Libya - The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi

by Alison Pargeter

  After Al-Mukhtar's death, Rome officially proclaimed the pacification of Libya and set about trying to turn the North African territory into an extension of Italy. In the spirit of Fascist civilization building, the Italians established large-scale agricultural and land-reclamation projects. Italian settler families were shipped en masse to Libya, where they were given small farms to work under special subsidized schemes. In 1938 alone, some 20,000 Italians, mostly peasants, were settled on specially prepared farms in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.23 A further 12,000 followed the next year. The Italians also hired Libyan labour to work on these schemes. Italy went about building infrastructure, too. As one British observer wrote in 1942, ‘The building, town-planning and sanitary activities of the Italians have been remarkable.’24 The whitewashed, tree-lined, arcaded boulevards in the centre of Tripoli are testimony to these acts of Fascist town planning.

  With Libya now considered Italy's fourth shore, the native inhabitants found themselves completely pushed aside, as the colonizers enjoyed the pleasures they had created out of this Mediterranean heap of sand. Indeed, the Fascists rejected Rome's earlier policy of collaborating with local elites, regarding the locals as little more than a pool of manpower that could be used to build what was officially declared in 1939 to be the nineteenth region of Italy. They permitted Libyans to be educated to elementary level only, and much of this education entailed ‘civilizing’ the ‘savages’ by teaching them Italian values. However, Mussolini did make some concessions to popular sentiment. In a deeply misplaced bid to counter the growing feelings of anti-Italianism, at a special ceremony in Tripoli in 1937, Il Provolone (the nickname for Mussolini, who, it was deemed, resembled the round Italian cheese of the same name) declared himself to be ‘The Protector of Islam’. At this event, the Fascist leader was presented with the ‘Sword of Islam’ (which, according to accounts of the time, had been manufactured in Tuscany and engraved by Libyan Jewish goldsmiths!). One historian wrote in 1941: ‘Having purchased “The Sword of Islam” as near to home as Florence … the Duce presented it to himself with grotesque solemnity.’25

  Libyans thus became like shadows in their own land. The famed British adventurist Freya Stark captures some of this feeling as she recounts her experiences in Benghazi under Italian rule:

  Something was missing and I noticed that it was the raucous Arab voice of the Levant. The crowds moved in a silence that sounded European to anyone familiar with the East … I began to feel a quagmire beneath this gay little town, a deadening substratum of fear. ‘There must be Arabs somewhere,’ I thought and spent what remained of the daylight trying to find them; and did eventually, in a little ghetto of squalid streets far back from the sea. A throttled horror made me wish never to visit Benghazi again.26

  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that this brutal period in Libya's history is still deeply ingrained in the Libyan psyche. Tales of resistance by locals against Italian forces continue to be common currency in what is essentially an oral culture. The strength of such sentiment should not be underestimated. The father of Ali Attia Mohamed Bujafool Zwai, a young Libyan from Benghazi who joined the jihad against US and British forces in Iraq in 2006, recounted how his son had been brought up on his grandmother's stories of resistance to the Italians. The young man's grandmother had repeatedly stressed that, while some members of the family's tribe had been killed in the struggle against the Italian colonizers, his father's particular branch had not produced any ‘martyr’ of its own. Desperate to redeem his family's honour, the young man determined to martyr himself in Iraq.

  Given the depth of feeling about this era, it is not surprising that Omar Al-Mukhtar is still held up as the country's greatest national icon, especially in the east. For many Libyans, the resistance leader symbolizes honour, strength and pride. Such is his aura that Qaddafi, who was himself brought up on stories of bravery against the Italian occupiers, regularly used Al-Mukhtar's image to try to bolster his own popular legitimacy. Who could forget the images of the Libyan leader arriving on his first ever visit to Italy in 2009, decked out in full military regalia, with a picture of Omar Al-Mukhtar in the hands of Italian captors pinned provocatively to his chest? The image of Al-Mukhtar was just as iconic during the 2011 revolution, during which Libyan youths referred to themselves as the ‘grandsons of Al-Mukhtar’. And Libya's new leaders have been no less keen to claim the desert hero as their own. The new governing body, the National Transitional Council (NTC), included a page specially dedicated to Al-Mukhtar on its website. Thus, while Libya's history has been a tale of domination by a range of colonial forces, each of which has imposed its own particular catalogue of horrors, it is the Italian period that left the deepest scar.

  Heading towards independence

  For all that Libyans yearned to be free of Italy's colonial yoke, it took another world war to liberate them from their imperial masters. Indeed Libya's journey to independence was shaped more by international than by internal forces, and the local people were little more than bystanders in the deliberations over their fate.

  Fascist Italy joined the Second World War on the side of Nazi Germany; the decision turned out to be a mistake. Following the Allied powers' victory over Germany and Italy at the famous battle of Al-Alamein in Egypt in 1942, it was all over for the Axis powers in North Africa. The Italians were forced to retreat, at last freeing Libya's three provinces from the clutches of its uncompromising colonial master. By the end of 1942, all the Italians in Cyrenaica had been evacuated, and some of the thousands of destitute Libyans who had been forced into exile were able to return.27 Not that there was much to come back to. While Tripolitania had largely escaped the fighting between the Allied and the Axis powers, Cyrenaica was badly damaged. Benghazi alone was subjected to more than a thousand air raids, which all but destroyed the infrastructure that the Italians had built. Even the farms that the Italians had abandoned were in a pitiful state, with farm buildings so devastated that some Libyan families who returned lived outside in tents while their herds took over the farmhouses.28

  While Libyans were jubilant at the departure of the Italians, the exit of their imperial overlord did not mean that they could now become masters of their own destiny. The three provinces fell straight into the hands of the victorious Allied powers; Britain set up military administrations in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania in 1942 and 1943 respectively, while the French, who had pushed up into the Fezzan, established their own administration in the south. The arrival of these new European powers did not prevent the local population from making a push for independence. The Sanussi order, in particular, saw the new British administration in Cyrenaica as an opportunity to try to wring some concessions for themselves. Sayyid Idris Al-Sanussi, who had shrewdly built up good relations with the British during his post-1922 exile in Egypt, from where he had offered them military support against the Axis powers, declared a Sanussi Emirate over Cyrenaica.

  However, the British were in no mood to offer any such concession on a formal basis. This was hardly surprising: by this point Libya's fate had been catapulted fully into the international arena. When the Second World War ended in 1945, the four Big Powers that had emerged victorious – Britain, France, the US and the USSR – were faced with the issue of what to do with their enemies' former territories. Although Libya's three impoverished regions were of little economic worth, they were of key strategic value to all four countries, particularly at this time of profound international upheaval. After reverses in Egypt and Palestine, Britain was keener than ever to keep a base in the Mediterranean that could also serve as a location for staging posts on its air routes to East Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Far East. With nationalist movements gaining in strength in its colonial territories, France wanted to maintain the Fezzan as a buffer zone to protect its highly prized possession of Algeria. Although the Americans were not actually on the ground in Libya, they were not without strategic interests there either. In 1943, the US Air Force had taken over the Mellaha air base, east of T
ripoli, which they renamed Wheelus. The USSR meanwhile, concerned about being sidelined, also wanted its share of the pie.

  Given that the four powers had such divergent interests, they struggled to come to any mutually acceptable arrangement over what to do with this ‘gigantic dust bowl of sand’.29 Despite the various proposals that were thrown up, deadlock prevailed.

  Unable to come to any workable agreement, the big players sent a Four Power Commission to the three provinces to elicit local views. Although still extremely limited, the Italian departure had opened up space for some indigenous political activism. Much of this activism was influenced by the return of exiles from Egypt, bursting with the new ideas of nationalism and Arabism that they had encountered there. Unsurprisingly, it was the more cosmopolitan city folk of Tripoli who proved the most open to these ideas, and by 1947 there were half a dozen political parties operating in the city. These parties were small and confined to the urban elite. Some comprised only a handful of members who could be seen almost daily, ‘sitting round a single table at a “Corso” café’.30 However, these parties were broadly united in their belief that the three regions should be brought together as a single independent country. In Cyrenaica the political activity that had emerged largely reflected the tight tribal structures and the domination of the Sanussi elite. The main political actor, dominating the scene, was the National Congress – a political party that was established in 1946 by Idris Al-Sanussi and that included most of Cyrenaica's tribal elders and a number of traditional urban leaders. The Congress boldly told the Four Party Commission that it wanted nothing short of independence under Sanussi rule. In the Fezzan, meanwhile, there was also a relatively strong pro-nationalist current.

  In the summer of 1948, the Commission reported back to the Four Power Conference that there was an overwhelming desire among locals for full independence. However, it also concluded that the country was politically, economically and socially unprepared for such a step. This left the Big Powers stumped; in the absence of any other solution, they threw the problem at the United Nations, hoping that this body could succeed where they had failed.

  However, patience with the United Nations soon wore thin. The Cold War was hotting up and preventing the Soviets from gaining a foothold in the Mediterranean became the overriding priority for Britain, France and the US in their deliberations over the future of this impoverished land. Unable to wait any longer, the British decided in 1949 to take unilateral action: they released plans for Cyrenaican self-government under the rule of Idris Al-Sanussi. While Britain announced that its actions would in no way prejudice the eventual future of Libya, the move cemented the dominance both of Idris and of the east.

  This was a ground-breaking moment for Cyrenaica. Although the British plans did not equate to full independence (Britain was to retain control of foreign affairs, defence and military bases), they at least gave Cyrenaicans power over their internal affairs. A jubilant Idris proclaimed the birth of the Sanussi Emirate from his Al-Manar Palace in Benghazi on 1 June 1949. The following year, in the Fezzan, France followed Britain's lead and handed over responsibility for internal affairs to a local government headed by Ahmed Bey Saif Al-Nassir. However, the Big Powers soon realized that they needed to go further; it dawned on them that, if the three regions entered some form of trusteeship under UN auspices, then the future of the military bases they had there would be brought into question. Under the UN trusteeship system, the administering power was not permitted to establish bases on the land it was administering; it was only as an independent country that Libya could freely enter into treaties and agreements governing such bases. The Western powers determined, therefore, that the best way of maintaining their all-important bases, and of keeping the Soviets fully out of the picture, was to grant Libya independence under a compliant pro-Western leadership. Only this approach could be sure to bind Libya firmly to the Western camp. Therefore, on 21 November 1949, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution stipulating that Libya should become independent as soon as possible, and no later than 1 January 1952.

  Libya was to be free at last. Yet for all the happiness this news engendered, it was tainted slightly by the fact that independence was a direct result of manoeuvrings on the part of the Big Powers, rather than of a hard-earned liberation struggle. Indeed, the Libyans had been relegated to the very lowest rung of the decision-making ladder – as with so much in their historical experience, independence was something that happened to them and in spite of them.

  However, the Libyans did at least have a say in what kind of governing system this newly independent country should have. Under the auspices of the United Nations, the three provinces formed a National Assembly, which, at its first meeting on 2 December 1950, agreed that Libya was to become a federal state under a constitutional monarch, with Idris Al-Sanussi as head of state of a United Kingdom of Libya. That it was to be a federal system was hardly unexpected, given the enormous differences between the three regions. The fact that Idris was to be the country's monarch was hardly more surprising: the Sanussi leader had emerged as the only figure of any real political significance and already had Cyrenaica in his hands. Moreover, the British – and the Western powers more widely – wanted someone in the post whose allegiance they could be certain of.

  In 1951, the National Assembly drew up Libya's first constitu--tion. This was no easy matter. Given the divergent interests of the different regions, and particularly those of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, what emerged was a complex and cumbersome political system, comprising a parliament, a federal government and powerful provincial councils, whose heads were appointed by the king. Indeed, such was the desire for local autonomy that the provincial governors and councils became powerful bodies in their own right.

  Perhaps most indicative of the competing claims of the two main regions, however, was the squabbling over where Libya's capital should be located. Unable to settle on one location, it was eventually decided that the capital would alternate every two years between Tripoli and Benghazi. This rather ludicrous solution meant that every couple of years the entire government and diplomatic corps had to pack up and make the arduous journey across thousands of kilometres of desert. To make matters worse, in a bid to avoid the punishing heat of the summer, government offices were later constructed in the Green Mountains at Baida, as a summer seat.31 The moves between these administrative capitals were complicated by the fact that the diplomats needed to have their passports checked in order to move from one province to another, and differing customs tariffs meant that duties were imposed on goods moving between the regions.

  Yet, for all its weaknesses, this system was a valiant attempt to forge a single nation from something that had essentially been operating as three different countries. It was certainly deemed sufficient by the Western powers: on 24 December 1951, the United Kingdom of Libya was born. The new country could finally start to put its colonial past behind it, and to look forward to a new era of independence, full of hope and promise.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ripe for Revolution

  On 24 December 1951, the newly installed King Idris Al-Sanussi, accompanied by the country's first prime minister, Mahmoud Muntasir, proudly proclaimed Libya's independence from the balcony of the Al-Manara Palace in Benghazi. Draped over the balcony was the country's new flag, its colours and symbols representing the coming together of the three regions as a single unit for the first time.1 It was a moving experience for the crowds who thronged below and who lined the rooftops of the buildings opposite, straining to catch a glimpse of their new monarch. One attendee at the palace celebrations recounted: ‘As the tears fell from my eyes I felt that the Libyan people had got their spirit back and that they had returned to history.’2 For a country so long ravaged by the interests of outside powers that had spared little thought for its indigenous inhabitants, this was a time of hope and of new beginnings.

  However, this new start was not to prove the great awakening that many had hoped fo
r. The challenges at independence were immense. The Italians had left the country with a population that was, for the most part, uneducated. Illiteracy rates stood at a shocking 90 per cent or more, and the country could boast only some sixteen graduates.3 There were almost no Libyan doctors, teachers or other technically trained people, and no real professional class. Local inhabitants were sorely lacking in administrative know-how, as not only were there no indigenous institutions, but Libyans had been excluded from Italian colonial administrative and bureaucratic offices. The kingdom had to build itself from scratch.

  The country was also utterly impoverished. At the time of independence, Libya was ranked the poorest nation in the world. Things were so bad that a former prime minister, Abdelhamid Bakkoush, recalled how the arrival of an Egyptian ship bringing a gift of rice prompted Tripoli's inhabitants to come out into the streets in celebration.4 Such dire financial conditions meant that, until the discovery of significant reserves of oil in 1959, the new kingdom had to rely almost exclusively on foreign aid for its survival, much of it from Britain and the US. For all its newfound freedom, Libya was still bound to the whims and wishes of the Big Powers.

  To make matters worse, though the country was officially united, the differences between the three regions could not be surmounted overnight. Although there was a broad consensus about being a single nation, suspicions and rivalry persisted, as each province sought to serve and secure its own interests in the new power structures that had been drawn up under UN supervision. The long years of physical separation, differing colonial experiences and diverse cultural traditions could not simply be whitewashed over by a new name and a new constitutional system. As a former British ambassador to Libya, Alec Kirkbride, observed in 1957, the use of the word ‘United’ in the country's official name was an expression of hope rather than a statement of fact.5