Mahmoud Jibril was late.
It was March 14, 2011, little more than a month after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Attention had already shifted to the next crisis in the region, this time in Libya, a country of some 6 million people located between Egypt and Tunisia along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Protests against the authoritarian regime of longtime Libyan dictator, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, had turned into a full-scale rebellion after he used extreme force against the demonstrators. Now Jibril, a Libyan political scientist with a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, was on his way to meet with me on behalf of the rebels fighting Qaddafi’s forces.
I had flown through the night and arrived in Paris early that morning to meet with the Foreign Ministers of the Group of 8 leading industrialized countries—France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, and the United States—to discuss ways to stop Qaddafi from slaughtering his own people. (Russia was expelled from the group in 2014, after the invasion of Crimea, and it went back to being the G-7, as it was before 1998.) Joining us were Ministers from several Arab countries who were calling for robust international action to protect Libyan civilians, especially from Qaddafi’s air force. When I arrived I spent most of the day locked in intense discussions with European and Arab leaders concerned that Qaddafi’s superior forces were poised to overwhelm the rebels. When I met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he urged the United States to support international military intervention to stop Qaddafi’s advance toward the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya. I was sympathetic, but not convinced. The United States had spent the previous decade bogged down in long and difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before we joined yet another conflict, I wanted to be sure we had thought through the implications. Would the international community, including Libya’s neighbors, unite behind this mission? Who were these rebels we would be aiding, and were they prepared to lead Libya if Qaddafi fell? What was the endgame here? I wanted to meet Mahmoud Jibril face-to-face to discuss these questions.
My suite in the grand old Westin-Vendôme on rue de Rivoli looked out over the Tuileries Garden, and from the window I could see the Eiffel Tower lit up against the Parisian sky. The beauty and color of Paris were a long way from the horror unfolding in Libya.
It had started in a now-familiar way. The arrest of a prominent human rights activist in Benghazi in mid-February 2011 had sparked protests that soon spread across the country. Libyans, inspired by what they had seen in Tunisia and Egypt, began demanding a say in their own government. Unlike in Egypt, where the Army refused to fire on civilians, Libyan security forces unleashed heavy weapons on the crowds. Qaddafi turned loose foreign mercenaries and thugs to attack demonstrators. There were reports of indiscriminate killings, arbitrary arrests, and torture. Soldiers were executed for refusing to fire on their fellow citizens. In response to this violent crackdown, protests morphed into armed rebellion, especially in parts of the country that had long chafed at Qaddafi’s quixotic rule.
In late February, the UN Security Council, shocked by Qaddafi’s brutal response, called for an immediate end to the violence and unanimously approved a resolution to impose an arms embargo on Libya, freeze the assets of key human rights violators and members of the Qaddafi family, and refer the Libyan case to the International Criminal Court. The ICC eventually charged Qaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, and the military intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi with crimes against humanity. The United States also imposed sanctions of its own and moved to provide emergency humanitarian aid to Libyans in need. At the end of February, I traveled to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to remind the international community that it had a responsibility to protect universal rights and to hold violators accountable. I said that Qaddafi had “lost the legitimacy to govern,” and “the people of Libya have made themselves clear: It is time for Qaddafi to go—now, without further violence or delay.” A few days before, in the same chamber in the Palais des Nations, the Libyan delegation had dramatically renounced their allegiance to Qaddafi and declared their support for the rebels. “Young people in my country today are with their blood writing a new chapter in the history of struggle and resistance,” one diplomat said.
A week later the rebels in Benghazi formed a transitional governing council. Armed militias across the country made gains against the regime, including in the western mountains. But then Qaddafi unleashed firepower they could not match. His tanks rolled through town after town. The resistance started to crumble, and Qaddafi pledged to hunt down and exterminate all who opposed him. The situation was increasingly desperate. That’s why Jibril was coming to plead his case.
As I waited for him to arrive, I thought about Muammar Qaddafi, one of the most eccentric, cruel, and unpredictable autocrats in the world. He cut a bizarre and sometimes chilling figure on the world stage, with his colorful outfits, Amazonian bodyguards, and over-the-top rhetoric. “Those who do not love me do not deserve to live!” he once said. Qaddafi seized power in a coup in 1969 and ruled Libya, a former Italian colony, with a mix of new-age socialism, fascism, and personality cult. Although the country’s oil wealth kept the regime afloat, his capricious governance hollowed out Libya’s economy and institutions.
As a state sponsor of terrorism, client of the Soviet Union, and proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, Qaddafi became a top enemy of the United States in the 1980s. In 1981, Newsweek put him on its cover with the headline “The Most Dangerous Man in the World?” President Reagan called him the “mad dog of the Middle East” and bombed Libya in 1986 in retaliation for a terrorist attack in Berlin that killed American citizens, which Qaddafi had planned. Qaddafi claimed one of his children died in the air strikes, which further strained relations.
In 1988, Libyan agents planted the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Thirty-five of the passengers killed on that flight were students from Syracuse University in upstate New York, and I got to know some of their families when I represented them in the U.S. Senate. In my eyes, Qaddafi was a criminal and a terrorist who could never be trusted. Many of his Arab neighbors agreed. Most of them had tangled with him over the years. At one point he had even plotted to assassinate the King of Saudi Arabia.
When Condoleezza Rice met Qaddafi in Tripoli in 2008, she found him to be “unstable,” with a “slightly eerie fascination” with her personally. In 2009 he made a stir in New York when he spoke at the UN General Assembly for the first time in his forty-year rule. He brought along a large Bedouin tent but was told he could not pitch it in Central Park. At the UN he was given fifteen minutes to speak but rambled on for a full hour and a half. His bizarre diatribe included rants about the Kennedy assassination and the possibility that swine flu was really a biological weapon designed in a laboratory. He suggested that Israelis and Palestinians live together in a single state called “Isratine” and that the UN move its headquarters to Libya to reduce jet lag and avoid the risk of terrorist attacks in New York. In short, it was a bizarre performance—but, for Qaddafi, typical.
Despite all this, in recent years Qaddafi had tried to show the world a new face, giving up his nuclear program, mending fences with the international community, and contributing to the fight against al Qaeda. Sadly any hope that he was mellowing into something resembling a statesman in his old age evaporated as soon as the protests started. Then it was back to the old murderous Qaddafi.
All of this—the defiant dictator, the attacks on civilians, the perilous position of the rebels—led me to consider what many of my foreign counterparts were debating: Was it time for the international community to go beyond humanitarian aid and sanctions and take decisive action to stop the violence in Libya? And if yes, what role should the United States play to advance and protect our interests?
Just a few days earlier, on March 9, I had joined the rest of President Obama’s national security team in the White House Situation Room to discuss the crisis in Libya. There was little appetite for direct U.S. intervention. Defense Secretary Robert Gates believed that the United States did not have core national interests at stake in Libya. The Pentagon told us that the most talked-about military option, a no-fly zone like the one we had maintained in Iraq during the 1990s, was unlikely to be enough to tip the balance toward the rebels. Qaddafi’s ground forces were just too strong.
The next day I testified before Congress and argued that this was not a time for America to rush unilaterally into a volatile situation: “I’m one of those who believes that absent international authorization, the United States acting alone would be stepping into a situation whose consequences are unforeseeable. And I know that’s the way our military feels.” Too often, other countries were quick to demand action but then looked to America to shoulder all the burdens and take all the risks. I reminded Congress, “We had a no-fly zone over Iraq. It did not prevent Saddam Hussein from slaughtering people on the ground, and it did not get him out of office.”
Retired General Wesley Clark, an old friend who led the NATO air war in Kosovo in the 1990s, summed up the argument against intervention in an op-ed in the Washington Post on March 11: “Whatever resources we dedicate for a no-fly zone would probably be too little, too late. We would once again be committing our military to force regime change in a Muslim land, even though we can’t quite bring ourselves to say it. So let’s recognize that the basic requirements for successful intervention simply don’t exist, at least not yet: We don’t have a clearly stated objective, legal authority, committed international support or adequate on-the-scene military capabilities, and Libya’s politics hardly foreshadow a clear outcome.”
The very next day a development in Cairo began to change the calculus. After more than five hours of deliberation and debate, the Arab League, representing twenty-one Middle Eastern nations, voted to request that the UN Security Council impose a no-fly zone in Libya. The Arab League had previously suspended the Qaddafi government’s membership, and now it recognized the rebel council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. These were major steps by an organization previously known as a club for autocrats and oil barons. One of the prime movers was the Egyptian diplomat Amr Moussa, who was serving as the Arab League’s Secretary-General but had his eye on the upcoming Presidential elections in Egypt. This no-fly zone resolution was, in part, his bid for support from the revolutionary factions that had helped drive out Mubarak. The Gulf monarchs went along, in part to show their own restive populations that they were on the side of change. And, of course, they all hated Qaddafi.
If the Arabs were willing to take the lead, perhaps an international intervention was not impossible after all. Certainly it would put pressure on Russia and China, who might otherwise be expected to veto any Western-backed action at the UN Security Council. But the Arab League statement used the term humanitarian action and did not explicitly mention military force. I wondered if Amr Moussa and the others were really prepared to back what it would take to stop Qaddafi from massacring his people.
AbZ, the Foreign Minister of the UAE, a powerful behind-the-scenes player at the Arab League, was in Paris when I arrived. We met in my hotel before the G-8 dinner, and I pressed him on how far the Arab commitment went. Were they prepared to see foreign planes dropping bombs on Libya? Even more important, were they prepared to fly some of those planes themselves? From the Emiratis, at least, the answer to both questions was a surprising yes.
The Europeans were even more gung ho. I got an earful about military intervention from Sarkozy. He is a dynamic figure, always full of ebullient energy, who loves being at the center of the action. France, a former colonial power in North Africa, had been close to Ben Ali in Tunisia, and the revolution there had caught Sarkozy flat-footed. The French had not been players in Egypt. So this was their chance to jump into the fray supporting the Arab Spring, demonstrating that they too were on the side of change. Sarkozy was also influenced by the French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, who had hitched a ride in a vegetable truck from the Egyptian border to see for himself what was happening. They were both genuinely moved by the plight of the Libyan people suffering at the hands of a brutal dictator, and they made a persuasive case that something had to be done.
When I saw British Foreign Secretary William Hague at dinner that night, he pressed the case for action. If Hague thought military action in Libya was necessary, that counted for a lot. I knew that he, like me, was wary of making such decisions without confidence in the rationale, strategy, and endgame.
Back at the hotel I met with our Ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, and our newly appointed Special Representative to the Libyan rebels, Chris Stevens, who had earlier served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’affaires in Tripoli. Cretz was a colorful character, a brash and funny diplomat from upstate New York. When his secret cables to Washington describing Qaddafi’s excesses were published by WikiLeaks, Cretz had faced threats and intimidation in Tripoli, and in late December 2010, I made the decision to bring him back to Washington for his own safety. By late February 2011, with the revolution heating up, our remaining diplomatic staff evacuated. Many left on a ferry to Malta that hit unusually high and heavy seas, but thankfully everyone made it to safety.
Stevens was another talented diplomat with long experience in the region. A blond-haired, charismatic Californian who spoke both French and Arabic, he had served in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jerusalem. Chris devoured old Libyan histories and memoirs and delighted in sharing obscure historical trivia and cracking jokes in the local dialect. I asked Chris to return to Libya to make contact with the rebel council in their stronghold of Benghazi. It was a challenging and dangerous mission, but America needed to be represented there. Chris agreed and accepted the assignment. His mother liked to say that he had sand in his shoes, always moving and running and working, seeking out new challenges and adventures across the Middle East. After years of experience in the field, he understood that the difficult and dangerous places are where America’s interests are most at stake and where it’s most important that we’re represented with skilled and subtle diplomacy. Later in the spring he and a very small team arrived in Benghazi on board a Greek cargo ship, like a 19th-century envoy, and got right to work building relationships with the civilian and military leaders of the rebellion. He did such an impressive job I would later ask the President to nominate him to succeed Cretz as our Ambassador to Libya.
Finally, around 10 P.M., Jibril arrived at the Westin in Paris accompanied by Bernard-Henri Lévy, who had helped arrange the meeting. They made quite a pair, the rebel and the philosopher. Hard to tell who was who. Jibril appeared more like a technocrat than a firebrand. He was small and bespectacled, with thinning hair and a stern demeanor. Lévy, by contrast, cut a dramatic and stylish figure, with long wavy hair and his shirt open practically down to his navel. He has been quoted as saying, “God is dead but my hair is perfect.” (To that I’d say, I think God is alive, but I’d love to have perfect hair!)
I found Jibril to be impressive and polished, especially for the representative of a rebel council on the verge of annihilation. He had served as head of the National Economic Development Board under Qaddafi before defecting to join the revolution and seemed to understand how much work would be necessary to rebuild a country devastated by decades of cruelty and mismanagement. He told us that hundreds of thousands of civilians in Benghazi were in imminent danger as the regime’s forces marched toward the city, raising the specters of the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. He pleaded for international intervention.
As Jibril spoke, I tried to take his measure. We had learned the hard way in Iraq and elsewhere that it’s one thing to remove a dictator and another altogether to help a competent and credible government take his place. If the United States agreed to intervene in Libya, we would be making a big bet on this political scientist and his colleagues. Over four decades Qaddafi had systematically removed anyone who might pose a threat to his rule and pulverized Libya’s institutions and political culture. So we were unlikely to find a perfect George Washington waiting in the wings. All things considered, Jibril and those he represented might well be the best we could hope for.
Afterward I reported to the White House what I had heard in Paris and my progress with our international partners. Our NATO allies were prepared to take the lead in any military action. The Arab League would support it, and some would even actively participate in combat operations against an Arab neighbor—a telling sign of how far Qaddafi had gone. I believed we could wrangle the votes in the Security Council to back a strong resolution. We had managed to get the Russians and Chinese on board with tough sanctions against North Korea and Iran in 2009 and 2010, and I believed we could do the same now. And, based on my meeting with Jibril, I thought there was a reasonable chance the rebels would turn out to be credible partners.
The National Security Council remained divided on the wisdom of intervening in Libya. Some, including UN Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council aide Samantha Power, argued that we had a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent a massacre if we could. Defense Secretary Gates was firmly opposed. A veteran of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and a realist about the limits of American power, he did not think our interests in Libya justified the sacrifice. We all knew the consequences of intervention were unpredictable. But Qaddafi’s troops were now a hundred miles from Benghazi and closing fast. We were looking at a humanitarian catastrophe, with untold thousands at risk of being killed. If we were going to stop it, we had to act now.
The President decided to move forward with drawing up military plans and securing a UN Security Council resolution. But there were two key stipulations. First, because the Pentagon had assured us that a no-fly zone by itself would be little more than a symbolic gesture, we would need to secure UN backing for more robust military action if necessary: the authority to use “all necessary measures” to protect civilians. Second, the President wanted to keep U.S. involvement limited, so our allies would have to shoulder much of the burden and fly most of the sorties. These conditions would require extensive additional diplomacy, but Susan and I both thought it was possible and started working the phones.
The next day at the Security Council in New York, the Russians offered a weak resolution calling for a cease-fire that I thought was actually a ploy to muddy the waters and blunt the building momentum for a no-fly zone. Unless we could convince them not to veto our stronger resolution, it was dead in the water. Beyond Russia, we were also concerned about China, which had veto power as well, and several nonpermanent members.
On the morning of March 15, I flew from Paris to Cairo to meet with Amr Moussa and emphasize how important it was that the Arab League come out strongly for military intervention and agree to actively participate. This policy had to be recognized as being driven by Libya’s neighbors, not the West, or it wasn’t going to work. Moussa confirmed that Qatar and the UAE were prepared to contribute planes and pilots to the effort, a major step forward. Later Jordan would step up as well. I knew this support would make it easier to convince wavering Security Council members in New York.
Qaddafi made our job easier when he went on television on March 17 and warned the citizens of Benghazi, “We are coming tonight, and there will be no mercy.” He pledged to go house by house looking for “traitors” and told Libyans to “capture the rats.” By then I was in Tunisia and called Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He had previously told me that Russia was dead set against a no-fly zone, but since then several nonpermanent members of the Security Council had gotten on board with our resolution. Now it was important to assure the Russians that this would not be like Iraq or Afghanistan and to be clear about our intentions. “We don’t want another war,” I told Lavrov. “We don’t want to put troops on the ground.” But, I explained, “Our goal is to protect civilians from brutal and indiscriminate attacks. The no-fly zone is necessary, but insufficient. We need additional measures. Time is critical.”
“I take your point about not seeking another war,” he responded. “But that doesn’t mean that you won’t get one.” However, he added, the Russians had no interest in protecting Qaddafi or seeing him slaughter his people. I explained that our resolution would incorporate the Russian proposal for a cease-fire, but that it had to also authorize a forceful response if Qaddafi refused to stop his advance. “We can’t vote in favor,” Lavrov said. “But we will abstain and it will pass.” That was all we needed. In this context an abstention was nearly as good as a yes vote. In later discussions, especially about Syria, Lavrov claimed he had been misled about our intentions. That struck me as disingenuous since Lavrov, as a former Ambassador to the UN, knew as well as anyone what “all necessary measures” meant.
Next I called Luís Amado, the Foreign Minister of Portugal, a nonpermanent member of the Security Council. Even if we avoided a veto, we still needed to be sure we had a majority, and the more votes we got, the stronger the message to Qaddafi would be. “I wanted to reiterate that the United States has no interest, or intention, or planning of any kind of using ground troops or a ground operation,” I told Amado. “We believe passing this resolution will give a big wake-up call to Qaddafi and the people around him. This could clearly influence the actions that he takes in the next days.” He listened to my arguments and then agreed to vote yes. “Don’t worry, we’ll be there,” he told me.
President Obama called South African President Jacob Zuma and made the same case to him. Susan lobbied her counterparts in New York. The French and British were working hard as well. In the end the final vote was 10 to 0, with five abstentions; Brazil, India, China, and Germany joined Russia in sitting out the vote. We now had a strong mandate to protect Libyan civilians with “all necessary measures.”
Almost immediately, there were difficulties and drama.
President Obama was very clear with our team and our allies that the United States would participate in a military operation to enforce the UN resolution, but only in a limited way. A key first step for enforcing a no-fly zone would be knocking out Qaddafi’s air defense system, and the United States was better equipped to do that than any of our partners. But the President wanted allied air forces to take the lead as soon as possible, and he was adamant that there would be no U.S. troops deployed. “No boots on the ground” became a mantra. All of that meant that we needed a broad and well-coordinated international coalition that could step in and take over after U.S. cruise missiles and bombers cleared the way. I soon found out that getting all our allies to work together as a team on this would be harder than any of us anticipated.
Sarkozy was eager to take the lead. In the run-up to the UN vote, he had been the most vocal advocate for international military action, and now he saw his chance to reassert France’s role as a major world power. He invited a wide range of European and Arab nations to Paris for an emergency summit on Saturday, March 19, to discuss implementation of the UN resolution. Conspicuously not invited, however, was our NATO ally Turkey. There were already tensions between Sarkozy and Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan because of France’s objections to Turkey joining the EU. Then Erdoğan had emerged as a voice of caution on Libya, and Sarkozy worked to exclude him from the coalition. The snub infuriated Erdoğan and turned him even more decidedly against intervention.
When I spoke with Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoğlu I tried to ease some of the hurt feelings. “I first want to tell you that I pushed very hard for you to be invited,” I said. As I feared, Davutoğlu was quite upset. “We are expecting action through NATO and suddenly in Paris, there is a meeting and we are not invited,” he complained, with good reason. Was this a French crusade or an international coalition? I explained that the summit had been organized by the French but that we were pushing hard for the military operation itself to be run by NATO.
In Paris I delivered President Obama’s message about our expectation that others would step up. Just after landing, I checked in by phone with AbZ. As described earlier, this turned into a very difficult conversation, as he threatened to pull the UAE out of the Libya operation because of U.S. criticism of their actions in Bahrain.
Then, before the official meeting even began, Sarkozy pulled me and British Prime Minister David Cameron aside and confided that French warplanes were already headed toward Libya. When the larger group found out that France had jumped the gun, it caused an uproar. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was just as strong-willed and eager for the spotlight as Sarkozy, was particularly incensed. There is an informal belief that old colonial powers should take the lead in addressing crises in their former dominions. That’s why, later, France was the one to send troops to Mali and the Central African Republic. In the case of Libya, a former Italian colony, Berlusconi felt that Italy should be out front, not France. What’s more, because of its strategic location jutting out into the Mediterranean, Italy provided the natural launching pad for most of the air sorties into Libya. It had already started opening a number of air force bases to allied jets. Now Berlusconi felt upstaged by Sarkozy, and he threatened to walk out of the coalition and close access to his country’s bases.
Beyond the bruised egos, though, Berlusconi and others had good reason to be concerned. We had learned in the Balkans and Afghanistan that coordinating a multinational military operation is complicated. Unless there are clear lines of command and control, with everyone working together to implement the same strategy, it can devolve into dangerous confusion. Imagine if a dozen different nations sent warplanes to Libya without coordinating with one another on flight plans, targets, and rules of engagement. It would be pandemonium in the sky, with the real possibility of a mishap resulting in the loss of life.
Because we had the most capabilities, the United States started out in the lead coordinating role. The next logical step was to have NATO organize the intervention. The Alliance already had an integrated military command and experience coordinating in previous conflicts. Sarkozy did not like that idea. For starters, it might mean less glory for France. But he also thought making Libya a NATO mission would alienate the Arab world, whose leadership had helped sway opinion before the UN vote. Qatar and the UAE had pledged to send planes to help enforce the no-fly zone—would they do so under the banner of NATO? What’s more, NATO operates by consensus, which means any one member, including Turkey, could block action. We had worked very hard at the UN to secure language authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect civilians so that we could do more than prevent Qaddafi’s planes from attacking rebel towns—it was crucial that we be able to stop his tanks and troops on the ground before they reached Benghazi. Some called that a “no-drive zone.” But Erdoğan and others were drawing the line at a pure no-fly zone with no air-to-ground strikes. Sarkozy feared that if NATO ran the mission, we would end up watching as Benghazi burned.
The Paris meeting ended without an agreement on what should happen after the initial American-led phase of intervention. But with Qaddafi’s forces on the move and French jets already in the air, there was no time for hesitation. I went before the cameras and announced, “America has unique capabilities and we will bring them to bear to help our European and Canadian allies and Arab partners stop further violence against civilians, including through the effective implementation of a no-fly zone.” A few hours later U.S. Navy warships in the Mediterranean fired more than a hundred cruise missiles, targeting air defense systems inside Libya and at a large column of armored vehicles approaching Benghazi. President Obama, who was traveling in Brazil, said, “I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice and it’s not a choice that I make lightly.” But, he went on, “actions have consequences, and the writ of the international community must be enforced. That is the cause of this coalition.”
Over the next seventy-two hours Libya’s air defenses were successfully destroyed and the people of Benghazi were saved from imminent devastation. President Obama was later unfairly criticized as “leading from behind” in Libya. That’s a silly phrase. It took a great deal of leading—from the front, the side, and every other direction, to authorize and accomplish the mission and to prevent what might have been the loss of tens of thousands of lives. No one else could have played the role we did, both in terms of the military capability to land a decisive first blow against Qaddafi’s forces and the diplomatic capacity to build and hold together a broad coalition.
Unfortunately relations inside the Alliance went from bad to worse over the next few days. On Monday, only two days after the Paris summit, representatives gathered at NATO headquarters in Brussels to try to work out the differences. But the meeting soon descended into acrimony, with the French Ambassador storming out of the room. Both sides were doubling down. As feared, the Turks were insisting on narrow parameters for a NATO mission, and the French were refusing to give up control. On Monday evening President Obama called Erdoğan to explain again the importance of “all necessary measures” and underscore that this would not include sending ground forces for an invasion. He later spoke to Sarkozy, who was willing to let NATO take over the no-fly zone if the French, British, and others could continue the more aggressive no-drive zone on their own. From our perspective, setting up two parallel missions was fraught with potential difficulties. But we agreed with Sarkozy that we couldn’t give up the ability to target Qaddafi’s ground forces, as they threatened to exterminate rebel communities.
On Monday night a terrifying incident heightened the stakes for all of us. An F-15 Strike Eagle fighter piloted by two U.S. airmen, Major Kenneth Harney and Captain Tyler Stark, suffered a mechanical failure over eastern Libya around midnight. Just after dropping a five-hundred-pound bomb on their target, the jet went into a tailspin. The two airmen ejected, but a tear in Stark’s parachute sent him off course. Harney was rescued soon afterward by a U.S. search-and-rescue team, but Stark was missing. I was worried sick thinking about this twenty-seven-year-old from Littleton, Colorado, lost in the Libyan desert.
Amazingly Stark was found by friendly Libyan rebels from Benghazi, who called a local English teacher to come and talk to him. It turned out the teacher, Bubaker Habib, had close ties to the staff of the U.S. Embassy. Our staff had all left the country, but Bubaker kept their numbers and was able to reach the State Department Operations Center. Over the course of a call with Ops, with State relaying information to the Pentagon, Stark’s rescue was arranged. In the meantime Bubaker drove him to a hotel in Benghazi, where he was treated by doctors for torn tendons in his knee and ankle. Bubaker later told Vanity Fair that he instructed the rebels, “We have an American pilot here. If he gets caught or killed it’s the end of the mission. Make sure he is safe and sound.” The Libyans thanked Stark profusely, expressing their gratitude for the U.S. intervention that was protecting them from Qaddafi’s troops.
In Washington all of us let out a huge sigh of relief. At the same time, I was beginning to see the contours of a possible compromise that might break the deadlock among our allies. If Turkey agreed not to veto action to enforce the no-drive zone—it didn’t have to participate, just abstain from blocking it—then we could convince France to give NATO full command and control.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reported to me that he had spoken to the Turks and had heard that the Arabs would not object to participating in a NATO-led mission, which was one of Sarkozy’s big concerns. As it turns out, AbZ happened to be in Davutoğlu’s office in Ankara when Rasmussen called. Davutoğlu handed the phone over to the Emirati and let him express his consent directly. Word from Qatar and the Arab League was also positive. “Did you share that with France?” I asked Rasmussen. He replied, “Their response was that it’s one thing what the Arabs say in private and another thing what they do publicly.” I said I would talk with Davutoğlu myself and see if we could get the Arabs to go on the record with their support.
When I reached Davutoğlu, I stressed that the United States agreed that NATO should now take over command and control. “We want the handover to be as smooth as possible. We need a unified command in a single theater of operations. We need to ensure all aspects including the civilian protection mission are integrated.” That meant having both the no-fly zone and the no-drive zone. Davutoğlu agreed. “There should be one command and control and it should be under NATO,” he said. “It’s important for the people of Libya. If there is a UN umbrella and under that NATO is doing the operation no one will see this as crusaders or East versus West.”
I also called French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé. “I think we are ready to accept the compromise under certain conditions,” he told me. If NATO was going to run the military operation, France wanted to set up a separate diplomatic committee made up of all the nations contributing forces, including the Arabs, to provide policy guidance. It was a modest gesture, I thought, and one we should be able to accommodate.
To seal the deal, I convened a conference call with the French, Turks, and British. “I believe we have an understanding among us. But I just want to be sure. It’s crucial we’re all on the same page on NATO’s responsibility to enforce the no-fly zone and protect civilians in Libya.” Then I carefully walked through the compromise. By the end of the call, we were all in agreement. “Bravo!” exclaimed Juppé as we hung up.
Soon NATO assumed formal command and control of what became known as Operation Unified Protector. The United States continued to provide vital intelligence and surveillance information that helped guide the air strikes, as well as midair refueling that allowed allied aircraft to stay in the skies over Libya for long stretches of time. But the vast majority of combat sorties would be flown by others.
The military campaign in Libya lasted longer than any of us had hoped or expected, although we never went down the slippery slope of putting troops on the ground, as some had feared. At times the coalition frayed and there was a fair amount of hand-holding and arm-twisting needed to keep all our partners on board. But by late summer 2011, the rebels had pushed back the regime’s forces. They captured Tripoli toward the end of August, and Qaddafi and his family fled into the desert. The revolution had succeeded, and the hard work of building a new country could begin.
In mid-October, with Tripoli liberated but Qaddafi still on the loose, I decided to visit Libya myself to offer America’s support to the new transitional government. With the country awash in shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, it was too dangerous to fly our usual blue-and-white 757 with “The United States of America” emblazoned from tip to tail, so the Air Force provided a C-17 military transport plane equipped with defensive countermeasures for the morning flight from Malta to Tripoli.
Just before we took off, a photographer for Time magazine, Diana Walker, saw me checking my BlackBerry and snapped a quick shot. Her photo, to everyone’s surprise, became an internet sensation many months later and the basis for a “meme” known as “Texts from Hillary.” The idea was simple: an internet user would pair the photo of me holding my phone with a picture of another famous person holding a phone and add funny captions to narrate the texts we supposedly sent back and forth. The first one posted showed President Obama lounging on a couch, with the caption “Hey Hil, Watchu doing?” The imagined response from me: “Running the world.” Eventually I decided to get in on the fun myself. I submitted my own version full of internet slang: “ROFL @ ur tumblr! g2g—scrunchie time. ttyl?” That roughly translated to “Love your site.” I also invited the creators of Texts from Hillary, two young PR professionals in Washington named Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe, to visit me at the State Department. We posed for a photograph of all three of us checking our phones at the same time.
At the time Walker took that photo, however, fun was the furthest thing from my mind. I was preparing for what promised to be a grueling day in a war-torn capital with a new government that had little hold on power and even less experience running a country.
After landing safely, the door of the C-17 opened and I looked out from the top of the plane’s stairs and saw a crowd of armed and bearded militia fighters waiting below. They were from Zintan, a battle-scarred town in Libya’s mountainous northwest that had been one of the major flash points of the revolution. Under the uneasy power-sharing arrangement between the various militias now in control of Tripoli, the Zintan brigade had responsibility for the airport. My security detail was as nervous as I had ever seen them. I took a deep breath and started to walk down the stairs. To my surprise the militia fighters started chanting, “God is Great!” and “USA!” They waved and cheered and held up their hands in the “V for victory” sign. Soon I was mobbed by these exuberant and exultant men from the mountains. Several handed their automatic rifles to comrades to hold while they squeezed next to me for a picture; others patted my back or shook my hand. Kurt Olsson, the head of my security detail, remained unflappable, but I imagine he came away with a few new gray hairs.
The men took their guns and piled into SUVs and pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons and escorted my motorcade through the city, aggressively boxing out other traffic and waving excitedly whenever they were alongside my car. The streets of Tripoli were covered with revolutionary graffiti, some lampooning Qaddafi and others celebrating rebel slogans and victories. Soon we arrived at the offices of a large Islamic charity that the new government was using as its makeshift headquarters.
After meeting with the Chairman of the National Transitional Council of Libya, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, I made my way to the office of Jibril, the rebel leader I had met in Paris who was now the interim Prime Minister. He greeted me with a broad smile, and I said, “I am proud to stand here on the soil of a free Libya.”
In meetings with Jalil and Jibril we discussed the many challenges facing the new government. At the top of their list was the continuing threat from Qaddafi and his loyalists. I assured them that NATO would continue its mission to protect Libyan civilians until the former dictator was found and fully defeated. Then I raised another concern.
Any government’s first responsibility is to provide security and ensure law and order. This was going to be a big challenge in Libya. Unlike in Egypt, where the military and security forces had remained largely intact after the fall of Mubarak, in Libya there was now a major vacuum. And, as friendly and high-spirited as the militia fighters from Zintan had been, the presence of so many independent armed groups in Tripoli and across the country was not sustainable. It was crucial to bring all the militias together in a single army under the control of civilian authorities, establish the rule of law, prevent score-settling and vigilante justice, and round up the loose weapons now flooding the country. The United States was prepared to help the new government in all these areas, but it was going to take leadership from them to make it work. Jibril and the others nodded in agreement and pledged to make it a priority.
After our meetings I sped off to a town hall discussion with students and civil society activists at Tripoli University. Qaddafi had done all that he could to discourage the emergence of volunteer groups, NGOs, independent media, and government watchdogs that make up civil society. I hoped they were willing and able to play a positive role in Libya’s next phase. History had shown that it was one thing to remove a tyrant and quite another to build a new government that delivers for its people. Democracy would face serious challenges in Libya. Would the country’s future be shaped by the arms of its militias or the aspirations of its people?
One after another, the students and activists stood up and asked thoughtful and practical questions about how to build a new democracy. “We have no political parties,” observed one young woman studying to become an engineer. She asked how Libyans should “encourage our people to involve more in the political life, considering that we have elections in a matter of two years or less and we have to elect our parliaments and our president.” Another young woman, a medical student, stood up. “We are very new to this democracy,” she began. “What steps do you think we can take to root the freedom of speech into the Libyan identity?” These young people desperately wanted to live in a “normal country,” with access to the global economy and all the rights they knew people in America and around the world had enjoyed for so long. And, in contrast to some of the young people I had met next door in Egypt, they were eager to put aside their differences, learn lessons from the outside, and get involved in the political process. Free Libya had a long way to go—they were starting basically from scratch—but these young people impressed me with their thoughtfulness and determination to build it.
Before leaving Tripoli I stopped by a local hospital to visit with civilians and fighters wounded in the revolution against Qaddafi. I talked with young men who had lost limbs and doctors and nurses overwhelmed by the casualties they had seen. I promised that the United States would provide medical support and even fly some of the most challenging cases to hospitals in America.
My final visit was to the compound of our Ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, which had been turned into a makeshift embassy. During the revolution, regime thugs had ransacked and burned our actual embassy (all U.S. personnel had already evacuated), so now our returned diplomatic staff was camped out in Gene’s living room. I marveled at the toughness and resolve of these brave American diplomats. We heard gunshots in the distance, and I wondered whether it was fighting or celebration. The embassy staff seemed quite used to it by now. As I shook each of their hands, I thanked them for all their incredible work and sacrifices.
Leaving Tripoli, the C-17 lifted off steep and fast. So much had happened in the nine months since I went to Doha to warn the leaders of the Middle East that if they did not embrace reform their region was going to sink into the sand.
Libya held its first elections in the summer of 2012. By all accounts, despite security concerns, the voting was well run and relatively free of irregularities. After more than forty years without political participation under Qaddafi, about 60 percent of Libyans, a broad cross-section of society, went to the polls to elect their representatives and then took to the streets in celebration.
I was worried that the challenges ahead would prove overwhelming for even the most well-meaning transitional leaders. If the new government could consolidate its authority, provide security, use oil revenues to rebuild, disarm the militias, and keep extremists out, then Libya would have a fighting chance at building a stable democracy. If not, then the country would face very difficult challenges translating the hopes of a revolution into a free, secure, and prosperous future. And, as we soon learned, not only Libyans would suffer if they failed.