Key Libyan Rebel Leader Is Quick Diplomatic Study

The Libyan rebel courting U.S. support for the government-in-waiting launched his academic career by chronicling America's response to the 1969 coup by the man he now wants to depose: Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Mahmoud Jibril, the 58-year-old de facto foreign minister for a rebel council based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, has been a key player in drumming up international support for the opposition in recent weeks. He helped galvanize European backing for military aid, and has repeatedly met with U.S. diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It is a task for which he should be well-suited: His 1985 doctoral dissertation, from the University of Pittsburgh, details the U.S. response to Col. Gadhafi's revolution. His work focused on how U.S. policy makers viewed and dealt with a new, unknown group of Libyan leaders with an uncertain agenda that threatened U.S. interests in the region.

The conclusion? U.S. views of Libya were overwhelmingly colored not so much by what the new Gadhafi regime actually did, but rather by how its rhetoric fit with America's shifting concerns, from Soviet expansion to the rise of international terrorism.

As long as Libya took a fiercely anti-Soviet line, it enjoyed a free hand to implement "radical oil policies" and foment revolutionary activity across Africa, he noted. But when Libya got too close to Moscow at a time of heightened Cold War hand-wringing, the Libyan regime was dubbed a tool of Soviet expansionism and a promoter of global terrorism.

"What really mattered to the Reagan administration was not Libya's activities per se (terrorism or not), but instead using Libya and its leaders as the battleground for attacking the main enemy, the USSR," he wrote in the dissertation, published as a book in 1988.

Understanding how to assuage America's core concerns could prove crucial today, when U.S. policy toward the region is still overwhelmingly colored by the twin worries of Iranian activities and the persistent threat of Islamist terrorism.

Mr. Jibril has been careful, both in his current role meeting with U.S. diplomats and in recent years while serving the Gadhafi government, to paint Libya as a country at odds with extremist Islam. The Gadhafi regime spent years fighting an Islamist terrorist group bent on overthrowing the regime, and Col. Gadhafi blames al Qaeda for the uprising against him.

The fear that al Qaeda and similar groups are taking advantage of the chaos and fighting to infiltrate the Libyan opposition has excited some quarters in Washington, though U.S. intelligence and military officials and diplomats stress that violent Islamists are playing, at most, a marginal role in the uprising.

Mr. Jibril is part of a triumvirate at the top of the Interim Transitional National Council, a 31-member group formed in Benghazi to act as Libya's government-in-waiting.

Other key members include Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Libya's former justice minister, who is essentially the opposition's prime minister, and Ali Al-Issawi, a former economy minister and ambassador to India, who is also helping with foreign affairs.

Mr. Jibril is well-known to the U.S. diplomats spearheading contacts with the still-mysterious opposition: U.S. ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz and the former deputy chief of mission in Tripoli, Chris Stevens. U.S. diplomats described Mr. Jibril in recent years as "smart, cosmopolitan, and one of the most strategic thinkers" inside Libya's elite, according to a document released by WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy Web site.

Mr. Jibril was reportedly offered the job of prime minister in the Gadhafi regime in late 2007, according to a cable released by WikiLeaks, not long after he was wooed back to the Libyan government by Saif el Islam Gadhafi, Col. Gadhafi's son, to try to modernize Libya's battered economy. U.S. diplomats reported that Mr. Jibril didn't want the job.

In meetings with U.S. officials between 2008 and 2010, Mr. Jibril sought U.S. investment in Libya, especially in technology, and called for stronger academic ties between the two countries.

He also painted a picture of Libya's potential appeal to the West that suggests how he might position post-Gadhafi Libya today: "Jibril's 'hunch' is that Libya will become 'more precious' in coming years by dint of its relatively virgin hydrocarbon resources, aversion to extremist iterations of Islam, and strategic proximity to Europe," U.S. diplomats reported in a 2008 cable released by WikiLeaks.

Resistance from regime hard-liners kneecapped his efforts to reform the Libyan economy, and he reportedly tried to resign as head of economic planning on several occasions before leaving in early 2010.

Bert Rockman, one of his political-science professors at the University of Pittsburgh, now at Purdue University, remembers his former research assistant as a "very bright guy, a very good student." Other former colleagues and professors uniformly describe him as a diligent and thoughtful student and devoted family man always thinking about modernization and lamenting Libya's stunted economy.

"I expected he'd be in the opposition," said Mr. Rockman, who kept ties to his former student while he worked for the Libyan government. "Mahmoud strikes me as an almost ideal kind of guy to have in this position."