The Race for Libya’s GNC Presidency: A Profile of Militant Turned Politician Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad Qaid

The Race for Libya’s GNC Presidency: A Profile of Militant Turned Politician Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad Qaid

Summary  

Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad Qaid, the elder brother of a top al-Qaeda commander killed in an American drone strike in Pakistan last summer, has emerged as a strong candidate in the upcoming election for Libya’s top political job president of the General National Congress (GNC). Of the three candidates who have declared so far for the election to replace Muhammad Magarief, who resigned because of a controversial law banning former Qaddafi officials from holding public office, the former jihadist Qaid can count on the support of some of Libya’s biggest revolutionary militias. Even if he fails to win, Qaid, who spent a decade-and-a-half in Qaddafi jails, is likely to wield increasing political clout in Libya.  

Libya’s Islamists: Turning Electoral Defeat into Political Victory  

Of all the former leaders of the now disbanded Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), jihadists who tried to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi in the 1990s before fleeing to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad Qaid has proven to be the most adept when it comes to post-revolutionary politics.  

After the ouster of Colonel Qaddafi 18 months ago, many Libya watchers were tipping Abd al-Hakim Belhadj or Sami Mustafa al-Saadi as the most likely LIFG luminaries to secure high office in post- Qaddafi Libya. [1]  

The overtly ambitious Belhdaj formed his own well-funded party, Hizb al-Watan, and enlisted a British political marketing firm to help fashion a slick advertising campaign in the run-up to last July’s congressional elections. Al-Saadi had served as the group’s ideologue and was considered to be the most astute political operator in the old LIFG, earning the title “Shaykh of the Arabs” from Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

However, it is the 45-year-old Qaid who managed to secure an influential role despite the setback his party and other Islamists suffered in last July’s GNC elections. Belhadj’s Hizb al-Watan failed to gain a single seat in the popular vote for party candidates and al-Umma al-Wasat, the party al-Saadi took the lead in founding and which Qaid is a member of, also fared poorly, winning just one seat of the 80 designated for political parties in the 200 seat Congress designated for political parties.  

When it came to party contests, the moderate National Forces Alliance and an allied party won 41 of the seats, with the main Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party, languishing with 17. That prompted Omar Ashour, Director of Middle East Graduate Studies at the University of Exeter, to describe Libya as “a country that seemed to meet all of the conditions for an Islamist victory,” producing “the sort of election results that liberals in Egypt and Tunisia could only dream about” (al-Jazeera, July 18, 2012).  

After nearly a year, the Islamists, among them former LIFG leaders, are in the process of turning electoral defeat into political victory, thanks to the successful lobbying of the 120 GNC members who were voted in as individual candidates and leveraging close ties with the major revolutionary militias to shape a powerful political coalition that uses both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means to gain the initiative. [2] 

A Strong Candidate 

Qaid has been a key player and a patient, hard-working one in the shaping of that coalition, exploiting his chairmanship of the national security committee of the GNC—he was voted into Congress as an individual candidate—as well as using his past role as a former LIFG insurgent and his credentials as a thuwar (revolutionary) in the successful uprising against Qaddafi to advance himself. Before being elected to the Congress, Qaid headed the National Border Guard in southern Libya.  

On most days the GNC meets, the soft-voiced and disciplined Qaid can be seen engaging other lawmakers in tête-à-têtes, influencing their thinking during long dialogues and brokering deals in the coffee bar and gardens of Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel, adjacent to the convention hall where Congress sits. One evening in April, this author witnessed Qaid’s negotiating skills when he calmed a heated dispute that was threatening to escalate into a gunfight between military policemen guarding the Rixos and angry thuwars protesting a delay in the payment of their salaries. As lawmakers looked on hopelessly and weapons were drawn, Qaid, an imposing bear of a man, waded into the melee and pacified guards and thuwars alike.     

The reward for his persuasiveness could well be the presidency of Libya’s Congress, the highest public office in the country. Even if he fails to win the presidency, Qaid’s candidacy confirms his status as a rising star in post-Qaddafi Libya, a man who has swapped military fatigues for a flowing galabeya (traditional garment) and prayer cap to considerable effect.  

Qaid’s prospects for the top job may hinge on whether the Muslim Brotherhood will back him.  A few months ago that may have been unlikely. There was little trust between the Brotherhood and former LIFG members who had not forgiven Libya’s Muslim Brothers for failing to back their insurgency during the Qaddafi era.

However, in recent weeks there has been a steady Islamist rapprochement in Libya, according to Sami al-Saadi; “The Muslim Brotherhood didn’t believe in using the force of arms against Qaddafi in the 1990s and we had other differences with them in the past, such as their closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but we don’t have many differences with them now and in terms of major policies we are generally in agreement.” [3]  

Both groups coordinated efforts to secure the approval last month of a political isolation law banning a range of Qaddafi-era officials from holding public office or being in government jobs, even if they contributed to the downfall of the late dictator. That law will take a toll of mainly moderate members of the GNC, partly reversing how the country voted last July in the congressional elections. Qaid and other former LIFG luminaries were highly involved, both publicly and behind-the-scenes, in engineering the political circumstances behind the exclusion law getting approved. [4] 

How the West Sees Qaid 

For the West, Qaid’s election could complicate relations with an increasingly Islamist Libya. Western officials remain not only uneasy with the Islamist tilt that appears to be developing in Libya, but continue to harbor suspicions about the LIFG and its past relations with al-Qaeda and its jihadist roots. [5]  

The American and British governments designated the LIFG as a terrorist organization and returned more than a dozen members of the group through illegal rendition to Qaddafi’s Libya in the immediate years following 9/11. Belhadj is currently suing the British government in the UK courts over his rendition to Libya and is considering filing a legal action against the U.S. government in American courts. [6] Al-Saadi recently settled a lawsuit against the British government, receiving a multi-million-dollar payout.  

Qaid and other LIFG leaders dispute the claim pressed by Qaddafi that they were affiliated with al-Qaeda and insist the West was tricked by the Libyan despot into believing they were.  They say they fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet-installed government of Muhammad Najibullah and remained in Taliban-governed Afghanistan afterwards because it was a haven where they could train and plot to oust Qaddafi. They admit to only cordial relations with Osama bin Laden, insisting they kept him at arm’s length and dismissed his efforts to persuade them to throw in their lot with al-Qaeda. Qaid says he did not sign up for a global jihad. Explaining why he joined the LIFG after abandoning his university studies in Benghazi to become a physician, he says: “We were students and tried to be peaceful and to talk with the Qaddafi regime to express our rejection of it. They oppressed us and many of my friends were killed. We wanted to free Libya, but we were given no space and we were obliged to find another way to secure our freedom. We became an armed movement and in 1989, I left Libya.” [7]  

Understanding the LIFG 

Qaid himself was not the subject of rendition. He was captured in 1995 in Libya while on a clandestine mission, spending the next 15 years in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison, where eventually he and other LIFG inmates participated in a mass disavowal of violent jihadism during a reconciliation process overseen by Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam. The retraction document LIFG participants agreed to did not foreswear all jihadist violence, accepting that jihad was in order in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan.

Of his past jihadism, Qaid says that he and the LIFG were focused only on Libya: “Osama bin Laden called for a global jihad. He had a different orientation from us. Our thinking was different and we were only concerned about Libya and ousting Qaddafi.” [8]  

Because of his imprisonment, Qaid did not take part in two debates that took place in Kandahar between LIFG leaders and Bin Laden during which the al-Qaeda amir urged anti-Qaddafi Libyans to join him. “He was polite, never lost his temper,” says al-Saadi. “He was soft-spoken but obdurate.” Never more so, according to al-Saadi, than when the Libyans urged Bin Laden to stop using Afghanistan as a base to attack the West, arguing among other things that it was exploiting Taliban hospitality and risking American intervention. [9] 

At least one UK intelligence officer, though, does not believe dealings between al-Qaeda and the LIFG were so innocent, arguing: “They trained together and some LIFG members did eventually join al-Qaeda.” [10] 

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, many LIFG insurgents fled, suspecting the United States would not distinguish between them and al-Qaeda, Qaid said, explaining that is what happened to his brother, Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was captured by U.S. forces and held at Bagram Air Base. “He was tortured very aggressively and humiliated,” said Qaid, who blames the United States and the torture his brother suffered for his sibling’s decision to join al-Qaeda and embrace global jihad after pulling off a legendary escape from Bagram. Qaid explained, “There were no Libyan Islamists left to guide him and he found others such as Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda adopted him and fed him their thoughts.” 

In physical appearance, Qaid could easily be taken for his younger brother. A noted Islamic scholar and Arabic poet, al-Libi lagged his older brother by two years in joining up with the LIFG.

Al-Libi’s slaying may have been one of the reasons Libyan jihadists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last September, an assault that led to the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In the days leading up to the attack, al-Qaeda’s amir, Ayman al-Zawahiri, eulogized al-Libi and called on “Libyan brothers” to avenge the loss. 

How Qaid Sees the West 

Qaid describes himself now simply as an Islamist and insists he bears no ill will towards the West, either for his brother’s death or the renditions of his LIFG comrades. However, he does argue that Americans are culpable for his sibling’s embrace of terrorism, drawing a direct line between al-Libi’s recruitment by al-Qaeda and the suffering he endured at the hands of American interrogators. Qaid maintains the West has to re-think how it combats Muslim extremists and laments the missteps of the “War on Terror.” “I hope America adopts dialogue and negotiation. I hope that America doesn’t reach always for force immediately,” a strategy that he argues that Libyan leaders need to follow with regard to the jihadists behind the attack on the United States. According to Qaid, the assault was not planned by core al-Qaeda. 

Qaid expresses sadness for Stevens’ death and disapproval of the assault on the U.S. consulate, arguing the envoy had been a crucial factor in the success of the uprising against Qaddafi, saying: “He was one of us, the rebels, and contributed very positively.” [11] 

However, Qaid disapproves of the United States flying surveillance drones in Libyan airspace to hunt down Stevens’ killers and warns against any action on the ground being taken by the United States in the future to capture those behind the consulate assault. That would “prompt a reaction not just from the extremists but from all Libyans, who are sensitive to territorial sovereignty.” [12] If Qaid became GNC president, his position on surveillance drones could prove problematic for an Obama administration under domestic U.S. political pressure to do something about the assault on the consulate and the death of an ambassador.    

Conclusion 

Qaid’s nomination is not only presenting the Obama administration with a challenge. It has added to the worries of Libyan moderates and progressives who argue that the country is undergoing an Islamist tilt. “This augurs badly for Libya’s future,” says Ayat Mneina, an activist with the Libyan Youth Forum. “I’m thoroughly appalled.” [13]  

Of further concern is how that tilt is taking place, the result of a combination of parliamentary action and extra-parliamentary methods. Qaid has the backing not only of the smaller Islamist parties but also the support of the Shahid Wafa (Loyalty to the Martyrs) bloc in the legislature, made up of members of militia brigades that fought in the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Qaddafi 18 months ago. The bloc was an important actor in the approval of the political isolation law that came about after key militias besieged ministries insisting the measure be passed. 

Jamie Dettmer is an expert on North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe.  He writes for Newsweek/Daily Beast, Voice of America and Maclean’s. He is also a Senior Media Fellow at the Democracy Institute. 

Notes 

1. See: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/07/07/outcome-libyan-elections-could-spell-trouble-for-us/.

2. Jamie Dettmer, “Libya’s Militias Shape Country’s Future”, Jamestown Foundation Hot Issue, May 24, Available at: https://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=40922&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=13&cHash=ceb245571e439bc6d8ae35c9e6a292ed#.UbNXSOArzzI.

3. Author’s interview with Sami al-Saadi, Tripoli, February 6, 2013.

4. Several interviews by the author with Western diplomats based in North Africa and Obama administration officials in Washington, D.C., April, May and early June 2013.

5. Jamie Dettmer, “Libya’s Militias Shape Country’s Future”, Jamestown Foundation Hot Issue, May 24, Available at: https://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=40922&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=13&cHash=ceb245571e439bc6d8ae35c9e6a292ed#.UbNXSOArzzI.

6. Author’s interview with Abd al-Hakim Belhadj, July 2012 and December 2012.

7. Author’s interview with Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad Qaid, Tripoli, February 18, 2013.

8. Ibid.

9. Author’s interview with Sami al-Saadi, Tripoli, February 6, 2013.

10. Author’s interview with a UK intelligence officer, April 21, 2013.

11.  Author’s interview with Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad Qaid, Tripoli, February 18, 2013.

12. Ibid.

13. Email exchange between the author and Ayat Mneina, May 31, 2013.