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Libya
Index
Muammar al Qadhafi was born in a beduin tent in the desert near
Surt in 1942. His family belongs to a small tribe of Arabized
Berbers, the Qadhafa, who are stockherders with holdings in the Hun
Oasis. As a boy, Qadhafi attended a Muslim elementary school,
during which time the major events occurring in the Arab world--the
Arab defeat in Palestine in 1948 and Nasser's rise to power in
Egypt in 1952--profoundly influenced him. He finished his secondary
school studies under a private tutor in Misratah, paying particular
attention to the study of history.
Qadhafi formed the essential elements of his political
philosophy and his world view as a schoolboy. His education was
entirely Arabic and strongly Islamic, much of it under Egyptian
teachers. From this education and his desert background, Qadhafi
derived his devoutness and his austere, even puritanical, code of
personal conduct and morals. Essentially an Arab populist, Qadhafi
held family ties to be important and upheld the beduin code of
egalitarian simplicity and personal honor, distrusting
sophisticated, axiomatically corrupt, urban politicians. Qadhafi's
ideology, fed by Radio Cairo during his formative years, was an
ideology of renascent Arab nationalism on the Egyptian model, with
Nasser as hero and the Egyptian revolution as a guide.
In Libya, as in a number of other Arab countries, admission to
the military academy and a career as an army officer became
available to members of the lower economic strata only after
independence. A military career offered a new opportunity for
higher education, for upward economic and social mobility, and was
for many the only available means of political action and rapid
change. For Qadhafi and many of his fellow officers, who were
animated by Nasser's brand of Arab nationalism as well as by an
intense hatred of Israel, a military career was a revolutionary
vocation.
Qadhafi entered the Libyan military academy at Binghazi in 1961
and, along with most of his colleagues from the RCC, graduated in
the 1965-66 period. After receiving his commission, he was selected
for several months of further training at the Royal Military
Academy at Sandhurst, England. Qadhafi's association with the Free
Officers Movement began during his days as a cadet. The frustration
and shame felt by Libyan officers who stood by helplessly at the
time of Israel's swift and humiliating defeat of Arab armies on
three fronts in 1967 fueled their determination to contribute to
Arab unity by overthrowing the Libyan monarchy.
At the onset of RCC rule, Qadhafi and his associates insisted
that their government would not rest on individual leadership, but
rather on collegial decision making. However, Qadhafi's ascetic but
colorful personality, striking appearance, energy, and intense
ideological style soon created an impression of Qadhafi as dictator
and the balance of the RCC as little more than his rubber stamp.
This impression was inaccurate and although some members were more
pragmatic, less demonstrative, or less ascetic than Qadhafi, the
RCC showed a high degree of uniformity in political and economic
outlook and in dedication. Fellow RCC members were loyal to Qadhafi
as group leader, observers believed, not because of bureaucratic
subservience to his dictatorial power, but because they were in
basic agreement with him and with the revolutionary Arab
nationalist ideals that he articulated.
Although the RCC's principle of conducting executive operations
through a predominantly civilian cabinet of technicianadministrators remained strong, circumstances and pressures brought
about modifications. The first major cabinet change occurred soon
after the first challenge to the regime. In December 1969, Adam
Said Hawwaz, the minister of defense, and Musa Ahmad, the minister
of interior, were arrested and accused of planning a coup. In the
new cabinet formed after the crisis, Qadhafi, retaining his post as
chairman of the RCC, also became prime minister and defense
minister. Major Abdel Salam Jallud, generally regarded as second
only to Qadhafi in the RCC, became deputy prime minister and
minister of interior. This cabinet totaled thirteen members, of
whom five were RCC officers. The regime was challenged a second
time in July 1970 when Abdullah Abid Sanusi, a distant cousin of
former King Idris, and members of the Sayf an Nasr clan of Fezzan
were accused of plotting to seize power for themselves. After the
plot was foiled, a substantial cabinet change occurred, RCC
officers for the first time forming a majority among new ministers.
From the start, RCC spokesmen had indicated a serious intent to
bring the "defunct regime" to account. In 1971 and 1972 more than
200 former government officials--including 7 prime ministers and
numerous cabinet ministers--as well as former King Idris and
members of the royal family, were brought to trial on charges of
treason and corruption. Many, who like Idris lived in exile, were
tried in absentia. Although a large percentage of those charged
were acquitted, sentences of up to fifteen years in prison and
heavy fines were imposed on others. Five death sentences, all but
one of them in absentia, were pronounced, among them, one against
Idris. Fatima, the former queen, and Hasan ar Rida were sentenced
to five and three years in prison, respectively.
Meanwhile, Qadhafi and the RCC had disbanded the Sanusi order
and officially downgraded its historical role in achieving Libya's
independence. They attacked regional and tribal differences as
obstructions in the path of social advancement and Arab unity,
dismissing traditional leaders and drawing administrative
boundaries across tribal groupings. A broad-based political party,
the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), was created in 1971 and modeled
after Egypt's Arab Socialist Union. Its intent was to raise the
political consciousness of Libyans and to aid the RCC in
formulating public policy through debate in open forums. All other
political parties were proscribed. Trade unions were incorporated
into the ASU and strikes forbidden. The press, already subject to
censorship, was officially conscripted in 1972 as an agent of the
revolution. Italians and what remained of the Jewish community were
expelled from the country and their property confiscated.
After the September coup, United States forces proceeded
deliberately with the planned withdrawal from Wheelus Air Base
under the agreement made with the previous regime. The last of the
American contingent turned the facility over to the Libyans on June
11, 1970, a date thereafter celebrated in Libya as a national
holiday. As relations with the United States steadily deteriorated,
Qadhafi forged close links with the Soviet Union and other East
European countries, all the while maintaining Libya's stance as a
nonaligned country and opposing the spread of communism in the Arab
world. Libya's army--sharply increased from the 6,000-man
prerevolutionary force that had been trained and equipped by the
British--was armed with Soviet-built armor and missiles
(see Foreign Military Assistance
, ch. 5).
As months passed, Qadhafi, caught up in his apocalyptic visions
of revolutionary pan-Arabism and Islam locked in mortal struggle
with what he termed the encircling, demonic forces of reaction,
imperialism, and Zionism, increasingly devoted attention to
international rather than internal affairs. As a result, routine
administrative tasks fell to Major Jallud, who in 1972 became prime
minister in place of Qadhafi. Two years later Jallud assumed
Qadhafi's remaining administrative and protocol duties to allow
Qadhafi to devote his time to revolutionary theorizing. Qadhafi
remained commander in chief of the armed forces and effective head
of state. The foreign press speculated about an eclipse of his
authority and personality within the RCC, but Qadhafi soon
dispelled such theories by his measures to restructure Libyan
society.
Data as of 1987
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