Libya has two problems. Neither of them has anything to do with the interest that the oil industry long has shown in the country's rich petroleum resource. One of Libya's problems is Moammar Qadhafi. The other is the inability of economic sanctions to deal with a rogue dictator now legally complicit in mass murder.
Three Scottish judges on Jan. 31 convicted and sentenced to life in prison a Libyan intelligence officer for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The explosion killed all 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground.
Government link
It remains unclear whether the convicted bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, acted on explicit instructions from Qadhafi. But al-Megrahi's past as Libya's chief of aviation security makes the government link less ambiguous than usual for an act of terrorism. Indeed, the conviction, rendered under Scottish law at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, made official what has long been suspected: that the Lockerbie disaster was part of Qadhafi's retaliation for the April 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi by US warplanes. Those attacks came after US servicemen were killed in the bombing of a Berlin nightclub.
That Qadhafi has sponsored terrorism and supported terrorist groups is beyond question. Whether or not he directly ordered the Lockerbie bombing, there can be no doubt that he wanted innocent people to die in large numbers. As terrorism goes, official intent is seldom this clear.
The first impulse of governments seeking justice, especially those of the US and UK, has been to extend economic sanctions. The response is proper as an interim measure. It also refutes expectations expressed by media commentators and some of the victims' families that the new administration of President George W. Bush would use the verdict as an excuse to remove the Libyan sanctions.
Cynicism behind that expectation should alarm oil companies. It should temper whatever enthusiasm they have for business opportunities in Libya so long as an unrepentant Qadhafi remains in power. Companies can't afford to ignore Libyan prospects, of course, or to take no heed of when opportunities might reopen. After the al-Megrahi verdict, however, and until something changes about Qadhafi's newly underscored status as international terrorist, commercial interest is best exercised from afar.
Concern by oil companies about the effects and effectiveness of economic sanctions in general is another matter. In Libya's case, they're a mess. The United Nations imposed one set of Libyan sanctions in 1991 and 1992 in response to the bombings of Pan Am 103 and a French airliner over Niger in 1988. It suspended them in 1999 when Qadhafi agreed to surrender suspects in the Lockerbie case for trial. Separately, the US Congress imposed sanctions under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA).
After the Camp Zeist verdict, US and British officials were quick to declare that the UN sanctions should resume until Qadhafi satisfies several original conditions, including acknowledging responsibility for the bombings and compensating survivors of the victims. The declarations correctly imply that al-Megrahi's conviction doesn't lay the matter to rest. And the immediate resort to sanctions is practical. It just isn't enough.
Qadhafi is an international menace. His influence in serial acts of mass murder is now more than a matter of widespread suspicion; it is a judicially established fact. Libya's ruler must not only meet the UN conditions for removal of sanctions but also submit to international measures against a resumption of his murderous habits. In the absence of such unlikely contrition, other governments must increase, not just maintain, their pressure.
Sanctions stalemate
What must not happen is stalemate around sanctions. A decade of sanctions coaxed Qadhafi into little more than baby steps toward minimum standards of international decency. The Camp Zeist verdict magnifies his culpability in at least one loathsome act. To not similarly magnify the international response by moving beyond sanctions would be dangerously irresolute.
But what lies beyond sanctions? New air strikes? A blockade of ports? Nasty questions, these. They require uncomfortable decisions against which governments too frequently use sanctions as a shield. The Libyan verdict raises an inescapable question: "What now?" If the answer is, "Same as before," Qadhafi and would-be airplane bombers around the world win.
For oil companies, who have employees on airliners every day, such a prospect cannot hold much appeal.
