Libya's
foreign policies have undergone much fluctuation and change since the state declared its independence from
Italy on
December 24,
1951. In the
Muammar al-Gaddafi era, it has been marked by severe tension with the
West (especially the
United States, although relations were normalized in the early 21st century) and by Gaddafi's activist policies in the
Middle East and
Africa, including his financial and military support for numerous paramilitary and rebel groups.
The Libyan Kingdom
As a kingdom, Libya maintained a definitively pro-Western stance, yet was recognized as belonging to the conservative traditionalist bloc in the
League of Arab States, of which it became a member in 1953.
[1]
The
government was in close alliance with the United States and
United Kingdom; both countries maintained military base rights in Libya. The U.S. supported the
United Nations resolution providing for
Libyan independence in 1951 and raised the status of its office at
Tripoli from a
consulate general to a
legation. Libya opened a legation in
Washington, D.C., in 1954. Both countries subsequently raised their missions to embassy level. Libya also forged close ties with
France,
Italy,
Greece, and
Turkey, and established full diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union in 1955.
Although the government supported Arab causes, including the
Moroccan and
Algerian independence movements, it took little active part in the
Arab-Israeli conflict or the tumultuous inter-Arab politics of the 1950s and early 1960s. The kingdom was noted for its close association with the West, while it steered an essentially conservative course at home.
[2]
The Gaddafi Era
Since 1969,
Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi has determined
Libya's foreign policy. His principal foreign policy goals have been Arab unity, elimination of
Israel, advancement of
Islam, support for
Palestinians, elimination of outside -- particularly Western -- influence in the
Middle East and
Africa, and support for a range of "revolutionary" causes.
After the 1969
coup, U.S.-Libyan relations became increasingly strained because of Libya's foreign policies supporting international
terrorism and subversion against moderate Arab and African governments. Gaddafi closed
American and
British bases on Libyan territory and partially
nationalized all foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya.
1970s
Export controls on
military equipment and
civil aircraft were imposed during the 1970s.
In 1972, the United States withdrew its
ambassador.
Gaddafi played a key role in promoting the use of oil
embargoes as a political weapon for challenging the West, hoping that an oil price rise and embargo in 1973 would persuade the West--especially the United States--to end support for Israel. Gaddafi rejected both Soviet
communism and Western
capitalism and claimed he was charting a middle course for his government.
[3]
In October 1978, Gaddafi sent Libyan troops to aid
Idi Amin in the
Uganda-Tanzania War when Amin tried to annex the northern
Tanzanian province of
Kagera, and Tanzania counterattacked. Amin lost the battle and later fled to exile in Libya, where he remained for almost a year.
[4]
Libya also was one of the main supporters of the
Polisario Front in the former
Spanish Sahara[5] - a
nationalist group dedicated to ending
Spanish colonialism in the region. The
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was proclaimed by
Polisario on
February 28,
1976, and Libya
began to recognize the SADR as the legitimate government of
Western Sahara starting
April 15,
1980. It is still common for
Sahrawi students to attend their schooling in Libya.
[6]
U.S.
embassy staff members were withdrawn from Tripoli after a mob attacked and set fire to the embassy in December 1979. The
U.S. government declared Libya a "
state sponsor of terrorism" on
December 29,
1979.
1980s
In May 1981, the U.S. government closed the Libyan "people's bureau" (embassy) in Washington, D.C. and expelled the Libyan staff in response their conduct generally violating internationally accepted standards of diplomatic behavior.
In August 1981, in the
first incident of the
Gulf of Sidra, two Libyan jets fired on U.S. aircraft participating in a routine naval exercise over
international waters of the
Mediterranean Sea claimed by Libya. The U.S. planes returned fire and shot down the attacking Libyan aircraft. On
December 11, 1981, the
State Department invalidated U.S.
passports for travel to Libya (a ''
de facto'' travel ban) and, for purposes of safety, advised all U.S. citizens in Libya to leave. In March 1982, the U.S. government prohibited imports of Libyan crude oil into the United States and expanded the controls on U.S.-origin goods intended for export to Libya. Licenses were required for all transactions, except food and medicine. In March 1984, U.S. export controls were expanded to prohibit future exports to the Ras al-Enf petrochemical complex. In April 1985, all
Export-Import Bank financing was prohibited.
The United States adopted additional
economic sanctions against Libya in January 1986, including a total ban on direct import and export trade, commercial contracts, and travel-related activities. In addition, Libyan government assets in the United States were frozen.
Libyan complicity was discovered in the 1986
Berlin discotheque terrorist bombing that killed two American servicemen. The United States responded by launching an
aerial bombing attack against targets near Tripoli and
Benghazi in April of that year.
[7]
In 1988, Libya was found to be in the process of constructing a
chemical weapons plant at Rabta, a plant which is now the largest such facility in the
Third World. As of January 2002, Libya was constructing another chemical weapons production facility at
Tarhunah. Citing Libya's support for terrorism and its past regional aggressions the United States voiced concern over this development. In cooperation with like-minded countries, the United States has since sought to bring a halt to the foreign technical assistance deemed essential to the completion of this facility.
Libya's relationship with the former
Soviet Union involved massive Libyan arms purchases from the
Soviet bloc and the presence of thousands of east bloc advisers. Libya's use--and heavy loss--of Soviet-supplied weaponry in its
war with
Chad was a notable breach of an apparent Soviet-Libyan understanding not to use the weapons for activities inconsistent with Soviet objectives. As a result, Soviet-Libyan relations reached a nadir in mid-1987.
In January 1989, there was
another encounter over the Gulf of Sidra between U.S. and Libyan aircraft which resulted in the downing of two Libyan jets.
===
Lockerbie disaster===
In 1991 two Libyan
intelligence agents were charged with the
bombing in December 1988 of
Pan American Flight 103.
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and
Lamin Khalifah Fhimah were tried by prosecutors in the U.S. and
Scotland. Six other Libyans were put on trial in their absence by a
Paris court for the 1989 bombing of
Union Air Transport Flight 772. They were found guilty and sentenced to
life imprisonment.
[8]
The
United Nations Security Council passed a
resolution asking Libya to surrender the suspects, cooperate with the Pan Am 103 and UTA 772 investigations, pay compensation to the victims' families, and cease all support for terrorism. Libya's refusal to comply led to the approval of Resolution 748 on
March 31,
1992, which imposed sanctions designed to bring about Libyan compliance. The U.N. imposed further sanctions with Resolution 883, a limited assets freeze and an embargo on selected oil equipment, in November 1993.
[9]
The Libyan government refused to comply until 1999, when it surrendered two Libyans suspected of involvement in the Pan Am 103 bombing for trial, leading to the suspension of U.N. sanctions. On
January 31,
2001, a
Scottish court seated in the
Netherlands found one of the suspects, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, guilty of murder in connection with the bombing, and acquitted the second suspect, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. Megrahi has appealed his conviction; the appeal began on
January 23,
2002.
Full lifting of U.N. sanctions is contingent on Libyan compliance with its remaining Security Council requirements on Pan Am 103, including acceptance of responsibility for the actions of its officials and payment of appropriate compensation. The United States has continued to call on Libya to comply with its remaining requirements, including acceptance of responsibility for the actions of its officials and payment of appropriate compensation.
1990s
There have been no credible reports of Libyan involvement in
terrorism since 1994, and Libya has taken significant steps to mend its international image.
In 1996, the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) was enacted, seeking to penalize non-U.S. companies which invest more than
$40 million in Libya's oil and gasoline sector in any one year. ILSA was renewed in 2001, and the investment cap lowered to $20 million.
After the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, Libya concentrated on expanding diplomatic ties with
Third World countries and increasing its commercial links with
Europe and
East Asia. Following the imposition of U.N. sanctions in 1992, these ties significantly diminished. Following a 1998 Arab League meeting in which fellow Arab states decided not to challenge U.N. sanctions, Gaddafi announced that he was turning his back on pan-Arab ideas, one of the fundamental tenets of his philosophy.
Instead, Libya pursued closer bilateral ties, particularly with
Egypt and
Northwest African nations
Tunisia and
Morocco. It also has sought to develop its relations with Sub-Saharan
Africa, leading to Libyan involvement in several internal African disputes in the
Democratic Republic of Congo,
Sudan,
Somalia,
Central African Republic,
Eritrea, and
Ethiopia. Libya also has sought to expand its influence in Africa through financial assistance, ranging from aid donations to impoverished neighbors such as
Niger to oil subsidies to
Zimbabwe. Gaddafi has proposed a borderless "
United States of Africa" to transform the continent into a single nation-state ruled by a single government. This plan has been moderately well received, although more powerful would-be participants such as
Nigeria and
South Africa are skeptical.
Libya paid compensation in 1999 for the death of British policewoman
Yvonne Fletcher, a move that preceded the reopening of the British embassy in Tripoli and paid damages to the families of the victims in the bombing of UTA Flight 772.
Détente
In 2003 Libya began to make policy changes with the open intention of pursuing a Western-Libyan
détente. The Libyan government announced its decision to abandon its
weapons of mass destruction programs and pay almost $3 billion dollars in compensation to the families of Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772.
[10]
Since 2003 the country has restored normal diplomatic ties with the
European Union and the United States and has even coined the catchphrase, 'The Libya Model', an example intended to show the world what can be achieved through negotiation rather than force when there is goodwill on both sides.
[11]
In early 2004, the U.S. State Department ended its ban on U.S. citizens using their passports for travel to Libya or spending money there. U.S. citizens began legally heading back to Libya (some U.S. travellers went to Libya illegally through third countries during the travel ban) for the first time since 1981.
On
May 15,
2006,
David Welch,
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, announced that the U.S. had decided to, after a 45-day comment period, renew full diplomatic relations with Libya and remove Libya from the U.S. list of countries that foster terrorism.
[12]
During this announcement, it was also said that the U.S. has the intention of upgrading the U.S. liaison office in Tripoli into an embassy.
[13] The U.S. embassy in Tripoli opened in May. This has been product of a gradual normalization of international relations since Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing. Libya's dismantling of its weapons of mass destruction was a major step towards this announcement, and it is seen as an incentive for Iran to do likewise.
Relations with
Bulgaria has been troublesome after
a group of Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were accused of infecting Libyan children with
HIV when they worked at a Libyan hospital; the nurses were sentenced to death in a Libyan court.
Conflict with Chad
Main articles: Chadian-Libyan conflict
Aouzou strip (blue)
Libya long claimed the
Aouzou Strip, a strip of land in northern
Chad rich with
uranium deposits that was intensely involved in
Chad's civil war in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1973, Libya engaged in military operations in the Aouzou Strip to gain access to minerals and to use it as a base of influence in Chadian politics. Libya argued that the territory was inhabited by indigenous people who owed allegiance to the
Senoussi Order and subsequently to the
Ottoman Empire, and that this title had been inherited by Libya. It also supported its claim with an unratified 1935 treaty between
France and
Italy, the
colonial powers of Chad and Libya, respectively. After consolidating its hold on the strip, Libya
annexed it in 1976.
Chadian forces were able to
force the Libyans to retreat from the Aouzou Strip in 1987.
A cease-fire between Chad and Libya held from 1987 to 1988, followed by unsuccessful negotiations over the next several years, leading finally to the 1994
International Court of Justice decision granting Chad sovereignty over the Aouzou Strip, which ended Libyan
occupation.
Border disputes
Libya claims about 19,400 km² in northern
Niger and part of southeastern
Algeria. In addition, it is involved in a maritime boundary dispute with
Tunisia.
International incidents
Benghazi hospital affair
Main articles: HIV trial in Libya
In the late 1990s a
Benghazi children's hospital was the site of an
outbreak of
HIV infection that spread to over 400 patients. Libya blamed the outbreak on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who were arrested and eventually sentenced to death (eventually overturned and a new trial ordered). The international view is that Libya has used the medics as
scapegoats for poor hygiene conditions, and
Bulgaria and other countries including the
European Union and the
United States have repeatedly called on Tripoli to release them. The case remains unresolved, and is the source of increasing tensions with Bulgaria, as well as an obstacle to continuing the process of improved relations with the West - a new trial began
May 11,
2006 in Tripoli. On
December 6, a study was released showing that some children had been infected before the six arrived in Libya, but it was too late for inclusion as evidence (in any event, the Libyan court had already rejected non-Libyan scientific studies). On
December 19,
2006 the six were again convicted and sentenced to death. They were finally released in June 2007, in exchange for a variety of agreements with the EU.
La Belle disco bombing
On
November 13,
2001, a
German court found four persons, including a former employee of the Libyan embassy in
East Berlin, guilty in connection with the 1986
Berlin discotheque bombing (see above), in which 229 people were injured and two U.S. servicemen were killed. The court also established a connection to the Libyan government. The
German government has demanded that Libya accept responsibility for the La Belle bombing and pay appropriate compensation.
Support for rebel and paramilitary groups
The government of Libya has also received enormous criticism and trade restrictions for allegedly providing numerous armed rebel groups with weapons, explosives and combat training. The ideologies of some of these organizations have varied greatly, even confusing outsiders at times. However most seem to be
nationalist, with some having a
socialist ideology; while others hold a more
conservative and
Islamic
fundamentalist ideology.
Paramilitaries supported by Libya past and present include:
★ The
Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) (describing themselves in
Irish as ''
Óglaigh na hÉireann'') of
Northern Ireland, a left-wing Irish paramilitary group that fought a
29-year war for a
United Ireland. See
Provisional IRA arms importation for details. ''Note that many of the break away
Irish Republican groups which oppose the
Good Friday Agreement (the
Continuity Irish Republican Army and the
Real Irish Republican Army) are believed to be in possession of a significant amount of the Libyan ammunition and
semtex explosives delivered to the IRA during the 1970s and 1980s.''
★ The
Palestine Liberation Organization of the Israeli occupied
West Bank and
Gaza Strip received of support from
Libya, as well as many other Arab states.
★ The
Moro National Liberation Front was a right-wing
Islamic fundamentalist rebel army which fought in the
Philippines against the military dictatorship of
Ferdinand Marcos
★
Umkhonto we Sizwe -
Xhosa, for the "spear of the nation" was originally the military wing of the
African National Congress (a multi racial, center-left political party) which fought against the white minority led
Apartheid regime in
South Africa. During the years of MK's underground struggle the group was supported by Libya.
★
ETA -
Basque Fatherland and Liberty, a left-wing Basque separatist group fighting for the independence of the
Basques from
Spain with ties to the
Provisional Irish Republican Army also received training support from Libya in the 1960s and mid-'70s .
★ Libya was also was one the main supporters of the
Polisario Front in the former
Spanish Sahara[5] - a left-wing
nationalist group dedicated to ending
Spanish colonialism in the region, and from 1975, to combatting the
Moroccan occupation of what is now known as
Western Sahara. The
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was proclaimed by Polisario on
February 28, 1976, and Libya
began to recognize the SADR as the legitimate government of
Western Sahara starting April 15, 1980. While monetary and military Libyan support for the
Sahrawi cause dwindled in the mid-1980s, after a rapprochement with
Morocco, the enemy of Polisario, some Sahrawi
refugee students are still able to apply for higher education in Libya.
[6]
Notes
1. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, (1987), "Independent Libya", ''U.S. Library of Congress'', Accessed July 14 2006
2. Abadi, Jacob (2000), "Pragmatism and Rhetoric in Libya's Policy Toward Israel", ''The Journal of Conflict Studies: Volume XX Number 1 Fall 2000, University of New Brunswick'', Accessed July 19 2006
3. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, (2001 - 2005), "Qaddafi, Muammar al-", ''Bartleby Books'', Accessed July 19 2006
4. Biography, "Idi Amin", ''Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board'', Accessed July 19 2006
5. Western Sahara under Polisario Control: Summary Report of Field Mission to the Sahrawi Refugee Camps (near Tindouf, Algeria) Michael Bhatia
6. Frustration stalks Saharan refugee camps Marina de Russe
7. Boyne, Walter J., (March, 1999), "El Dorado Canyon", ''Air Force Association Journal, Vol. 82, No. 3'', Accessed July 19 2006. See also Bernd Schaefer and Christian Nuenlist (eds.), "The US Air Raid on Libya on April 1986: A Confidential Soviet Account", Parallel History Project (PHP), November 2001, Accessed August 2006
8. (2003),"UTA 772: The forgotten flight", BBC News.
9. (2003), "Libya", Global Policy Forum, Accessed July 19 2006
10. Marcus, Jonathan, (May 15 2006), "Washington's Libyan fairy tale", ''BBC News'', Accessed July 15 2006
11. Hirsh, Michael, (May 11 2006), "The Real Libya Model", ''Newsweek'', Accessed July 15 2006
12. Welsh, David, (May 15 2006), "Issues Related to United States Relations With Libya", ''U.S. Department of State'', Accessed August 10 2006
13. (May 15 2006), "US to renew full ties with Libya", ''BBC News'', Accessed August 10 2006
14. Western Sahara under Polisario Control: Summary Report of Field Mission to the Sahrawi Refugee Camps (near Tindouf, Algeria) Michael Bhatia
15. Frustration stalks Saharan refugee camps Marina de Russe
See also
★
Iran-Arab Relations (Libya)
★
Libya and nuclear technology
External links
★
United States Embassy in Tripoli
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