Once an extremist but now a politician and businessman

Libyan ex-militiamen once linked to Al Qaida have now achieved not just legitimacy but also the ability to shape the course of a nation

Abdelhakim Belhadj has shed his combat fatigues for gray sports jackets and crisp white shirts. He has given up his AK-47 rifle for an election ballot. Once an extremist and revolutionary commander, he is now a globe-trotting politician and businessman.
"My thinking of that time is not a reflection of the way I think now," the 51-year-old said, referring to his fighting days in Libya.
But in a war-divided nation, penetrated by Daesh and struggling to forge a new identity, Libyans have not forgotten who Belhadj once was.
They remember that he fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
They remember that he led a Libyan Group an obscure, Al Qaida-linked militia that the United States branded a terrorist organisation. Belhadj was considered so dangerous that he was arrested and interrogated at a secret CIA rendition site in Asia after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Later, he was in a Libyan prison.
Today, as key players in the contest for the soul of the new Libya, Belhadj and his comrades represent a rare instance of former militants associated with Al Qaida achieving not just legitimacy, but the ability to shape the course of a nation.
"These guys are very involved in the political landscape of running things in Tripoli," said Claudia Gazzini, senior Libya analyst for the International Crisis Group. The worry for some, she said, is:"Have they really shed their extremist upbringing?"
The trajectory they followed is a winding one. The group dates to the battlefields of the Cold War and blossomed under the oppression of Libya's autocratic leader, Colonel Gaddafi.
Now, as he navigates Libya's regional and tribal schisms, Belhadj enjoys power, influence and wealth. But he remains a widely feared and controversial figure, viewed as a warlord and a terrorist mastermind, even as his supporters paint him as a misunderstood idealist.
"Belhadj represents a threat now and in the future," said Abdullah Belhaq, a spokesman for Libya's eastern-based parliament. "He is followed by armed militias, and they will always be against the establishment of a state to safeguard their interests."
I first met Belhadj, a civil engineer by training, in May 2010 in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. He and several LIFG leaders had been released from prison under an extremist-rehabilitation programme conceived by Gadhafi's son, Saif Al Islam Gadhafi. In exchange, they vowed to renounce violence and work to discredit Al Qaida.
Many Libyans and Western diplomats were skeptical. Belhadj and his comrades were among scores of Libyans who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight the occupying Soviet forces. They met bin Laden in a training camp, Sami Al Saadi, an LIFG co-founder, told me at the time. Belhadj returned to Libya in the early 1990s. There, he launched his group to overthrow Gaddafi and transform Libya. A low-level insurgency followed, as well as three failed attempts to assassinate the dictator. By then, Belhadj was known by his nom de guerre, Abu Abdullah Al Sadeq.
Gadhafi's regime crushed the LIFG, and by the late 1990s Belhadj and his comrades had fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they forged alliances with leaders of Al Qaida and the Taliban, according to Libyan authorities and analysts. Belhadj, while acknowledging the links, denied he was close to either group.
In the months before the September 11 attacks, bin Laden urged the LIFG to join his efforts to target the United States and its allies. Belhadj balked. His group's sole mission, he said recently, was to topple Gaddafi, not attack the West - "and I told it to the Al Qaida leaders." But the LIFG split over that choice, and some senior members joined bin Laden.
In late 2001, many LIFG commanders fled the region. Three years later, Belhadj and his pregnant wife were arrested in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and taken to a CIA site in Thailand. Saadi and others were arrested elsewhere in Asia.
For six years, they were held in the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. He has sued the British government for allegedly playing a role in returning him to Libya. Encouraged by moderate preachers and the younger Gadhafi, Belhadj and his comrades crafted a 400-page manifesto denouncing Al Qaida's beliefs and attacks on Western civilians.
Still, waging war against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was "a sacred act," they maintained. "When America invades a country, the insurgency is legal," Belhadj told me in 2010.
Belhadj became the commander of the Tripoli Brigade, a rebel militia, and on August 22, 2011, he and his men entered theBab al-Aziziya compound, Gadhafi's fortress and nerve centre.
For the several months, they had helped lead the battle against Gadhafi's forces aided by Nato airstrikes. On this day, they were close to seizing control of Tripoli, and Gadhafi had fled east.
Belhadj spotted the dictator's chair and sat in it. "To be sitting in Bab Al Aziziya was something we always dreamed of," he recalled.
Belhadj was named the leader of the Tripoli Military Council, the committee in charge of keeping order in the capital after Gaddafi was killed by rebels less than two months later. He would also join the rebels' Supreme Security Council. Other LIFG members joined other movements and ran religious youth camps, advocating strict Sharia laws.
Saadi founded a political party. Khalid Al Sherif, deputy emir of the LIFG, was appointed deputy defence minister in two post-Gadhafi governments. He also became an influential figure aligned with the UN-backed Government of National Accord, one of three governments vying for control of Libya.
Today, Belhadj has parlayed his revolutionary connections into vast wealth and influence. Even though he holds no official position in government, his well-armed loyalists wield power in the capital. But because he has moved out of the public spotlight and kept his political and business dealings secret, he remains an enigma to many Libyans.
While some Libyans view Belhadj as a businessman, others beg to differ. They believe "he's just pretending to be all about business, but is calling the shots," said Gazzini of the International Crisis Group.
Belhaq described Belhadj as exercising immense power largely through ill-gotten money, noting that within two years of his release from prison he owned an airline company. "Where did he get these billions from?" the eastern parliamentary spokesman said.
Belhadj, who now divides his time between Turkey and Tripoli, denies he owns an airline or any large business interests. "Maybe they are confusing me with another man with a similar name," he said.
Belhadj resigned from the Tripoli Military Council to launch his own political party, Al Watan, or "Homeland." He believes in democracy, he said, and ran unsuccessfully for parliament in 2012. He supports the UN-backed government, he said, because "we don't want to be out of the international community." In recent months, he has traveled to Switzerland and South Africa to encourage a peace process for Libya.
His followers hope he will run for prime minister if Libya becomes stable to hold elections again. "His past, though, keeps chasing him.
-Washington Post Syndicate
Sudarsan Raghavan is The Post's Cairo bureau chief. He was previously based in Nairobi, Baghdad and Kabul for the Post