Blair was right on Libya- how ‘The deal in the desert’ in 2004 has become of vital importance in the fight against ISIS today.
In 1974, a Pakistani scientist, by the name of Abdul Qadeer Khan, and his black market nuclear proliferation network, set in motion a proliferation of nuclear weapons like nothing the world had seen before. With a truly global reach, A.Q Khan began selling nuclear technology for profit without any constraint. By the 1990s, he was responsible for selling nuclear weapons technology to countries such as Iran, North Korea, but most crucially, to Libya. These events are absolutely fundamental in understanding Britain’s foreign policy in the period 1997-2007. Today, Tony Blair has been giving evidence to the Common’s foreign affair committee regarding his dealings with Libya in 2004. The evidence he gave has prompted a re-evaluation of Blair’s foreign policy, its rationale, and how the ‘deal in the desert’ has been crucial in the fight against ISIS today.
Tony Blair is a truly polarising public figure, a man who went from being the most popular Prime Minister in British history, to its most unpopular in the space of a decade. From the Iraq war to the public finance initiative, Blair was held responsible for a catalogue of mistakes during his premiership. Most pertinently, many would argue that his foreign policy is partly responsible for the crisis in the Middle-East today. That is a debate which has been had constantly following the rise of ISIS, and has certainly been covered in enough detail. That being said, in order to understand how the Blair administration organised its foreign policy, A.Q Khan and his proliferation network are absolutely crucial. For Tony Blair, the Khan network was not just a risk in itself, but rather critically intertwined with a far more dangerous entity, the rise of global terrorism. According to this logic, if it had been such a straightforward task for ‘rogue states’ such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya to acquire nuclear weapons on the black market, then it would be just as effortless for terrorist organisations to acquire them directly from these countries. This rationale without a doubt, was the primary driving force behind the British foreign policy under the Blair premiership. The idea of a scenario in which terrorists could get their hands on nuclear weapons played a crucial role in pushing Britain into military action in Iraq in 2003. The results of which are well documented. Whilst it failed miserably in Iraq, this thinking had success elsewhere, particularly in Libya.The infamous ‘deal in the desert’ between Britain and Colonel Gaddafi, as it has become known, was a series of agreements brokered by the British government in 2004, which culminated in Gaddafi being brought out from political isolation in return for Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear and chemical weapons programme. At the time, the deal was widely condemned by the British public. The main reasons for doing so were on the whole more than appropriate. Mummar Gaddafi, after all, had been responsible for sponsoring terrorism across the world. His role in funding the IRA in the late 1980s, and the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 meant that Britain and its allies saw Gaddafi as a dangerous pariah. More cynical charges were also levelled at the British government. These included accusations that British oil firms benefited from the deal in the form of lucrative contracts, and that Blair himself personally profited from the deal. These as of yet, are unfounded. There have also been claims that the British government were complicit in detaining Libyan exiles without charge.
Today, Blair has been giving evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee regarding this deal. What was most telling from the hearing was that the rationale that had underpinned his thinking in relation to terrorism had been a big success in Libya. The former Prime Minister stated before a group of MPs that ‘I think it is important that we brought them in from the cold, as it were, and important also in today’s context because I think – particularly if we had still had the residue of that chemical weapons programme in Libya today, given the state of Libya today and given the presence of Isis there – it would have constituted a real risk, even today’. The cynics will say that this is a baseless claim. They will add that it did not constitute a legitimate reason for doing a deal with the murderous Gaddafi regime. I disagree profoundly.
The Islamic State has taken control of large areas in Libya today. Their influence and the dangerous nature of the threat in Libya cannot be ignored. Looking back, had Gaddafi been left with his nuclear and chemical programme in 2004, the modern threat of ISIS would be of a far more precarious nature. The idea that this despicable terrorist organisation, which now has a strong foothold in Libya, could have picked up the residue of the Gaddafi programme is frightening to say the very least. In this context, ‘the deal in the desert’ was absolutely paramount for the stability of the region and the avoidance of nuclear technology falling into the hands of dangerous Jihadists. British foreign policy in this period therefore, was not without success.
The rationale behind the idea that nuclear proliferation and terrorism are interdependent in the modern world is obvious to me. There is no denying that nuclear technology in the hands of terrorists would equal disaster. Tony Blair’s foreign policy in the Middle-East was organised around this logic. It certainly had its downsides when put into practice, most famously in Iraq. Nevertheless, the ‘deal in the desert’ in 2004 was fundamental in avoiding dangerous nuclear proliferation, and in today’s context, has been of vital importance in the fight against ISIS.
By: James Coles
Edited by: M.Al-waadh
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