The defection of Libyan oil czar Shukri Ghanem has reignited hope that Muammar Qaddafi’s regime is inching toward collapse. Yet this supposedly “high-level defection” was anything but. Ghanem, the chairman of the National Oil Corporation, was a marginal, American-educated technocrat recruited to ingratiate Libya with an international community suspicious of the eccentric Qaddafi and wary of his 20 years of support for terrorist groups. With no power base of his own, Ghanem was completely beholden to the Libyan leader and often frustrated by Qaddafi’s inner circle, which thwarted his reform program.
Read Full Article »
