from a conservative monarchy into a revolutionary republic devoted to Islamic principles and dedicated to Arab nationalism. The new government embarked on a campaign to cleanse the country of corruption; it initiated important social, economic, and political reforms; it rejected colonialism and foreign values; it declared its neutrality in the struggle between the Western and Eastern blocs while denouncing both communism and imperialism; it sought the immediate evacuation of the American and British bases; and it affirmed Libya’s dedication to Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. The young officers immediately issued decrees that banned the sale and consumption of alcohol beverages, they closed nightclubs, and they ordered all public signs to be written in Arabic.
It soon became apparent to international observers that the most influential member of the RCC—and the de facto leader of the new republic—was a twenty-seven-year-old army captain by the name of Muammar al-Qaddafi, a deeply pious and ascetic Signal Corps officer whose revolutionary views on Arab nationalism were patterned after those of his hero, Gamal Abdul Nasser. Shortly after the coup the RCC named an eight-member cabinet to govern the country, appointed Qaddafi commander in chief of the Libyan Armed Forces, and promoted him to the rank of colonel. Qaddafi attained widespread support and popularity by pledging to end foreign political, economic, and cultural domination of the country and by extending the benefits of prosperity to all Libyans through a considerable expansion of free social services. He believed that as long as he maintained a high standard of living for the Libyan people he could purchase support and legitimacy for the regime.24 Qaddafi was certainly a revolutionary, but there was no denying the pragmatism that enhanced his chances for survival.
Muammar al-Qaddafi
Muammar al-Qaddafi was born in 1942 to a Bedouin family in Sirtica, the barren territory that separates Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. His family belonged to a tribe of Berber-Arab livestock herders, al-Qaddafa. As a youth Qaddafi was profoundly influenced by stories of Italian atrocities committed against his country during the colonial period, the devastation wrought by World War II, the shocking Arab defeat in Palestine in 1948–49, and events in Nasser’s Egypt of the 1950s. It was during his early adolescence that he began listening to Nasser’s fiery speeches on the “Voice of the Arabs” radio program and started formulating his political ideology. Qaddafi attended a Quranic elementary school in Surt and began secondary school in Sabha in Fezzan. While at Sabha he surrounded himself with similar-minded classmates who wanted to “liberate” Libya by overthrowing their king. He formed a “central committee” and held secret meetings to discuss Nasser’s political ideas. He was expelled for leading a pro-Nasser student demonstration and completed his secondary education under a tutor in Misratah in Tripolitania. From his Islamic upbringing and Bedouin background Qaddafi cultivated a deep religious consciousness, a strict set of personal ethics, and a strong sense of egalitarianism.
For Libyans of humble origins, a military career provided the best means of obtaining an advanced education and achieving higher economic and social status. Furthermore, for Qaddafi and other devotees of Nasser, the military offered the best vehicle for producing revolutionary change within the political establishment. In 1963, at the first general meeting of his movement (which was attended by followers from Sabha, Misratah, and Tripoli), the conspirators decided that Qaddafi and two other young men would enroll in the Libyan Royal Military Academy in Benghazi in Cyrenaica. After entering the academy Qaddafi began recruiting other officer-cadets into his revolutionary organization, which he named the Free Unionist Officers. After receiving his army commission in 1965 Qaddafi studied communications at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in Great Britain. Then came the devastating Six-Day War, which the Libyan armed forces observed from the sidelines. Just as Nasser had vowed to act against his king after Egypt’s humiliating defeat in 1948, after Israel’s stunning victory over Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967 several young Libyan officers pledged to rescue Arab esteem and deepen Libya’s commitment to Arab causes by abolishing the corrupt, pro-Western monarchy.
Revolutionary Libya
Within months of the coup the RCC consolidated its control over Libyan society and Qaddafi increased his power within the ruling apparatus. Qaddafi assumed the posts of prime minister and minister of defense while maintaining his leadership of the RCC. The regime brought more than two hundred former government officials to trial before “people’s courts” on charges of treason and malfeasance. Several individuals received death sentences or long prison terms. Former King Idris was tried and convicted in absentia and sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out. The RCC undermined the power and prestige of the Sanusis and assailed tribal distinctions as impediments to unity and social progress. The legal code was brought into compliance with sharia, and all political parties, except the RCC-sponsored Arab Socialist Union (ASU), were abolished. The ASU, which was modeled after Nasser’s party of the same name, was established to stimulate political participation, promote revolutionary fervor, and stoke enthusiasm for the regime. All trade unions were incorporated into the ASU, intellectuals were publicly repudiated, newspapers were shut down or taken over by the government, and all Italians and Jews were expelled from the country.25
In the mid-1960s the independence afforded by oil income and the growing popular appeal of Arab nationalism prompted the Libyan government to negotiate an end to the basing agreements it held with the United States and Great Britain. Both countries decided before the coup to evacuate their bases and hastened their departures after the RCC assumed power. The Nixon administration decided that Wheelus field was of marginal value and believed that a confrontation over the base could harm relations with the new leaders in Tripoli and could threaten America’s very lucrative oil interests. In the summer of 1970 the United States transferred control of Wheelus Air Base to the Libyan government.
After the closure of the American and British bases, Tripoli sought new sources for the country’s military equipment. To remain dependent on the United States and Great Britain for modern weaponry would have generated protest at home and criticism throughout the Arab world, since both countries were viewed as supportive of Israel and hostile to Arab interests. France, which had become increasingly dependent on imported Libyan oil and had developed an even-handed policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, agreed in 1970 to sell Libya a weapons package valued at four hundred million dollars. Although the contract included 110 Mirage fighter aircraft, France refused to sell Tripoli a fleet of medium tanks. That same year Qaddafi approached the Soviet bloc for arms, all the while maintaining his staunch opposition to communism and asserting his country’s status as a nonaligned state. He subsequently negotiated a deal with Moscow for the purchase of thirty tanks and one hundred armored personnel carriers.26 By the time Libya and the Soviet Union concluded their first major arms deal in 1974 both countries had come to realize that the immediate benefits of their tentative relationship outweighed their ideological differences and long-term disagreements. Tripoli relied on the Soviet Union for huge quantities of modern military equipment and technical assistance. Moscow appreciated Libya’s anti-Western policies, shared its goal of fostering radical elements in the Arab world and Africa, and valued its hard currency. Nonetheless, Qaddafi remained steadfastly opposed to communism, which he equated with slavery, and the Kremlin carefully avoided support for or identification with Qaddafi’s controversial theories and causes.27 A senior State Department official described the burgeoning Libyan-Soviet relationship as a “marriage of convenience.”28
By the mid-1970s Libya’s foreign policy had tilted dramatically toward increased cooperation with the Soviet Union, although the regime still maintained the facade of nonalignment. Furthermore, shortly after the United States evacuated Wheelus field the RCC informed the Nixon administration that Washington would not be able to achieve good relations with Tripoli so long as it supported Israel. In light of these developments, relations between the United States and Libya cooled rapidly. In 1973 the United States recalled its ambassador to Libya and did not dispatch a replacement.29
The Cultural Revolution
In 1972 Qaddafi relinquished his duties as prime minister and dedicated
