In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War that Israel fought against Egypt and Syria in 1973, Libya took the lead in declaring and trying to maintain an oil embargo to bring down the Israeli government. Limiting oil shipments long after prices quadrupled deprived Libya of needed oil revenues. Libya also headed the effort to blacklist both nations and corporations which traded with Israel. A great deal of support was obtained from the cash-starved new nations of Africa. Finally Qaddafi began to subsidize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
By the mid-1980's Libya provided funds and training for a host of nearly fifty organizations engaged in acts of terrorism for causes that Qaddafi approved. Qaddafi also aided South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) in its struggles against the racist white government.
Meanwhile, in 1973, Libya began to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy by invading and taking over the Aozou Strip from neighboring Chad to the south. Although only 45,000 square miles of desolate Saharan land, the Aozou was reputed to be rich in uranium ore. This action was followed by intervention in the lengthy Chadian civil war on the side of forces opposed to Chad's Hissen Habre. French intervention in 1983-1984 ensured Habre's ultimate victory. By 1987 Chad recaptured the Aozou Strip and Libya's retreating forces left behind more than a billion dollars worth of advanced military hardware.
The late 1970's also saw Libyan intervention in Uganda on the side of the ruthless dictator Idi Amin, and violent disputes with Egypt. The unpopularity of Qaddafi's foreign policy helped fuel an army officer revolt against him in August, 1975. However, the revolt failed, and two dozen conspirators were shot. The army revolt persuaded Qaddafi later to end the RCC, creating in its place a wide network of "People's Committees" supervised by Revolutionary Councils whose members were answerable only to him.
In Qaddafi's famous The Green Book (1973), he described his new revolutionary structure without classes, elites, or political parties as the Third Way. He claimed it was a means of avoiding problems inherent to both capitalism and communism. Consequently Libya entered its "Cultural Revolution" period, with The Green Book serving an inspirational purpose similar to that served by Mao Zedong's Little Red Book in China. By 1977 the book was expanded to include a section announcing an economic system in Libya without private-sector wage workers.
Since only the needy could be exploited, Qaddafi announced the abolition of need within Libya. Consequently, foreign workers were imported to do the more demanding manual labor tasks, while multinational corporate technicians were hired for technology-intensive tasks. While Libya's vast oil revenues were great enough to abolish need within Libya's tiny population, they also helped to abolish individual work incentive.
By 1981 The Green Book had been expanded to include a third section dealing with the importance of nationalism, and the superiority of Islam in producing multiracialism. At the time it was written, Qaddafi had decided to liquidate the large number of Libyan enemies he had accumulated that were living in exile.
In April, 1980, assassinations of Libyan dissidents were carried out in Bonn, Paris, and Rome. The new Reagan administration in the United States denounced Libya as a "terrorist nation," and U. S.-Libyan relations rapidly deteriorated.
The United States reacted strongly to Libya's offer of US$100 million in aid to Nicaragua's Sandinista regime in May, 1981. It gave Libya five days to vacate its embassy in Washington, D. C. In August the U. S. Navy's Sixth Fleet was sent on maneuvers off the Libyan coast, and two Libyan fighter planes were shot down when they flew too close to it. In December, the U. S. State Department—acting on skimpy evidence—announced that a Libyan "hit-squad" had been dispatched to the United States to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. In an atmosphere of hysteria, all U. S. citizens were ordered to leave Libya.
Finally on March 10, 1982, the United States placed an embargo on the importation of Libyan oil and the export of many technologically oriented products. Because it helped fund and train so many terrorist groups, Libya continued to reap suspicion and condemnation for most terrorist acts worldwide.
World History
