The WikiLeaks Guide to the Gadhafi Clan
Feb 23rd 2011 – 3:52PM
Theunis Bates
Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi heads a fractious family obsessed with power, wealth and chart-topping R&B stars, according to U.S. diplomatic cables released by anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks.
Those damning documents portray the tyrant and his eight children as a bizarre and brutal Brady Bunch, who were seemingly so fixated on building petty fiefdoms and fighting one another that they didn't realize the country was collapsing around them.
Here's what WikiLeaks has taught us about the secret life of the Gadhafi clan.
Moammar Gadhafi
The 68-year-old colonel -- who grabbed power from King Idris I in a bloodless coup in 1969 -- was described by America's ambassador to Tripoli, Gene Cretz, in 2009 as a "mercurial and eccentric" figure who has "an intense dislike or fear of staying on upper floors, reportedly prefers not to fly over water, and seems to enjoy horse racing and flamenco dancing."
These amusing details might suggest that the self-described "King of Kings" is a comedy tyrant. But the cables also paint him as a master tactician, who after 42 years in charge still oversees every aspect of the North African nation's economic, domestic and foreign policy -- as well as its brutal security apparatus.
He also manipulated his family in order to prevent any premature challenges to his rule. "[Gadhafi] has placed his sons," Cretz wrote in 2009, "on a succession high-wire act, perpetually thrown off balance, in what might be a calculated effort by the aging leader to prevent any one of them from authoritatively gaining the prize."
Saif al-Islam
The tyrant's second eldest son and heir apparent attempted, until recently,
to portray himself as a dedicated humanitarian and modernizer. The 38-year-old earned a Ph.D. from the prestigious London School of Economics, and his Gadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation spent millions shipping aid to earthquake-damaged Haiti.
A 2010 cable reported that many young Libyan men "aspire to be like Saif and think he is the right person to run the country." They describe him as educated, cultured and someone who wants a better future for Libya, in contrast with his more irresponsible brothers, the cable reported.
However, Saif -- who, like every member of the family, has profitable links with numerous Libyan oil companies -- does have a wild side. A March 2009 document noted his "hard-partying, womanizing ways." Another cable stated that he had purportedly paid Mariah Carey $1 million to sing at a New Year's Eve bash on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. "Saif's Oea newspaper hotly denied that their boss had been the financier," the cable continued, "and corrections were printed in western media noting that Muatassim, not Saif al-Islam, was the organizer of the party in question."
Irrespective of who paid for the celebration, Libyans now hate Saif as much as his brothers. On Sunday, he appeared on Libyan TV and justified atrocities against protesters, whom he called drunks, drug addicts and terrorists.
Saadi
"Saadi has a troubled past," noted a 2009 cable, "including scuffles with police in Europe (especially Italy),
abuse of drugs and alcohol, excessive partying, travel abroad in contravention of his father's wishes." The colonel's third eldest son has followed an unusual career path: An engineer by training, he became a professional soccer player and played a single season with Perugia in Italy's Series A league in 2003. He was booted from the squad after failing a drug test.
He now owns a large chunk of al-Ahli, one of Libya's top two teams, although his focus "drifted from soccer to the military (he was briefly an officer in a special forces unit and reportedly did well, but was bored by military life)." Several newspapers report that Saadi was involved in the bloody crackdown in the eastern city of Benghazi, which is now controlled by anti-Gadhafi forces.
Muatassim
The fourth eldest son is viewed as Saif's biggest competitor to take over the family business. It wasn't always so. Muatassim fell out with his father in the late 1990s and was forced to go into self-imposed exile in Egypt for several years. He was summoned back home in 2006 and appointed national security adviser -- a position that allowed him to take part in international security and counterterrorism negotiations. Muatassim visited Washington in April 2009, where he met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Saif was reportedly furious that his brother was allowed to handle such high-profile talks. According to a March 2009 document, he "bridled at the fact that Muatassim accompanied [his father] on the latter's [2008] visit to Moscow, Minsk and Kiev."
Muatassim was said to enjoy support from the regime's more conservative elements, who disliked Saif's close ties with the West. However, he lost the backing of some traditionalists last year, after the international media reported on his "New Year's Eve trip to St. Bart's" that "reportedly [featured] copious amounts of alcohol and a million-dollar personal concert courtesy of Beyonce, Usher and other musicians."
Hannibal
He has a "checkered" history "of unseemly behavior and public scuffles with authorities in Europe and elsewhere," according to a 2009 cable. These "scuffles" include a 2001 incident in a Rome hotel -- when he attacked three policemen with a fire extinguisher -- and an alleged assault on two of his staff in Geneva in 2008. He was arrested and charged in that attack but was released after just two days. Libya subsequently banned Swiss imports, stopped issuing visas to Swiss citizens and forced all Swiss companies in Libya to close their offices.
Hannibal -- Gadhafi's fifth eldest son -- is also suspected of beating his wife, Aline, on several occasions. He was forced to flee Britain in December 2009 after staff at London's swank Claridge's hotel heard a scream from his room and found Aline with a broken nose and other facial injuries. Gadhafi's daughter, Aisha, notes a cable, flew to London despite being "many months pregnant," and persuaded Aline to tell police that she had been hurt in an accident.
Khamis
Gadhafi's sixth son has stayed out of the limelight. Cables note that he is a "well-respected commander of a special forces unit that effectively serves as a regime protection unit" and "spent 14 months in a combined Russian staff college course especially designed for him and obtained a Ph.D. in military sciences in 2007."
His unit, the 32nd Brigade, is "widely known to be the most well-trained and well-equipped force in the Libyan military," reported a November 2009 paper from the Tripoli embassy. Media reports suggest that the brigade, believed to contain a large number of sub-Saharan African mercenaries, has been involved in many attacks on protesters.
Aisha
The colonel's only daughter acts as "minder for the most troublesome" Gadhafi children.
However, diplomatic cables suggest that Aisha -- a trained lawyer, who served on former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's defense team -- often ends up siding with the ne'er-do-wells rather than disciplining them.
"Aisha played a strong role in urging a hard-line Libyan position with respect to the Swiss-Libyan contretemps over Hannibal's arrest," explained a 2009 dispatch. "Separately, the Swiss ambassador told us that Aisha's less-than-accurate rendering to her father of the events surrounding Hannibal's arrest and treatment by Swiss authorities helped stoke [Gadhafi's] anger."
Her exaggerations, said the diplomat, made it almost impossible for Swiss and Libyan officials "to find an acceptable compromise" to the dispute.
Muhammad
Gadhafi's first son was his only child with first wife, Fatiha, whom he separated from after six months of marriage. The 40-year-old now heads the Libyan National Olympic Committee and is chairman of the General Post and Telecom Co.
Saif al-Arab
The most publicity shy of the eight siblings, he reportedly lives in the German city of Munich, according to a 2009 cable, "where he pursues ill-defined business interests and spends much time partying. The German ambassador has expressed concern to us that it is only a matter of time before there is an incident involving him."
Those damning documents portray the tyrant and his eight children as a bizarre and brutal Brady Bunch, who were seemingly so fixated on building petty fiefdoms and fighting one another that they didn't realize the country was collapsing around them.
Here's what WikiLeaks has taught us about the secret life of the Gadhafi clan.
Moammar Gadhafi
The 68-year-old colonel -- who grabbed power from King Idris I in a bloodless coup in 1969 -- was described by America's ambassador to Tripoli, Gene Cretz, in 2009 as a "mercurial and eccentric" figure who has "an intense dislike or fear of staying on upper floors, reportedly prefers not to fly over water, and seems to enjoy horse racing and flamenco dancing."
These amusing details might suggest that the self-described "King of Kings" is a comedy tyrant. But the cables also paint him as a master tactician, who after 42 years in charge still oversees every aspect of the North African nation's economic, domestic and foreign policy -- as well as its brutal security apparatus.
He also manipulated his family in order to prevent any premature challenges to his rule. "[Gadhafi] has placed his sons," Cretz wrote in 2009, "on a succession high-wire act, perpetually thrown off balance, in what might be a calculated effort by the aging leader to prevent any one of them from authoritatively gaining the prize."
Saif al-Islam
The tyrant's second eldest son and heir apparent attempted, until recently,
Hamza Turkia, Xinhua/AP
Heir apparent Saif al-Islam Gadhafi has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.
A 2010 cable reported that many young Libyan men "aspire to be like Saif and think he is the right person to run the country." They describe him as educated, cultured and someone who wants a better future for Libya, in contrast with his more irresponsible brothers, the cable reported.
However, Saif -- who, like every member of the family, has profitable links with numerous Libyan oil companies -- does have a wild side. A March 2009 document noted his "hard-partying, womanizing ways." Another cable stated that he had purportedly paid Mariah Carey $1 million to sing at a New Year's Eve bash on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. "Saif's Oea newspaper hotly denied that their boss had been the financier," the cable continued, "and corrections were printed in western media noting that Muatassim, not Saif al-Islam, was the organizer of the party in question."
Irrespective of who paid for the celebration, Libyans now hate Saif as much as his brothers. On Sunday, he appeared on Libyan TV and justified atrocities against protesters, whom he called drunks, drug addicts and terrorists.
Saadi
"Saadi has a troubled past," noted a 2009 cable, "including scuffles with police in Europe (especially Italy),
Mahmud Turkia, AFP/Getty Images
Saadi Gadhafi is an engineer and former pro soccer player with "a troubled past."
He now owns a large chunk of al-Ahli, one of Libya's top two teams, although his focus "drifted from soccer to the military (he was briefly an officer in a special forces unit and reportedly did well, but was bored by military life)." Several newspapers report that Saadi was involved in the bloody crackdown in the eastern city of Benghazi, which is now controlled by anti-Gadhafi forces.
Muatassim
The fourth eldest son is viewed as Saif's biggest competitor to take over the family business. It wasn't always so. Muatassim fell out with his father in the late 1990s and was forced to go into self-imposed exile in Egypt for several years. He was summoned back home in 2006 and appointed national security adviser -- a position that allowed him to take part in international security and counterterrorism negotiations. Muatassim visited Washington in April 2009, where he met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Saif was reportedly furious that his brother was allowed to handle such high-profile talks. According to a March 2009 document, he "bridled at the fact that Muatassim accompanied [his father] on the latter's [2008] visit to Moscow, Minsk and Kiev."
Muatassim was said to enjoy support from the regime's more conservative elements, who disliked Saif's close ties with the West. However, he lost the backing of some traditionalists last year, after the international media reported on his "New Year's Eve trip to St. Bart's" that "reportedly [featured] copious amounts of alcohol and a million-dollar personal concert courtesy of Beyonce, Usher and other musicians."
Hannibal
He has a "checkered" history "of unseemly behavior and public scuffles with authorities in Europe and elsewhere," according to a 2009 cable. These "scuffles" include a 2001 incident in a Rome hotel -- when he attacked three policemen with a fire extinguisher -- and an alleged assault on two of his staff in Geneva in 2008. He was arrested and charged in that attack but was released after just two days. Libya subsequently banned Swiss imports, stopped issuing visas to Swiss citizens and forced all Swiss companies in Libya to close their offices.
Hannibal -- Gadhafi's fifth eldest son -- is also suspected of beating his wife, Aline, on several occasions. He was forced to flee Britain in December 2009 after staff at London's swank Claridge's hotel heard a scream from his room and found Aline with a broken nose and other facial injuries. Gadhafi's daughter, Aisha, notes a cable, flew to London despite being "many months pregnant," and persuaded Aline to tell police that she had been hurt in an accident.
Khamis
Gadhafi's sixth son has stayed out of the limelight. Cables note that he is a "well-respected commander of a special forces unit that effectively serves as a regime protection unit" and "spent 14 months in a combined Russian staff college course especially designed for him and obtained a Ph.D. in military sciences in 2007."
His unit, the 32nd Brigade, is "widely known to be the most well-trained and well-equipped force in the Libyan military," reported a November 2009 paper from the Tripoli embassy. Media reports suggest that the brigade, believed to contain a large number of sub-Saharan African mercenaries, has been involved in many attacks on protesters.
Aisha
The colonel's only daughter acts as "minder for the most troublesome" Gadhafi children.
Mahmud Turkia, AFP/Getty Images
Aisha Gadhafi is a trained lawyer who served on Saddam Hussein's defense team.
"Aisha played a strong role in urging a hard-line Libyan position with respect to the Swiss-Libyan contretemps over Hannibal's arrest," explained a 2009 dispatch. "Separately, the Swiss ambassador told us that Aisha's less-than-accurate rendering to her father of the events surrounding Hannibal's arrest and treatment by Swiss authorities helped stoke [Gadhafi's] anger."
Her exaggerations, said the diplomat, made it almost impossible for Swiss and Libyan officials "to find an acceptable compromise" to the dispute.
Muhammad
Gadhafi's first son was his only child with first wife, Fatiha, whom he separated from after six months of marriage. The 40-year-old now heads the Libyan National Olympic Committee and is chairman of the General Post and Telecom Co.
Saif al-Arab
The most publicity shy of the eight siblings, he reportedly lives in the German city of Munich, according to a 2009 cable, "where he pursues ill-defined business interests and spends much time partying. The German ambassador has expressed concern to us that it is only a matter of time before there is an incident involving him."
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Q&A: How Will the Libyan Crisis (and Its Oil) Affect the US?
Feb 24, 2011 – 6:34 AM
Libya is different. Unlike the toppling of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt and the unrest roiling Bahrain and Iran, the violence gripping Libya, the 18th largest oil producer in the world, may have a more immediate impact on the American pocketbook.
That became clear early Wednesday when the Financial Times reported that half of Libya's oil industry had shut down, causing oil prices to surge to $100 a barrel on fears that the turmoil could spread to other major oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
A defiant Col. Moammar Gadhafi also threatened to blow up energy pipelines, Time magazine reported Wednesday.
Some experts say the turmoil in the Mideast could push gas prices up to $4 a gallon in the U.S.
Libya produces just 2 percent of the world's oil supply, but it is some of the world's most sought-after highest quality crude. It exports 85 percent of its oil to Europe and only 5 percent to the U.S.
International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol said Tuesday that oil prices were in the danger zone and could rise further if the turbulence continues in the Middle East.
Experts, however, say global oil and gas supplies are far from being at risk -- for now.
But the almost science fiction-like specter of Gadhafi threatening to "die a martyr" and possibly sabotage his own oil fields sheds a harsh glare on the reality of U.S. dependence on foreign oil and the limits of the oil reserves themselves.
AOL News spoke about the Libyan crisis with James Howard Kunstler, an iconoclastic author and outspoken social critic whose 2005 book "The Long Emergency" describes a near-apocalyptic future in a world with dwindling oil supplies.
AOL News: How is what's happening now in Libya affecting the average American?
Kunstler: Neither Egypt nor Tunisia were meaningful oil producers. Libya, on the other hand, is an important oil producer and gas producer. Oil production is a very complex industry, and it doesn't do well under chaotic conditions. The American public largely misunderstands how the oil markets function. But they will face the reality when they show up at the pump and either can't get any gas or have to pay through the nose.
AOL News: What don't they understand?
Kunstler: We have a nation paralyzed with wishful thinking and unreality. People are largely clueless as to the correlation between the oil markets and their lives. We are painfully dependent on foreign countries for oil. And the world is generally done with cheap, easy to get, high-quality sweet oil. The oil that's left is poorer quality, more expensive to produce and found in forbidding and difficult regions. But people believe all kinds of fairy tales that are manifestly untrue and idiotic, such as the idea that the earth is like a bonbon with a creamy nougat center of oil.
AOL News: How is the crisis in Libya going to start to manifest itself in the world?
Kunstler: Oil prices are rising because there's a recognition that the entire Middle East has become profoundly unstable and that all bets are off as to the outcome. As far as Libya goes, it's very hard for the world to absorb the loss of even 2 percent of the oil that is produced every day. Economies in industrial countries really wobble when this happens. World supply and world demand have been very tightly balanced for the past few years. Unlike years past, there is no surplus. The world is using more oil. They sold more cars in China last year than in the U.S.
AOL News: Give me some concrete examples of how the economy could wobble in the U.S. as a result of the crisis.
Kunstler: You may see American truck drivers start to suffer. They have to pay for their own diesel fuel, and they won't be able to absorb the kind of price increases we're starting to see right now. I can't overstate how much truck drivers move stuff around and feed America. If their business model starts to fail, the food is not going to show up in supermarkets. When truckers have a problem, sooner or later chain stores have a problem, and companies may not be able to pay their employees.
AOL News: What do you think the immediate fallout from Libya will be in the region?
Kunstler: The exertions that Gadhafi is going through now will only inflame the region more. The more he resists his departure and the more violence he provokes will only inspire people in other countries. Saudi Arabia is prime for a meltdown. The king is over 86 years old and not in the best of health, and his successor is over 85. There are other aristocratic families who'd like to toss the royal family off its throne. If Saudi Arabia becomes too turbulent, you can't run the oil industry there. If all that happened, it could be a duck and cover situation for the U.S. They are our second biggest supplier of oil.
AOL News: The International Energy Agency said peak oil hit in 2006. What does peak oil mean?
Kunstler: Peak oil is the point of maximum oil production, either in a country or the world as a whole. After which you enter the arc of depletion. About half of the world's oil is left. Unfortunately, a large percentage of that is economically unrecoverable for one reason or another. And because the banking system is blowing up, we've entered a crisis of capital, which means we may not have the money to get the remaining oil out.
AOL News: What about using new technology to get oil out of the ground?
Kunstler: The problem of the diminishing returns of the new technology comes into play. Horizontal drilling or injecting nitrogen or seawater into rock to goose the oil out of the rock just depletes the oil fields more. The Saudis have depleted their fields that way. They're no longer the world's No. 1 producer of oil. Russia is.
AOL News: What about alternative energy?
Kunstler: People think we'll be able to substitute other energies. Well, we're not going to run Wal-Mart, the military and interstate highways on alternative fuels.
AOL News: Is there a solution, then, to end our dependence on foreign oil?
Kunstler: They are behavioral changes we're not willing to make. I'm talking about creating walkable neighborhoods, restoring the country's regular train tracks rather than building high-speed trains. Our investment in living the way we do is too great. But we're being dragged kicking and screaming into a different way of doing things by what's going on in the world now.
That became clear early Wednesday when the Financial Times reported that half of Libya's oil industry had shut down, causing oil prices to surge to $100 a barrel on fears that the turmoil could spread to other major oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Algeria.
A defiant Col. Moammar Gadhafi also threatened to blow up energy pipelines, Time magazine reported Wednesday.
Some experts say the turmoil in the Mideast could push gas prices up to $4 a gallon in the U.S.
Libya produces just 2 percent of the world's oil supply, but it is some of the world's most sought-after highest quality crude. It exports 85 percent of its oil to Europe and only 5 percent to the U.S.
International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol said Tuesday that oil prices were in the danger zone and could rise further if the turbulence continues in the Middle East.
Experts, however, say global oil and gas supplies are far from being at risk -- for now.
But the almost science fiction-like specter of Gadhafi threatening to "die a martyr" and possibly sabotage his own oil fields sheds a harsh glare on the reality of U.S. dependence on foreign oil and the limits of the oil reserves themselves.
AOL News spoke about the Libyan crisis with James Howard Kunstler, an iconoclastic author and outspoken social critic whose 2005 book "The Long Emergency" describes a near-apocalyptic future in a world with dwindling oil supplies.
AOL News: How is what's happening now in Libya affecting the average American?
Kunstler: Neither Egypt nor Tunisia were meaningful oil producers. Libya, on the other hand, is an important oil producer and gas producer. Oil production is a very complex industry, and it doesn't do well under chaotic conditions. The American public largely misunderstands how the oil markets function. But they will face the reality when they show up at the pump and either can't get any gas or have to pay through the nose.
AOL News: What don't they understand?
Kunstler: We have a nation paralyzed with wishful thinking and unreality. People are largely clueless as to the correlation between the oil markets and their lives. We are painfully dependent on foreign countries for oil. And the world is generally done with cheap, easy to get, high-quality sweet oil. The oil that's left is poorer quality, more expensive to produce and found in forbidding and difficult regions. But people believe all kinds of fairy tales that are manifestly untrue and idiotic, such as the idea that the earth is like a bonbon with a creamy nougat center of oil.
AOL News: How is the crisis in Libya going to start to manifest itself in the world?
Kunstler: Oil prices are rising because there's a recognition that the entire Middle East has become profoundly unstable and that all bets are off as to the outcome. As far as Libya goes, it's very hard for the world to absorb the loss of even 2 percent of the oil that is produced every day. Economies in industrial countries really wobble when this happens. World supply and world demand have been very tightly balanced for the past few years. Unlike years past, there is no surplus. The world is using more oil. They sold more cars in China last year than in the U.S.
AOL News: Give me some concrete examples of how the economy could wobble in the U.S. as a result of the crisis.
Kunstler: You may see American truck drivers start to suffer. They have to pay for their own diesel fuel, and they won't be able to absorb the kind of price increases we're starting to see right now. I can't overstate how much truck drivers move stuff around and feed America. If their business model starts to fail, the food is not going to show up in supermarkets. When truckers have a problem, sooner or later chain stores have a problem, and companies may not be able to pay their employees.
AOL News: What do you think the immediate fallout from Libya will be in the region?
Kunstler: The exertions that Gadhafi is going through now will only inflame the region more. The more he resists his departure and the more violence he provokes will only inspire people in other countries. Saudi Arabia is prime for a meltdown. The king is over 86 years old and not in the best of health, and his successor is over 85. There are other aristocratic families who'd like to toss the royal family off its throne. If Saudi Arabia becomes too turbulent, you can't run the oil industry there. If all that happened, it could be a duck and cover situation for the U.S. They are our second biggest supplier of oil.
AOL News: The International Energy Agency said peak oil hit in 2006. What does peak oil mean?
Kunstler: Peak oil is the point of maximum oil production, either in a country or the world as a whole. After which you enter the arc of depletion. About half of the world's oil is left. Unfortunately, a large percentage of that is economically unrecoverable for one reason or another. And because the banking system is blowing up, we've entered a crisis of capital, which means we may not have the money to get the remaining oil out.
AOL News: What about using new technology to get oil out of the ground?
Kunstler: The problem of the diminishing returns of the new technology comes into play. Horizontal drilling or injecting nitrogen or seawater into rock to goose the oil out of the rock just depletes the oil fields more. The Saudis have depleted their fields that way. They're no longer the world's No. 1 producer of oil. Russia is.
Kunstler: People think we'll be able to substitute other energies. Well, we're not going to run Wal-Mart, the military and interstate highways on alternative fuels.
AOL News: Is there a solution, then, to end our dependence on foreign oil?
Kunstler: They are behavioral changes we're not willing to make. I'm talking about creating walkable neighborhoods, restoring the country's regular train tracks rather than building high-speed trains. Our investment in living the way we do is too great. But we're being dragged kicking and screaming into a different way of doing things by what's going on in the world now.
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