Libya, the UK and military kit… it’s just business
Nobody, just now, can find the colonel. And everyone has an answer as to why not, in this land of so much sand, so few people. Which is right, because the elusiveness of one of the world’s last “designer tyrants” is because of many factors.
One of those, bizarrely, could possibly be down to deals done by the UK with the former dictator.
Our story begins a few days ago when, even as we tried to drive through the vast gates of the notorious Khamis military base in south Tripoli, a gunman thrust a dozen or so ID badges into our vehicle.
To our astonishment were names and photos of British men. The passes were headed “Collaborators With The 32nd Brigade”. What was the nature of their “collaboration” with the elite and feared 32nd – run by Khamis, the colonel’s son?
We had one clue – two of these men were linked to General Dynamics UK which makes and exports sophisticated command and control systems similar to the Bowman System used by the British Army.
Essentially it’s a laptop-based comms network which, in essence, allows everyone from commanding officer down to the soldier in a ditch to communicate with nobody hacking in and listening. Pretty vital to any army.
A little digging and there it all was. General Dynamics signed one of the biggest deals of all with the colonel – a whopping $165 million for just this kind of kit.
So where do Tony and Vince come in?
Well, you’ll recall that once the colonel decided nuclear weapons were Very Naughty Indeed, off came the arms embargo in 2004 and suddenly Tripoli became one giant soft play area for arms dealers and comms-wallahs worldwide.
Everyone was best pals with the colonel by now and soon, in 2007, Tony Blair was in Tripoli putting out for the Gold Braided One with the zillion-watt Blair smile and a pocket full of deals.
Centre table: General Dynamics and that massive communications deal. From Blair down it was time to reel in the Tripolitans.
Enter Vince – Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Tripoli, Sir Vincent Fean. And it appears Vince certainly bent his back to the task at hand, batting for Britain to get the deal signed.
Letters released by the Foreign Office under Freedom of Information requests reveal a company much in debt to Vince.
“Dear Vincent,” gushed an exec from General Dynamics even as he was on the plane flying from Tripoli, “I wanted immediately to write to thank you…for your interest and support on the rocky road towards success in the programme”.
Other correspondence thanks Our Man in Tripoli for his “sponsorship of the deal”.
And yet…and yet…just a year or so later Vince’s Foreign Office would urgently review selling sophisticated military communications systems to Tripoli.
All this needs to be seen in the wider context of a big increase in arms and military equipment sales from the UK to a series of regimes from North Africa to the Gulf, up until the current unrst started earlier this year.
Today the Foreign Office press office claimed the UK has one of the most rigorous regimes in the world governing defence exports. It said it did not export equipment where there is a clear risk it could be used for internal repression.
It added it cannot comment about individual deals, nor about what happened under previous governments.
Some will say this is life in the real world and that’s just business. Others will say it illustrates again that when it comes to arms and military exports the essential British position is “if we won’t some other country will.”
So it is that Libyans today feast at Eid. They welcome friends. Families gather. But they cannot find The Colonel.
And could the reason for that be – in part – because of the secure comms Tony, Vince and General Dynamics worked so hard to provide for him?
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General Dynamics has responded to Channel 4 News with the following statement:
On 9 May 2008, General Dynamics UK announced publically that it had been competitively awarded an £85m GBP contract to supply a tactical communications system to the Libyan armed forces. This contract was part of the UK Government’s initiative to improve economic, educational and defence links with Libya at that time. The programme was competed and delivered with the full support of Her Majesty’s Government and in accordance with the UK’s Defence Industrial Strategy, defence export controls legislation and foreign policy objectives.
We cannot confirm any information about the names you have provided as we do not comment on such matters in light of data privacy and personal security concerns, and also given the unpredictable nature of what is happening in Libya today to release any individuals names, whoever they may be, would be irresponsible in the extreme.
As part of the contract discussed above, General Dynamics UK did have small engineering team in Libya supporting the delivery of the system. They were not located at, nor did they have any access to, the base featured in your news package on Sunday. At the time the current unrest began in February they had not delivered the system to the customer as that contracted deadline had not been reached. We evacuated all our staff from Libya on 19th February 2011, and no employees of this company have been in Libya since that date.
There are 10 comments on this post
“the programme was completed and delivered…” “they had not delivered the system”. So which is it general Dynamics?
The latter.
It´s not only British Companies causing problems.
– This attempted sabotage of NATO could also be serious.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/2011831151258728747.html
Alex,
Thank you for this one light in a very dark reporting tunnel. You’ll have to dig deep indeed to find this kind of report anywhere else in Brit mainstream media reporting of the Libya Civil War.
Now…..what’s the odds the communication system had a built-in bug, and everything was available to, say, the CIA and MI6 to name just two? If true, that would indicate advance knowledge of what was to come…which in turn would indicate – well, does it need a picture to illustrate it? Yes, this is wild conjecture. But, as you know, our “intelligence” services have done far worse things, including assassination and destabilising foreign governments; nothing is beyond their insanity.
A first class piece of reporting. So good in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if you got a tap on the shoulder and some “friendly advice” or redirection. That’s usually the way it works.
Come on, Alex, I think you are being a tad cynical.
After all, if we didn’t supply all these petty dictators like Sadam and Gadaffi with arms, when we finally came round to attacking them, it wouldn’t seem like a fair fight and we’d be accused of bullying.
Admittedly, our record at spotting a baddy isn’t very good – probably why we armed bin Laden – but no one is perfect. And after all, Gadaffi told Tone that he was a reformed character and only needed the guns etc to shoot pigeons who were crapping on the many posters of himself.
And anyway, the banks thought it was good business and they never get anything wrong.
And, of course, the final argument, with which it is impossible to argue: if we didn’t sell them this kit, someone else would, as pornographers and drug dealers around the world will testify.
Large quantities of UK defence equipment used by our troops are liberating Libya and the fuss is over some high-tech radios that might not even have got there? Bizarre.
How about looking at the nations that don’t have strict export controls like the UK has? They sell the stuff that goes bang…
See also the written statement to Parliament from the Foreign Secretary on 18 July announcing no evidence of any misuse of UK-made kit during the Arab Spring.
insideman.
The 4c system command/control/communication/computation provided by GDUK enabled;(because as the company admit,the equipment was “delivered” with the help of an engineering team.)the dear colonel to facilitate the massacre of innocent civilians.
Yes, the commercial aspects together with the political one of “he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch” at least up until this feb, are not good enough reason for this equipment sale.
Why? perhaps the use of this gear against british boots on the ground would have caused a few red faces in our political class. One reason that our troops were not dragged into ground operations may have been the use of superior 4c equipment supplied by a british firm against britains own soldiers.
@Insideman
As a working system was not in Libyan hands by the time that GDUK withdrew from Libya in February, it posed no threat to ‘boots on the ground’ UK or otherwise. The only way that Ghadaffi could be using it to evade capture would be if he hid inside one of the crates that it was shipped in.
Nemo may indeed be correct, although I have my doubts. We are only taking a companies word for it. What is needed is proof of those items of 4c kit handed over to the 32nd or khamis brigade prior to the revolution, having been installed in armoured vehicles.
The General Dynamics team on site consisted of welders, what were they doing then? presumably not enabling the installation of these systems by welding them into cradles inside these vehicles. I don’t think so.
The reality is this kit was close to going on stream, or if proved by the finding of this kit already in use.
If the revolution occurred 6 months later then the system would have been FULLY OPERATIONAL for use against innocent civilians. General Dynamics and their like cannot use a “get out” because it may not have been working yet. At some point it would have.
It would have been a “force enabler” to be used to very good effect on internal subversives.And of course NATO.
I only hope those Brits employed by GDUK in Libya have realised how sordid all this is and had the decency to resign. Somehow I doubt it
political cynic.
I find your words very odd as a “political cynic” that the Foreign secretary stating that UK kit has not been misused in the Arab Spring is taken by you at face value.
Considering that MI6 the SAS and the boy wonder Blair are all now involved in events prior to the revolution. Then I think you should consider renaming yourself “political simpleton”.
Radios don’t go bang, correct; what they do is enable your troops to be at the right place at the right time, so that the things that do go bang DO. In this case against civilians.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Radios help A LOT.