Qaddafi story has some resonance for Syrian leader

Michael Young draws some parallels between Muammer Qadaffi and Bashar Al Assad

Shadows of Syrians are reflected on a giant poster showing President Bashar Assad, during a supporting rally in Damascus. Muzaffar Salman / AP Photo

There is a chapter in Hisham Matar's new book The Return that tells us a great deal about the nature of Arab dictatorships and their skills at manipulating others to survive.

The book is an account of Mr Matar’s return to Libya after years in exile, following the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. In 1990, his father, Jaballa, a prominent opponent of Qaddafi, had been abducted by Egyptian intelligence agents on behalf of the Libyans and sent back home to be jailed. There, Jaballa was almost certainly killed by the regime.

During this time, Mr Matar sought information on his father, and one of the leads he pursued was to contact Saif Al Islam Qaddafi, Muammar Qaddafi’s son, who was then portraying himself as a reformer.

What ensued was a game of manipulation, as Saif Al Islam and his ciphers sought to push Mr Matar to publicly reaffirm the role Egypt had played in the abduction. Mr Matar replied that he had already done so, and saw no reason to press the issue as he still had family, especially his mother, living in Cairo.

However, the requests that he once again blame Egypt continued, without which Mr Matar was given no information on his father’s fate. This game continued intermittently until 2011, when the uprising in Libya put an end to the charade, though Saif Al Islam Qaddafi had apparently secured the release of several of Mr Matar’s relatives who had also been jailed.

The account was no more than a microcosm of how dictatorships work, but a revealing one. Here was an attempt to exploit for political ends a family that had long suffered from the disappearance of a loved one.

Rather than simply tell Mr Matar that his father had been killed, Qaddafi led him on, purportedly because he needed something from Mr Matar to challenge the internal hierarchy in Libya and reveal what had happened to Jaballa Matar.

Arab dictators have been canny at remaining in power, and though Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011, he had been in office since 1969. During that period he had become a pariah, then, for a time, a darling of western countries eager to secure Libyan oil contracts.

Indeed, one problem Mr Matar faced was that the British government, although it assisted him, was disinclined to push too hard against ­Libya.

Syrian president Bashar Al Assad is in a similar situation. His army and allies have surrounded Aleppo, marking a decisive new phase in the conflict in Syria, one that will most probably guarantee his political survival. Though he has committed terrible crimes against his own population, Mr Al Assad is today regarded by a wary West as a valuable barrier against ISIL.

The Syrian regime has exploited this to the fullest, reopening intelligence contacts with western countries, allegedly to help them identify ISIL members at home. Doubtless, the Syrians have behaved with their counterparts much the same way as Qaddafi did with Mr Matar: Give me what I want and I may give you what you want, if it serves my purpose.

The problem lies, partly, in the West. The Syrian crisis has exposed how fragile are ideas of democracy and human rights when they hit up against the interests of states. The refugee crisis of 2015, which was aggravated by the Assad regime, was an example.

It was not so much that European states resisted integrating the refugees that was surprising, but that many swiftly abandoned the principle of giving refuge while displaying open hostility towards the victims themselves.

The ISIL threat made matters worse. Amid widespread suspicion of Muslims, almost no attention is given anymore to notions of democracy in the Middle East. The likes of Mr Al Assad are regarded as potential partners in the fight against terrorism, not as individuals whose brutal systems feed extremism.

In this context the Obama administration’s claim in its 2015 National Security Strategy to be working towards a “rules-based international order” sounds quaint.

Rarely since the Second World War has the international order seemed in such disarray, as pitiless leaders engage in crimes with impunity. It is remarkable, for instance, that there has been no serious push in the past five years to indict Mr Al Assad for the bloodbath in Syria.

If the Al Assad regime wins, and the signs are that it will at least eventually prevail in the western half of the country, this will represent a key moment in the region and even beyond. It will show that leaders can butcher their own people to remain in power, and that western countries will accept this if they feel that they have to.

In other words, if the West refuses to defend its own liberal humanitarian values, no one else will, and the international order will be altered as a consequence.

In that case, we shouldn’t be surprised if the experiences of the Syrian population, like those of Mr Matar, become discouragingly commonplace.

Michael Young is a writer and editor in Beirut

On Twitter: @BeirutCalling