The 1969 overthrow of King Idris and his pro American monarchy put Libya on a collision course with the United States.

Libya’s new ruler, Mu’ammar Qaddafi had expansionist plans. Libyan oil would provide the financing.

The Libyan oil boom turned into a frenzy when the Six-Day War closed the Suez Canal in 1967. About the same time, experts predicted political stability in Libya for years to come.

On September 1, 1969, the world found out that the experts were wrong. In the early morning hours a group of radical young military officers, led by Mu’ammar al Qaddafi, gained control of the Libyan military. Their coup had been years in the making. Inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, they had decided that their path to power was not through party politics but through the military.

Qaddafi saw himself as the embodiment of the Arab world. One of the first acts of his new Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) was to shut down British and American military bases in Libya and expel the large Italian population. He closed all Catholic churches in the country and ordered their crosses removed and their contents sold at auction.

He also hated Israel, fostered military ties with the Soviet Union, and established links with terrorists and their organizations.

In December 1969, a counter coup was aborted. Qaddafi had consolidated his powers. It was time for him to deal with the oil industry. By now, Libya was supplying 30% of Europe’s oil and was known as the gas station of Europe.

In January 1970, the RCC called for an increase in the posted price of oil, an action that would plump up Libya’s profits. Timing was fortuitous. The  Suez Canal remained closed, and an oil pipeline had ruptured in Syria. Although there was no shortage of oil, there were major transportation problems that Libya’s proximity to the Mediterranean could work around.

Eventually a Libyan agreement  was negotiated, raising Libya’s share of the oil profit from 50 to 55%. More importantly, according to Yergin:

The Libyan agreements decisively changed the balance of power between the governments of the producing companies and the oil companies. For the oil-exporting countries, the Libyan victory was emboldening; it not only abruptly reversed the decline in the real price of oil, but also reopened the exporters’ campaign for sovereignty and control over their oil resources, which had begun a decade earlier with the foundation of OPEC, but then had stalled. For the companies, it was the beginning of a retreat.

The Jersey director who had responsibility for Libya has said: “The oil industry as we had known it would not exist much longer.”

An Occidental manager said: “Everybody who drives a tractor, truck, or car in the Western world will be affected by this.”

The world’s relationship with Libya would soon change further. In 1981, retaliating for suspected terror links,  the US President Ronald Reagan invalidated the use of US passports for travel to Libya. In 1982, the US banned imports of Libyan oil as well as a number of exports to Libya.

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am flight 103, traveling from London to New York, exploded over Lockerbie, in southern Scotland. All 259 people on board along with 11 people on the ground were killed. Two Libyans were charged with the bombing. Rumors were floated that Qaddafi had ordered the bombing.

In April 1986, Reagan blamed Qaddafi for a terrorist raid in West Berlin. According to Walter LaFeber in America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996:

He called him “the mad dog of the Middle East” and ordered a bombing raid that killed Qaddafi’s adopted daughter and injured at least a dozen other people.

In 1989,  as reported in The New York Times (January 4, 1989):

American warplanes shot down two Libyan fighters that displayed ‘clear hostile intent’ in international waters off the Libyan coast . . .

The incident . . . took place at a time of increasing American concern about a chemical plant in Libya that Washington contends was built to manufacture chemical weapons.

. . . American officials, aware of speculation that the Administration was drawing up plans to attack the plant, insisted that the downing of the two jets had no connection to American efforts to prevent Libyan production of poison gas. The aerial clash occurred more than 600 miles from the plant.

Libya . . . asserted that its planes, Soviet-made MIG-23’s, were unarmed and on routine patrol when the American F-14’s carried out a “premeditated attack” from a carrier in the Mediterranean.

Now, let’s fast forward.

Today, with Qaddafi holding on precariously to power, Libya is no longer the gas station of Europe.

Interestingly, Libya ranks as only the 17th largest oil producer in the world. The US imported 32,000 barrels of crude per day in December 2010, representing an average of approximately 0.37% of daily US crude imports that month.

Instead of oil, in the midst of the uncertainty surrounding the “Arab spring,” Europe is much more concerned with the impact of uncontrolled migration from Libya, and the impact it would have on the European social, cultural, and economic fabric. In March 2011

The French minister for European affairs, Laurent Wauquiez, said . . . that the influx of immigrants from Libya is a real risk for Europe that must not be underestimated . . .

We must defend our frontiers on a European level, said Wauquiez. What we’re talking about isn’t a few tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who could arrive in Europe: It’s potentional 200,000 to 300,000 this year.

Brussels, on the other hand, argues that the number of potential migrant lies somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 people.

These concerns come as migrant populations in Europe — particularly those with strikingly different ways and beliefs — arouse fear and mistrust.

No-flight zone anyone?

I’d love your comments.

The following links are useful if you’d like more information:

The Libyan Migration Corridor

Timeline: Libyan Sanctions

Timeline: The Lockerbie Bombing

When the Cold War began, Libya held little importance for either superpower. Yes, it was the home to Wheelus Air Force base, one of the major American bomber bases in the Eastern Hemisphere, but that’s about it. Leading exports were esparto, a type of grass used to make paper for currency bills, and scrap metal scavenged from the rusting tanks and trucks and weaponry that had been left behind by the Allies and the Axis powers.

The country gained some recognition when independence was declared on December 24, 1951. The Soviet Union had been stymied in its efforts to establish a Mandate over the country following the end of World War II. Now, Libya was the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations. It was also one of the first former European possessions in Africa to gain independence.

Proclaimed a constitutional and hereditary monarchy, the new United Kingdom of Libya was made up of three arbitrarily joined provinces: Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan. The kingdom formed a federal government with three capital cities.: Tripoli, Benghazi, and Al Bayda. Idris as-Senussi, the Emir of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and the leader of the Senussi Muslim Sufi order, was declared king.

Two years after independence, on March 28, 1953, Libya joined the Arab League.

In the mid 1950s, Libya gained further significance with the growing suspicion that the country might produce oil.

The Libyan Petroleum Law of 1955 was designed to encourage oil exploration and development. Instead of the large concessions allowed by the countries of the Persian Gulf,  this law provided for much smaller concessions. As the Libyan petroleum minister explained: “I didn’t want my country to be in the hands of one oil company.”

The Libyan strategy — the strategy of diffusion — was to concession to smaller, independent companies who didn’t haven’t a stake in oil elsewhere. It was believed that such companies would want to explore and produce as rapidly as they could in Libya. The law also offered an incentive that would make  Libyan oil more profitable than oil from other countries. The central objective of the law was summed up in the short statement: “We wanted to discover oil quickly.”

The first round of negotiations in 1957 saw 17 companies bid for a total of 84 concessions. Early exploration results were disappointing, but this changed in 1959 when Standard Oil of New Jersey made a huge strike about 100 miles south of the Mediterranean coast. The US State Department summed it up: “Libya has hit the jack-pot.”

By 1961, 10 good fields had been discovered, and Libya was exporting oil — a very high-quality “sweet” or low sulfur — crude. As Daniel Yergin notes in his book The Prize:

In contrast to the heavier Persian Gulf crudes, which provided a large proportion of fuel oil, Libyan crudes could be refined into a much higher proportion of gasoline and other light, “clean” products, perfect for the growing automobile fleets of Europe and excellently suited to the dawning age of environmentalism.

Aside from “sweetness,” the other thing Libyan oil had going for it was location. North Africa was not as far afield as the Middle East, so the oil did not have to be transported through the Suez Canal or travel aound the Horn of Africa. From Libya it was just a quick journey across the Mediterranean to the oil refineries in Italy and on the southern coast of France.

By 1965, Libya was the world’s sixth-largest exporter of oil, responsible for 10% of all petroleum exports. In 1969, its output actually exceeded that of Saudi Arabia.

While the Libyan government at that time was friendly — or at least neutral — toward the United States, the Libyan business environment was hostile, permeated with corruption.

Soon the political environment would be hostile as well. On April 25, 1963, the federal system of government was abolished and the name of the country was changed to the Kingdom of Libya.  More far reaching changes were soon to come.

The monarchy ended on September 1, 1969 when a group of military officers  staged a coup d’état against King Idris while he was in Turkey for medical treatment.  The coup was led by a 28 year old army officer named Mu’ammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhaffi. King Idris was exiled to Egypt.

The new regime, headed by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic. The new RCC’s motto became “freedom, socialism, and unity.” It pledged to remedy “backwardness”, take an active role in the Palestinian Arab cause, promote Arab unity, and encourage domestic policies based on social justice, non-exploitation, and an equitable distribution of wealth.

The new government soon negotiated with the Americans to evacuate the Wheelus Air Base from Libya. The agreement had just two more years to run. In December 1969, the US agreed to vacate the facility by June 1970.

A new, more unpleasant, chapter would soon begin.