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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Libya
Index
Qadhafi's approach to sub-Saharan Africa revolved around
several basic concerns: the attempt to increase Libyan influence in
Muslim or partly Muslim states, promotion of Islamic unity, and
support, often uncritical, for African liberation movements. One of
Qadhafi's frequently stated goals was the creation of a Saharan
Islamic state, but critics accused him of being more interested in
empire than in fostering and promoting Islam. The aforementioned
objectives governed his relations with African states, and nowhere
more so than in neighboring Chad and Sudan.
Libya had been deeply involved in Chad since the early 1970s.
Reasons for this involvement included tribal and religious
affinities between northern Chad and southern Libya and a contested
common border dating back to the colonial period. In 1973 Libya
occupied the Aouzou Strip. The territory, which allegedly contains
significant deposits of uranium and other minerals, gave the
Libyans a solid foothold in Chad. From his Aouzou Strip base
Qadhafi also gave moral and material aid to northern dissidents in
the prolonged Chadian civil war. In the late 1970s, these
dissidents were led Goukouni Oueddei, the leader of the Tebu
(see Peoples of Libya
, ch. 2).
After failure in the 1970s of mediation efforts in which Libya
was deeply involved, Qadhafi provided equipment and troops to
Goukouni that enabled him to capture N'Djamena, Chad's capital, in
December 1980. In January the two leaders called for a merger of
their countries, but the outcry among a number of West African
states and from France, the former Chadian colonial power, was so
great that the proposal was dropped. Even within Goukouni's own
forces, there was considerable opposition to Libya's presence and
tactics. Under persistent international pressure, Libya's estimated
10,000 to 15,000 troops withdrew to the Aouzou Strip in November
1981. Opposition forces under Hissein Habré subsequently drove
Goukouni back north, leaving Habré in control of N'Djamena, from
which he pressed unsuccessfully for Libya's withdrawal from Aouzou.
During the 1970s, relations between Libya and Sudan went from
bad to worse. At the beginning of the decade, Qadhafi aided
Sudanese President Jaafar an Numayri against leftist plotters. But
by the mid-1970s, relations had turned hostile after Numayri
accused Libya of subversion and of responsibility for several coup
attempts. Thereafter, Sudan belonged to the camp of Qadhafi's sworn
opponents. In 1980 Numayri condemned the Libyan invasion of Chad,
being especially fearful of Libyan meddling in Sudan's troubled
border province of Darfur. In early 1981, Numayri called for
Libya's expulsion from the Arab League and for a joint effort to
overthrow or kill Qadhafi. A few months later, he ordered Libyan
diplomats to leave Khartoum in the wake of a bombing of the Chadian
embassy linked to Libyan instigation.
Libyan intervention in Uganda in the 1970s constituted a
special case. There Qadhafi was interested less in unity than in
bolstering a friendly Islamic regime against both internal and
external opposition. Beginning in 1972, Qadhafi gave financial and
military backing to Idi Amin Dada in return for Amin's disavowal of
Uganda's previously close relationship with Israel. Thereafter,
Qadhafi continued to back Amin, despite the wide condemnation of
Amin's brutal rule. In late 1978 and early 1979, when combined
Tanzanian-Ugandan forces drove Amin from power, Qadhafi
unsuccessfully airlifted troops and supplies in Amin's defense, and
he granted the Ugandan leader temporary asylum in Tripoli.
Data as of 1987
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