Qaddafi’s Days Numbered as Libyan Coffers Run Dry, Ex-Central Banker Says
Former Libyan Central Bank Governor Farhat Bengdara
Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg
Farhat Bengdara, former governor of the Central Bank of Libya.
Farhat Bengdara, former governor of the Central Bank of Libya. Photographer: Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg
June 14 (Bloomberg) -- Farhat Bengdara, who ran Libya's central bank before defecting, talks with Bloomberg's Lara Setrakian about Muammar Qaddafi's finances and regime outlook. They spoke yesterday in Dubai. (Source: Bloomberg)
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s rule may end in weeks as international sanctions starve him of funds and rebels and NATO-led forces cut off fuel shipments, said Farhat Bengdara, who ran Libya’s central bank before defecting.
Qaddafi’s government had $500 million in cash at the end of February, when Bengdara fled, the former banker said in an interview in Dubai yesterday.
“It’s almost run out,” Bengdara said. “They have no fuel for tanks. It’s a matter of weeks” before Qaddafi is forced out of power, he said.
Western and Arab leaders have demanded an end to Qaddafi’s four-decade rule, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization aircraft have targeted his forces in a military campaign about to enter its fourth month. Qaddafi has already held on longer than NATO initially predicted. The military mission was expected to last “weeks, not months,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told parliament in Paris on March 24.
“We must give them their due,” French Navy Admiral Philippe Coindrau said in a June 9 video press conference from the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier off the Libyan coast. “Our opponents are extremely professional, extremely reactive and extremely aggressive. They are experienced and well trained and don’t hesitate to use violence.”
Coindrau said he saw no signs that Qaddafi’s forces have been able to replace lost equipment or acquire fuel and ammunition. “Every day we notice the attrition of Qaddafi’s forces,” he said.
Gold Bars
As a sign finances are being squeezed, Qaddafi’s government has asked commercial banks to hand over whatever hard currency they have, Bengdara said. Four top bank managers have defected, he said, though he declined to name them to protect their families. The regime also has 155 tons of gold bars that can’t easily be used to pay for supplies, he said.
NATO planes are monitoring movement on the ground, making it hard to supply fuel to the regime’s forces. “They tried to import fuel by any means, but they couldn’t,” Bengdara said.
Libya was producing as much as 1.4 million barrels a day of crude oil before the conflict, though the country has been unable to export oil since the start of coalition air raids. Refineries have also been shut because of the fighting. In April, a tanker took about 1 million barrels from rebel- controlled territory, which was marketed by Qatar’s national oil company.
‘Very Few Days’
Abdurrahman Shalgham, Libya’s former foreign minister and representative to the United Nations, told reporters in Abu Dhabi last week that rebel troops will reach Tripoli, the capital, within “some weeks” and that Qaddafi has “very few days” left in power.
That optimism isn’t shared by everyone. Even if Qaddafi’s soldiers are handicapped, Tripoli isn’t about to fall to the forces of the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council, said Karim Mezran, a political-science professor at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy, and a researcher at Rome’s Center for American Studies.
“The British and French totally overestimated the rebels and totally underestimated Qaddafi’s support,” Mezran said in a telephone interview. He said the most likely outcome is a semi- permanent partition between the eastern region of Cyrenaica under rebel control and the western region of Tripolitania under loyalist control.
NATO Targets
Since taking over the military mission on March 31, NATO says it has flown more than 4,100 strike sorties. Two days ago, alliance aircraft struck vehicles, gun emplacements, and weapons depots around Tripoli, Waddan, Misrata, and Brega, NATO said on its website. British aircraft sank two speedboats near Misrata, the U.K. Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Rebels have been able to ease the siege of Misrata in the West. Yet the bulk of their forces are more than 400 miles (650 kilometers) east of Tripoli, where the front line between the towns of Ajdabiya and Brega has barely budged in a month.
“It is not a war of intense military confrontations, but of little skirmishes,” said Yves Bonnet, a retired former head of the French anti-terrorism agency who visited Libya on a fact- finding mission in April. “Qaddafi clearly has support in Tripolitania and is clearly unpopular in Cyrenaica. It’s a very crystallized situation.”
An aide to NTC leader Mahmoud Jebril said last week that Saif al-Islam, Qaddafi’s son, had approached rebels in recent days to negotiate an exit from power for his father. Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, as well as Turkey and South Africa, are seeking a solution. Russia’s envoy for the Libyan conflict, Mikhail Margelov, has also said he’s ready to negotiate an end to the fighting.
“The leaders on both sides can’t talk to each other because there’s too much bad blood,” said Eric Denece, founder of the French Center for Intelligence Research, who was part of the same mission as Bonnet. “But their underlings could start to talk.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Lara Setrakian in Dubai at lsetrakian1@bloomberg.net; Gregory Viscusi in Paris at gviscusi@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net; James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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