MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Libya
Index
King Idris I, the first leader of independent Libya
Under the constitution of October 1951, the federal monarchy of
Libya was headed by King Idris as chief of state, with succession
to his designated heirs. Substantial political power resided with
the king. The executive arm of the government consisted of a prime
minister and Council of Ministers designated by the king but also
responsible to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of a
bicameral legislature. The Senate, or upper house, consisted of
eight representatives from each of the three provinces. Half of the
senators were nominated by the king, who also had the right to veto
legislation and to dissolve the lower house. Local autonomy in the
provinces was exercised through provincial governments and
legislatures. Benghazi and Tripoli served alternately as the
national capital.
Several factors, rooted in Libya's history, affected the
political development of the newly independent country. They
reflected the differing political orientations of the provinces and
the ambiguities inherent in Libya's monarchy. First, after the
first general elections, which were held on February 19, 1952,
political parties were abolished. The National Congress Party,
which had campaigned against a federal form of government, was
defeated throughout the country. The party was outlawed, and Sadawi
was deported. Second, provincial ties continued to be more
important than national ones, and the federal and provincial
governments were constantly in dispute over their respective
spheres of authority. A third problem derived from the lack of a
direct heir to the throne. To remedy this situation, Idris in 1953
designated his sixty-year-old brother to succeed him. When the
original heir apparent died, the king appointed his nephew, Prince
Hasan ar Rida, his successor.
In its foreign policy, Libya maintained a pro-Western stance
and was recognized as belonging to the conservative traditionalist
bloc in the League of Arab States (Arab League), of which it became
a member in 1953. The same year Libya concluded a twenty-year
treaty of friendship and alliance with Britain under which the
latter received military bases in exchange for financial and
military assistance. The next year, Libya and the United States
signed an agreement under which the United States also obtained
military base rights, subject to renewal in 1970, in return for
economic aid to Libya. The most important of the United States
installations in Libya was Wheelus Air Base, near Tripoli,
considered a strategically valuable installation in the 1950s and
early 1960s. Reservations set aside in the desert were used by
British and American military aircraft based in Europe as practice
firing ranges. Libya forged close ties with France, Italy, Greece,
and Turkey, and established full diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union in 1955, but declined a Soviet offer of economic aid.
As part of a broad assistance package, the UN Technical
Assistance Board agreed to sponsor a technical aid program that
emphasized the development of agriculture and education. Foreign
powers, notably Britain and the United States, provided development
aid. Steady economic improvement occurred, but the pace was slow,
and Libya remained a poor and underdeveloped country heavily
dependent on foreign aid.
This situation changed suddenly and dramatically in June 1959
when research prospectors from Esso (later renamed Exxon) confirmed
the location of major petroleum deposits at Zaltan in Cyrenaica.
Further discoveries followed, and commercial development was
quickly initiated by concession holders who returned 50 percent of
their profits to the Libyan government in taxes. In the petroleum
market, Libya's advantages lay not only in the quantity but also in
the high quality of its crude product. Libya's proximity and direct
linkage to Europe by sea were further marketing advantages. The
discovery and exploitation of petroleum turned the vast, sparsely
populated, impoverished country into a independently wealthy nation
with potential for extensive development and thus constituted a
major turning point in Libyan history
(see Hydrocarbons and Mining
, ch. 3).
As development of petroleum resources progressed in the early
1960s, Libya launched its first Five-Year Plan, 1963-68. One
negative result of the new wealth from petroleum, however, was a
decline in agricultural production, largely through neglect.
Internal Libyan politics continued to be stable, but the federal
form of government had proven inefficient and cumbersome. In April
1963, Prime Minister Muhi ad Din Fakini secured adoption by
parliament of a bill, endorsed by the king, that abolished the
federal form of government, establishing in its place a unitary,
monarchical state with a dominant central government. By
legislation, the historical divisions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania,
and Fezzan were to be eliminated and the country divided into ten
new provinces, each headed by an appointed governor. The
legislature revised the constitution in 1963 to reflect the change
from a federal to a unitary state.
In regional affairs, Libya enjoyed the advantage of not having
aggravated boundary disputes with its neighbors. Libya was one of
the thirty founding members of the Organization of African Unity
(OAU), established in 1963, and in November 1964 participated with
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia in forming a joint consultative
committee aimed at economic cooperation among North African states.
Although it supported Arab causes, including the Moroccan and
Algerian independence movements, Libya took little active part in
the Arab-Israeli dispute or the tumultuous inter-Arab politics of
the 1950s and the early 1960s.
Nevertheless, the brand of Arab nationalism propounded by
Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nasser exercised an increasing influence,
particularly among the younger generation. In response to antiWestern agitation in 1964, Libya's essentially pro-Western
government requested the evacuation of British and American bases
before the dates specified in the treaties. Most British forces
were in fact withdrawn in 1966, although the evacuation of foreign
military installations, including Wheelus Air Base, was not
completed until March 1970.
The June 1967 War between Israel and its Arab neighbors aroused
a strong reaction in Libya, particularly in Tripoli and Benghazi,
where dock and oil workers as well as students were involved in
violent demonstrations. The United States and British embassies and
oil company offices were damaged in rioting. Members of the small
Jewish community were also attacked, prompting the emigration of
almost all remaining Libyan Jews. The government restored order,
but thereafter attempts to modernize the small and ineffective
Libyan armed forces and to reform the grossly inefficient Libyan
bureaucracy foundered upon conservative opposition to the nature
and pace of the proposed reforms.
Although Libya was clearly on record as supporting Arab causes
in general, the country did not play an important role in Arab
politics. At the Arab summit conference held at Khartoum in
September 1967, however, Libya, along with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
agreed to provide generous subsidies from oil revenues to aid
Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, defeated in June by Israel. Also, Idris
first broached the idea of taking collective action to increase the
price of oil on the world market. Libya, nonetheless, continued its
close association with the West, while Idris' government steered an
essentially conservative course at home.
After the forming of the Libyan state in 1963, Idris'
government had tried--not very successfully--to promote a sense of
Libyan nationalism built around the institution of the monarchy.
But Idris himself was first and foremost a Cyrenaican, never at
ease in Tripolitania. His political interests were essentially
Cyrenaican, and he understood that whatever real power he had--and
it was more considerable than what he derived from the
constitution--lay in the loyalty he commanded as amir of Cyrenaica
and head of the Sanusi order. Idris' pro-Western sympathies and
identification with the conservative Arab bloc were especially
resented by an increasingly politicized urban elite that favored
nonalignment. Aware of the potential of their country's natural
wealth, many Libyans had also become conscious that its benefits
reached very few of the population. An ominous undercurrent of
dissatisfaction with corruption and malfeasance in the bureaucracy
began to appear as well, particularly among young officers of the
armed forces who were influenced by Nasser's Arab nationalist
ideology.
Alienated from the most populous part of the country, from the
cities, and from a younger generation of Libyans, Idris spent more
and more time at his palace in Darnah, near the British military
base. In June 1969, the king left the country for rest and medical
treatment in Greece and Turkey, leaving Crown Prince Hasan ar Rida
as regent.
Data as of 1987
|
|