 |
| Volume XIV, Winter 2007, Number 4 |
| |
BOOK REVIEW
|
| |
|
| |
A History of Modern Libya, by Dirk Vandewalle.
Cambridge University Press, 2006. 246 pages. £14.99 ($30.40.)
David S. Sorenson
Professor of international studies, U.S. Air War College
Dirk Vandewalle has a reputation as a distinguished scholar of Libya, and this book burnishes it. Professor Vandewalle covers the history of Libya from its first mention by Herodotus to Muammar al-Qadhafi's efforts to reconnect with the West after years of isolation. He gives special emphasis to the quixotic politics of the Jamahiriyya, Qadhafi's ideal of a stateless society for the Libyan people.
Libya's history is shaped largely by its geography, a remote patch of desert divided into Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fazzen, with little economic value until the discovery of oil. After 1517 these regions came under the nominal control of the Ottoman Empire, which extended control over the coastline but paid little attention to the growth of an Islamic revivalist movement, the Sanusiyya, later to be led by Libya's king, Idris al-Sanusi. Italy took advantage of Ottoman weakness and began penetration of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fazzen in the late nineteenth century, annexing Libya in 1912. Italian occupation was extraordinarily brutal; according to Vandewalle 250,000-300,000 Libyans died during the colonial period, and Italy excluded the majority of the indigenous population from most of the country's economic activity. Italian defeat in World War II ultimately brought independence in 1951 as an "accidental state" created by the great powers. Libya's birth was accompanied by extraordinary problems, including an infant mortality rate of 40 percent, an illiteracy rate of 90 percent and a per capita income of $25 per year; and its new ruler, King Idris, was a reluctant leader at best. What initially saved Libya from potential ruin was the discovery of oil in the mid-1950s, aided by a progressive oil law that not only encouraged small oil companies to drill, but also channeled oil royalty money into internal development. Unfortunately those revenues, roughly 80 percent of Libya's budget, became instruments of corruption as Libya slid into the status of a rentier state. That corruption, and the western influence fueled by oil exploration, opened the door to revolution, which came in September 1969 at the hands of the Revolutionary Command Council, led by a 27-year-old admirer of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser ("Tell President Nasser we made this revolution for him. He can take everything of ours…" announced Qadhafi). But when Nasser died six months later, Qadhafi decided to take Nasser's mantle, declaring himself a leader of the Arab revolution. The talent he brought to the task was limited, though; most of the RCC members (radical officers in the Libyan military) came from the less prestigious tribes in Libya and had no experience in either economics or politics. Qadhafi appeared to recognize that the RCC had limited talent, particularly its military members, as he staffed the ministries with civilians.
In 1971, Qadhafi began the move to "popular rule," initiating one of the more bizarre forms of governance. With the publication of the first part of the serialized Green Book, Qadhafi put into practice his distrust of parties and bureaucrats by crafting a political structure composed of "popular committees," to allow Libya to make the transition to a stateless society, in popular language called a Jamahiriyya. This creation directly challenged the authority of the RCC, whose members launched the first of several coup attempts in August 1975. The coups failed and the plotters fled abroad, paradoxically giving Qadhafi even more space to construct his stateless society.
The zeal of the Jamahiriyya under Qadhafi's "guidance" appeared unbounded. Wage earners became "partners," entitled to wealth-sharing measures. Private entrepreneurs became "parasites," giant state supermarkets replaced their operations, and rent was abolished, along with private practice in such areas as law and medicine. The steel industry received massive investments (in a country with little iron ore or coal), as did water projects, particularly the "Great Man-Made River," a vast underground channel to move water from aquifers in southern Libya to the coast, at a cost of $27 billion. Libya's oil industry, however, was exempted from falling under the control of the General People's Congress (GPC), the body of amateurs charged with operating the Jamahiriyya economy. Fortunately for Libya, high oil prices following the 1973 Middle East war staved off what otherwise might have been economic ruin, though few in power foresaw the coming decline in petroleum prices.
By 1979, Qadhafi apparently became dissatisfied with revolutionary progress and stepped up the pace of the revolution itself. He resigned from the GPC and suspended the country's laws, while announcing at the same time that Islamic law was no longer appropriate for modern societies. His solution was to offer the Green Book as a guide for the Libyan legal system. His rule continued to generate opposition, which Qadhafi either channeled into harmless expressions or quashed with security forces. He insured that the Libyan military would not emerge as a locus of opposition by repeatedly reorganizing and reshaping it into a kind of popular force (which may explain its woeful performance in Chad, as discussed in Kenneth Pollack's Arabs at War).
Qadhafi's revolution also elicited external opponents, primarily the United States after the Reagan election of 1980. Reagan accused Libya of supporting numerous international terrorist groups and denounced Qadhafi as the "mad dog of the world," though Qadhafi used the language to enhance his own image as a revolutionary leader. American actions moved beyond words in 1981, when U.S. fighters shot down two Libyan fighters over the Gulf of Sirte, and in April 1986, when U.S. fighter bombers attacked targets in Libya in retaliation for alleged Libyan involvement in a terrorist bombing of a disco in Germany. The bombing inflicted little significant damage other than to kill Qadhafi's adopted daughter, though the resulting shock possibly helped to slowly reverse the course of Libya's revolution. Western sanctions against Libya, combined with growing isolation from the rest of the Arab world (Saudi Arabia broke with Libya over oil policy), initially deepened Libya's involvement with international terrorism. However, the bombing of two civilian airlines in 1988 and 1989 deepened sanctions and, coupled with the illogic of the Jamahiriyya's running the economy, fueled a return of internal dissent against Qadhafi. Losing public face, Qadhafi lashed out against the very committee structure he had created, but he also recognized that he needed to execute a course correction, and began a cautious liberalization policy. The reforms that began in 1987 allowed for a certain level of infitah (openness), permitting self-management enterprises stripped of state subsidies, a return to private retail trade, and the opening of tourism. However, average Libyans saw the reforms as a reduction in subsidies, and, for Qadhafi, the necessity of reform conflicted with the loss of tools he had used to control the country. It is unclear whether the reforms would have improved Libya's economy in the face of strict economic sanctions, but Libya's decision to hand over the Lockerbie suspects to international trial in April 1999 began the path to reduced international economic pressure on Libya and a slow return of economic growth.
Such changes were welcomed by Libya's population, which was growing weary of the constant drumbeats of revolution from Qadhafi. He seemed to understand the need for course corrections, as privatization continued and Libya distanced itself from terrorist activities. Libya also abandoned its nascent WMD programs, much to the relief of the United States. Younger intellectuals, including Qadhafi's son Saif al-Islam, began to rise in influence. These proponents of liberalization continued Libya's recovery from decades of Qadhafi's ideas, pushing acceptance of IMF criteria for economic reform and a return of the international oil companies that Libya needed to accelerate economic growth. The consequences are an economic boom that has brought foreign goods and eager foreign business people to Tripoli, though the prosperity has not touched many Libyan citizens who still live in poverty.
Economic change has not produced political reform. As Vandewalle indicates, Libya may continue to pursue state-led market reform, or "…the Jamahiriyya can pursue economic liberalization in earnest, giving increasing and real voice to the country's reformers - realizing that such a pursuit will inevitably lead to further demands for accountability, transparency and political voice…."
Dirk Vandewalle has written a detailed story of Libya's history, well documented and carefully argued. It can be read with profit by both specialists and those who seek a better understanding of one of the more interesting countries in North Africa.
|
|
