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Libya
Relations with the United States and Western Europe
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Libya was widely suspected of financing
international terrorist activities and political subversion around
the world. Recruits from various national liberation movements
reportedly received training in Libya, and Libyan financing of
Palestinian activities against Israel was openly acknowledged.
There were also allegations of Libyan assistance to such diverse
groups as Lebanese leftists, the Irish Republican Army, Muslim
rebels in the Philippines, and left-wing extremists in Europe
and Japan. Some observers thought support was more verbal than
material. However, in 1981 the GPC declared Libyan support of
national liberation movements a matter of principle, an act that
lent credence to charges of support for terrorism.
Support for international terrorism was a major issue in Libya's
relations with the United States and Western Europe. The United
States, in particular, viewed Libya's diplomatic and material
support for what Tripoli called "liberation movements" as aid
and comfort to international terrorists. In general, after the
early 1970s relations between the two countries went from bad
to worse, even while the United States continued to import Libyan
crude.
Qadhafi opposed United States diplomatic initiatives and military
presence in the Middle East. As a protest against Washington's
policies in Iran, the United States embassy in Tripoli was stormed
and burned in December 1979. In the late 1970s, Washington blocked
delivery to Libya of equipment judged of potential military value
and in May 1981 ordered Libyan diplomatic personnel to leave the
United States to prevent assassination of anti-Qadhafi Libyan
dissidents. The most serious incident occurred in August 1981
when United States jets shot down two Libyan jet fighters during
naval maneuvers in the Gulf of Sidra (see Relations with the United
States and Western Europe , ch. 4). That same month, Libya signed
an economic and political agreement with Ethiopia and South Yemen,
the so-called Tripartite Agreement, aimed at countering Western,
and primarily American, interests in the Mediterranean and Indian
Ocean. After a series of joint consultations, however, the pact
became largely a dead letter.
Libya's income from oil came from sales to Western Europe as
well as to the United States, and to ensure a steady supply of
oil most European nations tried to remain on reasonable terms
with their Libyan supplier. Some protests arose over the wave
of political assassinations of Libyan exiles in Europe in 1980,
but only Britain with its independent supply of oil took a strong
stand on the issue. Qadhafi's call that same year for compensation
from Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany),
and Italy for destruction of Libyan property in World War II brought
no response, even when the Libyan leader threatened to seize property
if adequate compensation were not negotiated.
By the early 1980s, Libya was a country embroiled in controversy.
Libyan ventures in Chad and elsewhere in North Africa and the
Middle East had earned a good deal of opprobrium for Qadhafi,
who often pursued his goal of Arab and Islamic unity and extended
Libyan influence at what seemed any price. Indeed, suspicion if
not hostility were the usual response to Qadhafi's initiatives
in the Arab and Western world.
Domestically, the government had attempted to ensure a more equitable
distribution of wealth, a step that pleased many but by no means
all of its citizens. A new political system with new institutions
was also in place with the aim of involving as many citizens as
possible in governing themselves. But overlapping jurisdictions
and responsibilities had led to confusion, and there were questions
as to the viability of the committee system of government. A sizable
number of Libyans seemed uninterested in political participation,
while others had gone into opposition, active or passive, at home
and abroad. The country's oil revenues had been channeled into
agricultural and industrial projects that the regime hoped would
provide employment and lessen dependence upon imports and foreign
labor. Even in these areas, the results were less promising than
had been expected, and falling oil prices diminished the financial
resources that could be devoted to continued economic and foreign
policy initiatives.
The decline in oil revenues and consequent economic slowdown,
the continued reliance upon non-Libyan expertise, and the generally
unfavorable state of foreign relations and persistent dissidence
in the military and society at large posed grave problems for
the Qadhafi regime in the early 1980s.
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Two of the best English-language sources on Libya are John Wright's
Libya, which covers Libyan history prior to the 1969
revolution, and his Libya: A Modern History, devoted
to the course of the revolution during the 1970s. Jamil M. Abu-Nasr's
detailed A History of the Maghrib views Libya in the
larger context of regional history but carries the narrative only
up to 1951. The various works of the archaeologist Richard G.
Goodchild are of primary importance for the study of Libya in
antiquity. Kathleen Freeman utilizes both fable and fact in her
delightful and informative historical essay on Cyrene in Greek
City-States. For a treatment of the late medieval period,
see Robert Brunschvig's La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides.
Much material of value for an understanding of the early Ottoman
period in North Africa is found in Fernand Braudel's classic The
Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip
II. Seton Dearden's A Nest of Corsairs is the welldocumented
but fast-moving story of the Karamanli dynasty. Few works on modern
Libya compare in scholarly significance to Edward Evans-Pritchard's
monograph The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Claudio G. Segrè's
Fourth Shore studies the colonial period from an Italian
vantage point and submits findings that call for a reassessment
of the demographic colonization of Libya. Several of the essays
in E. G. H. Joffe and K. S. McLachlan, Social and Economic
Development of Libya, cover important aspects of Libya in
the present century. Lisa Anderson examines the mistrust of the
modern bureaucratic state that is so peculiarly Libyan and that
characterizes Qadhafi's political philosophy in The State
and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980.
Richard B. Parker's North Africa offers an incisive overview
of contemporary Libya that emphasizes Qadhafi's role in determining
state policies. (For further information and complete citations,
see Bibliography.)
Data as of 1987
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