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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Libya
Index
Qadhafi became the foremost exponent of Arab unity in the
1970s. Although all Arab governments endorsed the idea in
principle, most observed that conditions were not right for putting
it into practice or that unity would come only at the end of a long
process of historical evolution. But Qadhafi rejected these views.
As he conceived it, Arab unity was not an ideal but a realistic
goal. He agreed that achieving Arab unity was a process that
required sequential and intermediate stages of development, but the
challenge he posed to other Arab leaders was that the process had
to begin somewhere. Qadhafi expressed his determination to make a
contribution to the process and offered Libya as the leavening
agent
(see Arab Relations
, ch. 4).
Throughout 1970 Qadhafi consulted with Egyptian and Sudanese
leaders about how to achieve some form of union. Nasser died in
September 1970, but Egyptian participation in the unity talks
continued under his successor, President Anwar as Sadat. It was the
young Qadhafi, however, who moved to assume Nasser's mantle as the
ideological leader of Arab nationalism.
At the request of its new head of state, Lieutenant General
Hafiz al Assad, the unity talks were expanded to include Syria.
After further meetings, Qadhafi, Sadat, and Assad simultaneously
announced in April 1971 the formation of a federation of Libya,
Egypt, and Syria. The three heads of state signed a draft
constitution in August that was overwhelmingly approved in
referenda in all three countries. Sadat was named the first
president of a council of heads of state that was to be the
governing body for the Federation of Arab Republics (FAR), which
came into existence on paper on January 1, 1972. Broad plans were
drawn up to provide for a full-fledged merger affecting the legal
systems, laws, employment, armed forces, and foreign policies of
all three countries. Agreement on specific measures, however,
eluded the FAR leaders, and the federation never progressed beyond
making symbolic gestures of unity, such as the adoption of a common
flag.
For Qadhafi, the FAR was a step on the road to achieving his
ultimate goal: the comprehensive union of the "Arab Nation."
Although he remained the federation's most ardent backer, Qadhafi
was never satisfied with the approach taken by his Egyptian and
Syrian partners toward what he termed the "battle plan" for
confrontation with Israel. Nonetheless, he initiated talks with
Sadat on full political union between Egypt and Libya, which would
merge the neighboring countries into a single state within the
framework of the FAR.
At first glance, the proposed merger seemed like the mating of
a whale with a minnow. Egypt's population was 34 million, Libya's
under 2 million. But Libya's annual per capita income was fourteen
times that of Egypt. Its fiscal reserves in 1972 were estimated at
more than the equivalent of US$2.5 billion--at least ten times the
amount held by Egypt.
Sadat pledged support for the project at the conclusion of a
conference with Qadhafi in August 1972. Soon, however, real
obstacles to the merger arose, including the serious personal
disagreement that developed between the two leaders over a
timetable for the union. Qadhafi called for immediate unification,
the framing of a constitution to follow; Sadat insisted on step-by-
step integration and thorough preparation of the instruments of
union. During 1973 Qadhafi went so far as to offer to resign as
Libyan head of state if his departure would placate Sadat, whose
enthusiasm for the merger had waned conspicuously. Qadhafi also
organized a "holy march" on Cairo by an estimated 30,000 Libyans to
demonstrate Libyan support for the merger, but to no avail. The
September 1, 1973, date that Sadat had set for final action to be
taken on the merger passed without notice in Cairo, hardly a
surprising development because many Egyptians as well as Libyans
had come to oppose the project. Opposition stemmed from the
historical antipathy between Egyptians and Libyans and such factors
as the incompatibility of the two political systems, with Egypt
being considerably more democratic than Libya as well as more
secular in orientation.
Qadhafi envisioned the combination of Libya's wealth and
Egypt's manpower and military capacity as the key element for the
success of the Arab struggle against Israel. For example, to
further this success, Libyan aircraft were secretly transferred to
the Egyptian air force and subsequently saw action in the October
1973 War. It was that war with Israel, however, that proved to be
the watershed in relations between the two Arab states. The joint
Egyptian-Syrian operation came as a surprise to Qadhafi, who had
been excluded from its planning by Sadat and Assad. The Libyan
leader castigated his erstwhile FAR partners for wasting resources
in fighting a war for limited objectives, and he was appalled by
Sadat's agreement to a cease-fire after the successful Israeli
counteroffensive. He accused the Egyptian leader of cowardice and
of purposely sabotaging the federation. In response, Sadat revealed
that he had intervened in 1973 to prevent a planned Libyan
submarine attack on the S.S. Queen Elizabeth II while the
British liner was carrying a Jewish tourist group in the
Mediterranean. Thereafter, relations between the two leaders
degenerated into a series of charges and countercharges that
effectively ended any talk of merger.
In the mid-1970s, Qadhafi undertook a major armaments program
paid for by the higher post-1973 oil revenues. He wished to play a
major role in Middle East affairs based on military strength and
increasing uneasiness with Sadat's policies. To acquire
sophisticated weapons, Qadhafi turned to the Soviet Union, with
which his relations grew closer as Sadat leaned more and more
toward a peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli problem. Mutual
suspicion between Sadat and Qadhafi, plus Egyptian charges of
Libyan subversion, led to a brief but sharp shooting war along
their common frontier in July 1977. Egyptian forces advanced a
short distance into Libya before Algerian mediation ended the
fighting. The conflict occasioned the departure from Libya of
thousands of Egyptians employed in the petroleum industry,
agriculture, commerce, education, and the bureaucracy, causing
disruption of Libyan economic activities and public services.
The major break between Egypt and Libya came over Sadat's
journey to Jerusalem the following November and the conclusion of
a separate peace with Israel in September 1978. Not only were
diplomatic relations between Egypt and Libya broken, but Libya
played a leading role in organizing the Steadfastness and
Confrontation Front in December 1977. The front's members were
Libya, Syria, Algeria, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen
(South Yemen), and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), all
of whom bitterly opposed Sadat's peace initiatives. Qadhafi favored
the isolation of Egypt as punishment, because he adamantly rejected
a peaceful solution with Israel. He subsequently toned down his
more extreme rhetoric in the interest of forging unity among Arab
states in opposing the policies of President Sadat and his
successor, Husni Mubarak.
Qadhafi's quest for unity on his western border was similarly
fruitless. A proposed union with Tunisia in 1974 was immediately
repudiated by Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's president. This incident,
together with Tunisian accusations of Libyan subversion and a
quarrel over demarcation of the continental shelf with its oil
fields, thoroughly soured relations. Then in early 1980 a group of
disgruntled Tunisians staged an abortive revolt at Gafsa in central
Tunisia, disguised as a cross-border attack from Algeria. Bourguiba
accused Qadhafi of engineering the incident and suspended
diplomatic relations with Tripoli. Qadhafi denied involvement, but
relations between Tripoli and Tunis remained at low ebb.
Having failed to achieve union with Egypt and Tunisia, Qadhafi
turned once again to Syria. In September 1980, Assad agreed to yet
another merger with Libya. This attempt at a unified state came at
a time when both countries were diplomatically isolated. As part of
the agreement, Libya undertook to pay a debt of US$1 billion that
Syria owed the Soviet Union for weapons.
Ironically, this successful union with Syria confounded
Qadhafi's pan-Arab ambitions. When war broke out between Iran and
Iraq in September 1980, Libya and Syria were the only Arab states
to give unqualified support to non-Arab Iran. At the same time, the
war brought a break in Libya's relations with Iraq and Saudi
Arabia. Yet another obstacle arose in December 1981 when Qadhafi
had to contend with the first of two airline hijackings carried out
by Lebanese Shias seeking information about their leader, Imam Musa
Sadr, who had disappeared while on a visit to Libya in 1978. Both
hijackings ended without release of or news about Musa Sadr, whose
disappearance badly tarnished Libya's image among Shias in Lebanon,
Iran, and elsewhere.
Data as of 1987
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