Exit the Colonel Read Free

was not likely to be well received by those with interests in the New Libya.
    Once the uprising began on February 15, I became instantly transfixed with events on the ground. After the liberation of Benghazi in March, I looked for ways to get back into the country, even if briefly, to experience the atmosphere of a revolution that, while long deemed a distinct if not imminent possibility, was nonetheless astounding. I was working at the time on a project to establish a network of primary care clinics in port cities in East and West Africa, and I shared an interest with a Libyan colleague in investigating the possibility of applying a similar model to revolutionary Libya—but with a focus on the treatment of trauma—in regions where, despite Libya’s riches, the standards of medical care were abysmal. I wanted to know more about how the uprising had spread in Benghazi, and what had happened since I had left. I wanted to look deeper into where the United States and the rest of the West had gone wrong, and right in Libya. After all, I had been sent to Libya ostensibly to help push forward what was at the time the beginning of an interesting transition, if not a warm relationship, one which might have positive effects on the way the United States dealt with other seemingly intractable regional disputes.
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    UNTIL THE 2011 REVOLUTION, not much had been written about Libya. One obvious reason was the difficulty—particularly for Americans—in gaining access. Journalists would typically have to travel on foreign passports to visit Libya, and were strictly “minded” during their stay. Only a handful of academics—Dirk Vandewalle, Moncef Djaziri, Moncef Ouannes, Hanspeter Mattes, and Ronald Bruce St. John stand out—had devoted more than a fraction of their career to writing about Libya, usually as part of research on oil states and with little expectation that their interest in Libyan politics would become pressingly relevant.
    In writing this book, I have tried to fill in the gaps between the academic studies of a dysfunctional state and the more recent journalistic accounts; between the high-level political and economic situations and the local
culture; between the pre-2011 history of Libya and the Arab Spring. I draw heavily on my own experiences in pre- and post-revolutionary Libya, as well as a large number of Arabic and French sources.
    My perspective is somewhat rare, in the sense that the people who covered the revolution as journalists and diplomats were for the most part different from those who were there before. I benefited from particularly good access to those members of the regime who defected, who were in the know but not known, and wanted to share their insight on the events in which they had taken part. I also had access to many senior sitting and former US and EU officials, many of whom were eager to tell their part of the backstory, even if on condition of anonymity. Many others involved in policy making in current and previous US and UK administrations were unwilling to comment.
    In some cases, interviews I hoped to conduct with Gaddafi-era or revolutionary figures were made unnecessary by extensive interviews published in still-obscure local newspapers, before these individuals assumed roles of even greater importance. There was a period in the early days of the revolution during which many of the protagonists were far more open, ebullient, and willing to talk in detail about their experiences.
    Much of what happened to Libya over the last few decades is the result of negligence—on the part of Libya’s leadership and the international community, including the US and Europe, which paid attention to what was happening in the country only when it was politically or economically expedient. Despite its veneer of irrelevance to US policy makers, Libya had and continues to have a significant impact on the West, even if that impact is diffuse. In the 1970s, Gaddafi sparked