransom, leading the Barbary pirates to declare war on the United States. In an episode frighteningly similar to current events, the Turkish Ottoman pirates cut down the flag pole in front of the US consulate in Tripoli. At the same time, administrators in Algiers were upset that the previous Adams presidency had been paying Tripoli more in tribute than they received, while the governors in Tunis grew angry at not having received a payoff in several years.
By now, the President had a naval force at his disposal to protect American merchant ships and enforce US foreign policy. He soon dispatched a small naval force under orders to “protect our commerce and chastise their insolence-by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.” The USS Enterprise chalked up its first defeat of a Barbary ship in August of 1801. More US naval ships arrived on the Barbary coast and established a blockade around Barbary port cities in 1803.
The First Barbary War continued until 1805, when the US Marines led a daring raid along with Greek and indigenous mercenaries in the Battle of Derna. The action resulted in a decisive American victory, immortalized in the Marine hymn with the words, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli; we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land, and sea.” It was America’s first war and the country’s first successful overseas military campaign.
Though America was distracted by the War of 1812 and Europe similarly preoccupied by the Napoleonic Wars, governments on both sides of the Atlantic resolved to destroy the Barbary pirates once and for all. The Berlin Conference of 1884 formalized European imperialism on the African continent. While France secured Algeria using the pretext of preventing further Barbary piracy, Italy staked its claim to Libya in 1912, calling it Italian North Africa. After fighting a bitter war against Libyan Bedouin resistance, Italy eventually had to abandon the country as North Africa was plunged into World War Two.
It was during the North African Campaign against the Nazi forces of Erwin Rommel, perhaps Germany’s most capable general, that the British Special Air Service was first used for commando actions behind enemy lines. Conducting parachute drops and working alongside the Long Range Desert Group, the SAS strode into history, becoming the preeminent Special Operations force, which the rest of the Western world sought to emulate decades later.
As a result of the Allied victory in the Second World War, Libya was allowed to become an independent state. In 1951, it was declared an independent monarchy ruled by King Idris. With the discovery of Libya’s massive oil reserves, the country became rich seemingly overnight. With wealth concentrated around King Idris, resistance to the monarchy and foreign interference c
ontinued to build during the post-colonial Arab and African nationalist movements of the 1960s.
Under the aegis of Marxist revolutionary rhetoric, Omar Gaddafi staged a coup against the king in 1969. The Libyan revolution had brought into power a dictator who would antagonize America, and Africa, for decades to come.
Born to a Bedouin family of little consequence, Gaddafi rose through the ranks as a young Libyan military officer, receiving specialized radio training in England along the way. When he launched his coup, he used his charisma to build popular support and align himself against the Italian colonizers and Western powers. Although he came out of a post-colonial background, Gaddafi can in some ways be seen as a precursor to over-the-top populist figures such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in terms of his strong anti-Western stances and attempts to nationalize industry in an effort to free his citizens from the “scourge of the private sector.”
Gaddafi proposed his own unique political doctrine, one that embraced socialism but rejected the atheism of the Soviet Union, instead implementing Sharia Law in Libya. This course of action was well advised as communism had been quickly rejected in Iraq during its first go-around in the Muslim world during the 1950s, when Soviet envoys insisted that the Arabs abandon their Muslim faith.
Promoting himself to colonel, and later general, Gaddafi installed himself as the figurehead of his revolutionary movement while giving the illusion that the reins of power had been handed over to a series of councils and committees. Seeking to become a pan-Arab leader at the center of a single Muslim state that encompassed North Africa and the Middle East, Gaddafi cultivated relationships with Arab leaders such as Anwar Al-Sadat of Egypt and Hefiz Al-Assad of Syria. However, these leaders never fully trusted Gaddafi or his ambitions. Even though he was strongly anti-Israeli and promoted the Palestinian cause, Egypt and Syria left him out of the planning process as they prepared for war against Israel.
Israel’s defensive preemptive action, now known as the Six-Day War, struck a humiliating defeat to the Arab nations that resonates to this day. When Israeli fighter jets screamed over Egyptian airfields and destroyed their aircraft before they could even get off the ground, it left a feeling of impotence among the Arabs. Finger-pointing and shifting of blame happened between Assad, Sadat, and Gaddafi, resulting in the Arab leaders’ completely rejecting Gaddafi as a political player.
Since the Arabs wanted nothing to do with the Libyan leader, Gaddafi instead turned his attentions to Africa, now hoping for a pan-African movement that would unite the continent under his leadership. Delusions of grandeur appeared to be a habitual character flaw of his. In addition to assassinating overseas dissidents, Gaddafi financially supported anti-Western terrorist groups as wide-ranging as the IRA, the Red Army Faction, Filipino Muslim militants, the Black Panthers, the ANC in South Africa, and many others.
Meanwhile, covert operations were in the works against the Libyan colonel, operations hatched by former CIA operative Ed Wilson. Ted Shackley was the original CIA officer who set the conditions for covert operations that utilized non-official cover, that is to say, front companies. Wilson also came to specialize in the establishment of front companies that housed various CIA projects and programs. One of his more successful endeavors was setting up Consultants International, which was used as a front to provide logistical support for CIA operations. However, it all came to an end when Wilson and approximately 800 other CIA operatives were fired in 1977. This had the unforeseen outcome of making many of these operatives turn to freelance work.
Ed Wilson began cutting deals with the Libyan government, including sending training teams into the country to instruct Libyan soldiers in infantry and commando tactics. One of those teams was led by legendary Special Forces Sergeant Major Billy Waugh. Waugh, a Vietnam veteran who conducted cross-border operations with MACV-SOG, led a team consisting of three other Special Forces veterans to Benghazi in 1977.
The four men were called in for a briefing by someone acting as a lawyer and representing Ed Wilson in the Washington, DC area. It was at this briefing that they learned that the mission they had been recruited for was not actually a CIA-sponsored operation but rather a commercial endeavor undertaken on Wilson’s own initiative.
“My bullshit antennae went on high alert upon hearing this news,” Waugh recalls about the meeting in his memoirs. He was never completely convinced that the mission was not being conducted under the auspices of the CIA.
While the team waited for their visas to be approved through the Libyan embassy, Waugh received a call to his hotel room. The man on the other end of the line dropped some names, the names of Special Forces men Waugh had served with in Vietnam, in order to establish his bona fides. Waugh agreed to meet the man, named Pat, in a restaurant in Arlington. Pat produced a CIA identification card and informed Waugh that Ed Wilson’s training mission in Libya had not been authorized by the Agency. However, he was still encouraged to go to Libya with the training team and take a 35mm camera with him and snap any pictures of Libyan military installations or equipment that could prove useful to the CIA down the line.
With the de facto blessing of the CIA, Waugh and his team landed in Tripoli in August of 1977. After their first meeting with Libyan military officers, the Americans were housed at the Omar Khayamm Hotel in Benghazi. Assigned to train Libyan commandos, Waugh relied on his Special Forces background to gain the trust of the trainees and began casually taking photographs with his CIA-supplied camera, snapping pictures of everything from surface and air missile sites to MIG fighter jets.
Waugh worked with the Libyan commandos for almost a full year but never had a high opinion of their capabilities. In 1978, he returned home and got married before going back to Libya as a singleton operator. This time, the Libyans asked him to conduct a cross-border operation into Egypt to photograph potential military targets, a request that Waugh refused as it would mean his taking part in military operations for the Libyan government, a government not exactly on good terms with America to begin with.
Having refused the recon mission, Waugh was moved to a secret compound in the Green Mountains, east of Benghazi, to train another commando unit. It was on November 4th, 1978, that Waugh learned the US embassy in Tehran had been taken over by Iranian terrorists and Americans had been held hostage in retaliation for the United States’s providing asylum for the late shah of Iran. The Arab world perceived this act as a sell-out by America. A Libyan officer who had befriended Waugh warned him at the eleventh hour that the Libyan government would be coming after him and he needed to escape the country immediately.
The officer helped him escape to Benina Airport in Benghazi and handed him a ticket to Frankfurt, Germany, where Waugh’s wife was living with family at the time. Though Billy got out of the country in the nick of time, he later learned that his Libyan officer friend had been executed for taking part in an attempted coup against Colonel Gaddafi.
A few years later, in 1982, Ed Wilson was arrested for selling 20 tons of C4 plastic explosives to the Gaddafi regime. It was also alleged that the Libyan commandos trained by the Special Forces veterans he had hired for Gaddafi later went around the world assassinating Libyan political dissidents in places as far flung as Germany and the United States. Wilson maintained his innocence and spent decades in prison trying to clear his name.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests, he managed to show at least eighty occasions on which the CIA had been in contact with him after he was no longer their employee, establishing that there was a continuing relationship between him and the CIA. Although he was never able to demonstrate that the US government had allowed him to sell the C4 to Libya, he did show that he had been in close contact with CIA representatives during the time of major arms deals he had made with Gaddafi. Ultimately, this was enough for his release from prison in 2004.
Was Ed Wilson working for the CIA the entire time, or did the CIA simply allow him to run his own entrepreneurial activ
ities and piggyback their own operations onto the tail end of them by recruiting people like Billy Waugh to feed them information? We probably won’t know for sure until more documents are declassified.
Gaddafi’s reign of terror came to a head with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland and killed 270 people. Secret NSA intercepts pointed toward Gaddafi as the culprit, the bombing of the aircraft done as part of a series of skirmishes between America and Libya that included the US military shooting down two Libyan fighter jets and sinking a number of military boats off the country’s coast. In response, Gaddafi had a discotheque in Germany bombed, killing three people. The United States later retaliated by deploying fighter jets to drop bombs on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. The airstrike failed to kill the Libyan dictator but allegedly killed his adopted daughter. This small-scale conflict ultimately resulted in the dictator’s ordering the Lockerbie bombing.
These airstrikes were almost certainly planned with the aid of the reconnaissance photos taken by Billy Waugh during his many adventures in Libya.
Another motivation for the Lockerbie bombing was America’s and France’s assistance to Chad as Gaddafi’s pivot from the Arab world to Africa saw him launching a highly unpopular war in the desert nation on his southern border. The so-called Toyota War between Chad and Libya resulted in yet another defeat for Gaddafi in 1987, with heavy losses of both soldiers and war material.
Not content to run an extraction-based economy centered on oil exportation and oppress the people in his own nation, Gaddafi furthered his African ambitions by financing and providing weapons to butchers in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and elsewhere. He also provided aid and comfort to other autocrats such as Idi Amin of Uganda and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.