Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XVII, Part 3, North Africa

131. Intelligence Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency¹

PA M 80–10242

Washington, May 16, 1980

LIBYA’S RECENT ROLE AS A PATRON OF TERRORISTS

The level of Libyan support for terrorism abroad, which tends to fluctuate according to Qadhafi’s moods, seems once again to be rising. For a variety of reasons, Qadhafi has apparently decided to risk Western disapproval and unfavorable world opinion by supporting expanded terrorist activities. Although forecasting Qadhafi’s near and mid-term actions is difficult because of his quixotic personality, the current trend indicates a more active and dangerous involvement in support of terrorist groups and activities for at least the near term. As part of this new facet of Libyan support for terrorism, Qadhafi [1 line not declassified] is expanding the capabilities of his terrorist teams.

Goals and Ambitions 1979–80

Despite his own shifting moods and the erratic changes in Libyan foreign policy, Qadhafi continues to be driven by three basic causes: championing Islam, assisting people he considers to be fighting wars of “national liberation” and defending the Arab Nation as he defines it. In promoting these causes Qadhafi has in the past supported groups whose connection to Islam, national liberation, or pan-Arabism was highly tenuous. In the past several years Qadhafi apparently ceased aiding the more peripheral of his old clients while at the same time picking up a few new clients particularly in Latin America, with equally peripheral claims to his assistance.

Libyan support for terrorist groups seems to reflect the following priorities:

a. Palestinians, who combine the causes of national liberation, Islam, and pan-Arabism.

b. Other Arab dissident groups seeking the over throw of moderate Arab regimes.

c. Muslim groups abroad who are minorities in states ruled by non-Muslim majorities, such as the Moro in the Philippines and the Pattani in Thailand. There is also evidence that Qadhafi is willing to assist Muslim extremists in Muslim-dominated states outside of the Middle East such as Bangladesh and Indonesia.

d. National liberation movements in southern Africa, Latin America, and, to a diminished extent, Western Europe.

Support for the Palestinians

Palestinian radicals remain the principal beneficiaries of Libyan aid. Qadhafi continues to seek domination over as many Palestinian factions as possible; he has even offered financial assistance to the al-Saiqa group, which is controlled by Syria. Libya continues to provide unknown (but presumably significant) amounts of money to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP–GC), the Popular Struggle Front (PSF), and the Front for the Liberation of Palestine (FLP). Qadhafi is also courting the Black June Organization (BJO), whose relationship with its Iraqi patrons seems to have cooled considerably. Libya is recently reported to have offered bases in Libya to the BJO; [2 lines not declassified].

Qadhafi is aware, however, that Palestinian rhetoric is seldom matched with concrete action. He recognizes that Libyan support for Palestinian groups has yielded meager results, and he may introduce more qualifiers on his financial aid. [5 lines not declassified]

Libya nonetheless is likely to continue to court the radical Palestinian groups while at the same time seeking to bring them more fully under Libyan control. Qadhafi’s prospects for success will remain limited by Palestinian unwillingness to become the tools of Libyan foreign policy, and by the unwillingness of other Rejectionist Front nations to let Libya become the main patron of the Palestinians.

Although the April Summit Conference of the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front in Tripoli provided Qadhafi and Arafat an opportunity to paper over some of their differences, it is clear that the meeting resolved no fundamental issues.² Arafat is currently trying to distance himself from the Conference’s more radical positions. While Arafat is not dependent on Libya for either funding or weapons, Qadhafi eventually needs a modus vivendi with Fatah, the largest of the PLO’s groups, if he is to credibly claim that he is at the forefront of the Palestinian struggle. He doubtlessly will try to hold Fatah to all agreements it initialed, but Libyan or Libyan-backed attacks on the Fatah leadership may also occur in an effort to replace Arafat and his associates with more radical Palestinians. Nayaf Hawatmeh, leader of the pro-Soviet Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), is reported to be Syria’s and Libya’s candidate to replace Arafat as PLO chief.

Support for Arab Dissident Groups

Qadhafi continues to aid a number of groups seeking the overthrow of moderate Arab regimes. In January of this year, with the complicity of some Algerian officials, Qadhafi trained, armed, and launched Tunisian dissidents in the ill-fated Gafsa raid.³ Other targets include Egypt, the Sudan, Morocco, and Oman. [2 lines not declassified] Libya has also supplied training and equipment to POLISARIO forces fighting the Moroccan army and has also assisted the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman/Bahrain.

Campaign Against Libyan Dissidents

Qadhafi also continues to target Libyan dissidents living abroad. [less than 1 line not declassified] Libya has embarked on a campaign to silence critics of the regime through either kidnaping or assassination. [4 lines not declassified] Qadhafi seems sufficiently worried by dissident criticism that he is willing to risk Western censure by carrying out attacks in London, Rome, and other cities. [9 lines not declassified]

Support for Muslim Groups Outside the Middle East

Libya continues to supply some material support to the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a Muslim organization seeking independence for part of the southern Philippines. [3 lines not declassified] There are strong indications that the level of Libyan support for the Moros has declined over the past four years.

Libya also supports the other Muslin insurgency in the Pacific region by offering limited training to some members of the Pattani United Liberation Organization based in southern Thailand. [4 lines not declassified] The Indonesian government consistently refuses to allow the Libyans to open an embassy in Jakarta.

In November 1977, Libya was strongly suspected of abetting a coup attempt in Bangladesh with some Soviet help. [5 lines not declassified]

Sub-Saharan Africa

During 1979 Qadhafi’s Sub-Saharan strategy suffered two major setbacks with the toppling of the Amin regime in Uganda and the Bokassa regime in the Central African Republic (CAR). The Ugandan adventure was particularly costly for Qadhafi in terms of men and supplies lost as well as international prestige. To recoup some of his losses, he is reportedly sponsoring the “Central African Liberation Movement,” which is presumably targetted against the current French-backed CAR regime. Recently Qadhafi demonstrated that he has not forgotten Amin; he showed a willingness to cross even his allies by hindering a Cuban effort to transport Ugandan cadets to Havana via Tripoli.

The Libyans are reportedly training a number of dissidents from African countries at a camp south of Tripoli. In the past year trainees there have included nationals of Tanzania, Rwanda, Mozambique, South Africa, and Namibia.

Libya continues to challenge the French for dominance in Chad. Qadhafi’s past role involved the training of Chadian forces in a Libyan camp near the Chad/Libya border. Libya has supported each of the major factors at one time or another during the protracted conflict, [3 lines not declassified].

Support for Other National Liberation Movements

Qadhafi’s earlier support for a wide variety of West European terrorist groups has been greatly diminished, although he still has indirect links through some radical Palestinian groups. One reason why support for European groups is not high on Qadhafi’s list of priorities is that they are neither Islamic nor Arab and can only with difficulty be considered “national liberation forces.” In addition, Qadhafi has shown an increasing awareness that meddling in the internal political affairs of industrial countries produces few results and has attracted an enormous amount of negative publicity.

Past Libyan financial, training, and logistics help for the Provisional IRA seems at an end, [3 lines not declassified] the only real IRA link with the Middle East in recent years has been with al-Fatah. There is no indication that Libya has any further connection with the remnants of the German Baader-Meinhof Gang. Indeed Qadhafi offered to help the FRG track down the Gang’s members in 1978 and called them “disturbed persons.”

Libya’s connection with Italian terrorist groups is more ambiguous, although at the time of the Aldo Moro kidnaping Qadhafi offered the Italian government any assistance requested. There have been [less than 1 line not declassified] reports suggesting that Red Brigade members received training in Libyan camps, and that there may be indirect ties between that organization and Libya via the Palestinian radical groups (particularly the PFLP).

There is no current evidence of Libyan support for Spanish terrorist groups. [4 lines not declassified] At present, most material support for terrorism in Spain comes from either indigenous sources or ethnic Basques [less than 1 line not declassified]. Both Fatah and the PFLP are providing arms and training for ETA, but the direct Libyan connection seems to have been broken.

Libya is still willing to play a role in support of Latin American terrorist groups, in part because they more fully meet Qadhafi’s criteria for national liberation movements. In January of 1979 Libya hosted a conference of “National Liberation” and invited representatives from a number of groups such as the Chilean MIR, the Colombian M19 Movement, Salvadoran groups, and the Sandinistas. With the encouragement of the Soviet Union and Cuba, Fatah is now reportedly supplying weapons and training to Salvadoran terrorists, with Libya and the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Yemen supplying additional training. Libya’s role in Latin America is likely to be that of providing guerrilla training while Cuba plays a more active operational role.

Frustrations and Setbacks 1979–80

In late 1978 and early 1979 Qadhafi showed signs of moderating his support for international terrorism and discussed anti-terrorist issues with both US and West German officials. At that time he indicated a genuine concern that Libya’s international reputation as a patron state for terrorism was damaging both the country’s and his own image. Since mid-1979, however, Qadhafi has suffered a number of setbacks in those areas he considers most important: championing the cause of Islam, the Palestinians, and pan-Arabism.

One of Qadhafi’s major psychological setbacks was the publicity garnered during 1979 by the Iranian Revolution, and particularly by Khomeini. Prior to the fall of the Shah, Qadhafi styled himself the leading spokesman for Islam and saw Libya as the prime source of Islamic ferment. Khomeini appeared, captured world attention, and capitalized on a growing resurgence of Islamic self-awareness worldwide. Although Qadhafi hailed the Iranian Revolution and claimed it was modeled on his own, Libya’s relations with Khomeini’s Iran have been very uneven. The Iranians believe, with good reason, that Qadhafi caused the disappearance of the Lebanese Shia leader Imam Musa Sadr. Because of this, Iranian clerical leaders are reluctant to accept Qadhafi’s profferred friendship and have kept him at arm’s length.

For the near term, Qadhafi is likely to continue to be fascinated by the Iranian revolution and seek ways to capitalize on it. The sacking of the US embassy in Tripoli in November 1979 was a crude imitation of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran. Qadhafi is likely, however, to become increasingly jealous of Iranian prominence in Islamic affairs, and his relationship with Iran may become increasingly adversarial. Before the fall of the Shah, Libya helped train Iranian terrorists. While there is no evidence of current Libyan meddling in Iranian internal affairs, Qadhafi might be tempted to contact opponents of the Tehran government if relations between Tehran and Tripoli deteriorated further.

The rupture of relations between Fatah and Libya, although initiated by Qadhafi, must be regarded as a setback for him. As one of the major contributors to the Palestinian cause (financial aid, weapons, and training) Qadhafi has always sought a correspondingly major role in helping to shape Palestinian policy. The PLO, and Arafat in particular, have resisted Qadhafi’s tutelage. The current dispute between Fatah and Libya is partly the result of the conflict between Arafat’s inclination to work out a diplomatic solution to the Palestinian problem and Qadhafi’s call for military action against the signers of the Camp David accords. Arafat has also intimated he can live with Israel, whereas Qadhafi wants all Jews who immigrated to Palestine after 1947 expelled.

The toppling of the Amin and Bokassa regimes were also serious setbacks for Qadhafi. In addition, Libya is embroiled in the conflict in Chad and likely to come up against his old nemesis, the French.

Qadhafi faces continued discontent among his own people, and there have been several assassination attempts against him recently. His much publicized recent campaign against corruption and dissent seems to have further alienated the military. He is also increasingly paranoid about Libyan exiles and wants them silenced.

Qadhafi is also clearly not served by his reorganization of the Libyan Foreign Affairs Secretariat, which is apparently in the process of being phased out and replaced by the Foreign Liaison Office of the Libyan General People’s Congress. Such expertise in determining and implementing foreign policy as Libya had managed to accumulate is rapidly becoming dissipated.

1980: A New Phase?

Libya may be entering into a new and more dangerous form of patron state support for terrorism as a result of Qadhafi’s frustrations at home and abroad. His earlier moves in the direction of moderation seem to have been scrapped: witness the burnings of the US and French embassies in Tripoli, the Gafsa incident, his vendetta against moderate Palestinians and Libyan exiles, and his current willingness to target heads of state. While some of these activities are merely a reversion to Qadhafi’s behavior of the early 1970s, there are indications that he is now willing to take greater risks and may be developing greater capacity to carry out his threats.

In the past, some of Qadhafi’s enemies, [less than 1 line not declassified], were targeted for assassination by Palestinian groups equipped and trained by Libya. Many of these projects fell through because of the ineptness of the terrorist groups. [3 lines not declassified] By eschewing unreliable surrogates and using his own resources, Qadhafi improves his chances for a successful assassination of an offending head of state. By using his own resources, Qadhafi’s activities can also be traced back directly to him; his apparent unconcern about how such actions are perceived abroad is in itself an ominous trend.

The assassinations of prominent Libyan exiles in London and Rome in mid-April of this year and the subsequent discovery of a weapons cache intended for future operations in Europe are also directly traceable back to Qadhafi with no cutouts. [less than 1 line not declassified] the murders may be the first in an extensive Libyan effort against dissidents living in Western Europe.

[1 paragraph (13 lines) not declassified]

1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Support Services (DI), Job 85T00287R: Production Case Files, Box 1, Folder 116: Libya’s Recent Role as a Patron of Terrorists. Secret; [handling restriction not declassified]. The memorandum was prepared in the National Foreign Assessment Center, International Issues Division, Office of Political Analysis (OPA), and coordinated in the Near East-South Asia, Latin America, Western Europe, East Asia Pacific, and African Divisions and the Center for Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior in OPA.
2. In telegram 3269 from Tunis, April 17, the Embassy summarized the Summit proceedings. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D800197–1208)
3. See Document 204.