US officials kept a watchful eye yesterday for any more Americans wishing to leave Libya after US President Barack Obama slapped sanctions on Muammar Gaddafi and his clan in an effort to weaken his teetering regime.
Obama, seeking to punish the deadly assaults against protesters, signed an executive order last Friday to seize assets of Gaffafi and named family members in the US and globally within the auspices of US financial institutions, saying the human dignity of Libyans “cannot be denied”.
Officials said the US sanctions were a direct attempt to prevent any looting of Libya’s assets and sovereign wealth by Gaddafi and his sons amid turmoil which reports said has killed over 1,000 people and split the country.
Privately, sources said, Washington hoped the measures would encourage defections from the regime.
In the latest sign Washington had all but called for Gaddafi’s ouster, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said yesterday in a Twitter message that “despite Gaddafi’s hardly sober claim that the protesters are on drugs, the people of Libya are clear-eyed in their demand for change.”
Washington shuttered its Tripoli embassy, warned its spies were seeking evidence of “atrocities” in Libya, and said that Gaddafi had lost the confidence of his people, in an apparent broad hint that Washington wanted him gone.
But the State Department said US efforts to assist Americans who may still be in Libya “will not cease”.
“In order to help, our task force will remain up and running to make sure that if there are any Americans remaining, we can assist them,” Crowley said.
Last Friday a chartered plane carried US citizens to Turkey and away from Tripoli’s violence, after a chartered ferry carrying more than 300 people, mostly Americans including dozens of US diplomats and their families, cast off from the harbour after bad weather relented, and sailed to safety in Malta.
Judith Drotar, director of the American School of Tripoli who was evacuated to Malta, spoke of the “horrific” uncertainty in the capital city as conditions worsened there last week.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen. Nobody did,” she told CNN.
“We’ve left everything behind.”
The UN Security Council met yesterday to consider multilateral sanctions on the Gaddafi government, as the Libyan strongman warned of a looming battle in Tripoli to protect his four-decades-old regime.
“By any measure, Muammar Gaddafi’s government has violated international norms and common decency and must be held accountable,” Obama said in a statement.
“These sanctions therefore target the Gaddafi government, while protecting the assets that belong to the people of Libya.”
“We will stand steadfastly with the Libyan people in their demand for universal rights, and a government that is responsive to their aspirations. Their human dignity cannot be denied,” Obama said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney appeared to acknowledge that US rhetoric in recent days was tempered by anxiety that US citizens trapped in the vicious violence could face reprisals.
The US embassy in Tripoli, which was only opened in 2006, during a tentative rapprochement in US-Libya ties, was shuttered for security reasons and all diplomatic personnel withdrawn.
Deputy chief of mission Joan Polaschik, who was evacuated with other staff on the flight to Turkey, spoke of “very very serious gunfire” in recent days in the area near the embassy and said staff “almost got caught in a firefight” after leaving the embassy to head for safety.
“So I think we’re really lucky that we were be able to get out when we did,” she told CNN, and expressed concern for Libyan colleagues and their families who stayed behind.
The White House fleshed out its attempts to hold Gaddafi “accountable” in addition to the new sanctions.
It warned that it would use the full extent of its “intelligence capabilities to monitor the Gaddafi regime’s actions” and would particularly seek evidence of violence or atrocities committed against the Libyan people.
On the financial front, the US Treasury warned US banks to watch out for transfers linked to Libya’s political leaders.
The department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network told banks to be aware of “potential increased movement of assets that may be related to the situation in Libya.”
Libya and its leaders are suspected of holding billions of dollars in foreign bank accounts, cash largely gleaned from the country’s vast oil wealth.
Libya would face hard transition after Gaddafi
An end to Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship would create a transition period with stumbling blocks for Libya, a divided country whose institutions are weak, despite oil wealth and young people’s desire for freedom and democracy.
Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, Libya ranks with other Arab countries such as Yemen or the Gulf monarchies as “extreme cases,” said author and political consultant Khalil Matar.
In Libya’s east, west and south regions, which have existed long before the country’s independence, “tribal alliances are more important than anything else,” explained Matar, who wrote Lockerbie and Libya, examining Libya’s terrorist bombing of an American passenger flight over Scotland in 1988.
“It’s based on tribal alliances, very different than Egypt or Tunisia. It will be about how much can the tribes hold together.”
Robert Danin, a Middle East expert for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the think tank’s website: “While Gaddafi’s departure from the scene would be mourned by few, it would also create an enormous power vacuum. Entirely unclear is what glue will hold together this largely decentralised country, in which nationalist identification is low, and tribal and clan affinity paramount.”
The lack of institutions, deliberately perpetuated by the dictator of the past 42 years, is another handicap.
“Tunisia and Egypt also had dictators but with a constitution, a parliament, elections and a semblance of democracy,” said a Geneva-based Libyan League for Human Rights spokesman, who asked not to be named. “All this is foreign to Libya, making the challenge a bit more difficult.”
But these are “groundless fears,” said Algerian lawyer Saad Djebbar, who is based in London.
Young people who protested and marched in Tripoli and Benghazi, are connected on Facebook and Twitter like they were in Cairo and Tunis.
“The young generation have become part of the universal order, the order where people want to enjoy the same respect for the rule of law, for open society and for good governance,” said Djebbar, who participated in a roundtable discussion at Chatham House.
“They watch stellite TV,” Djebbar continued, “they looked at how Obama was elected, at how people speak without fear, assemble without fear.”
While some predict a Balkanisation of Libya if Gaddafi is gone, Djebbar noted that protesters in the eastern part of the country were chanting “Libya is one tribe, one state.”
In an editorial last Friday, The Economist said: “There is little doubt that Libya, even without Mr Gaddafi, will remain a messy and possibly violent place. Yet Libya does have some things going for it. It has plenty of cash, with foreign reserves alone totalling nearly $140 billion.