Convinced of the righteousness of his causes, Qaddafi employed a number of unconventional tactics to achieve his foreign policy objectives. In particular he used petroleum as a political weapon, he targeted moderate Arab and African governments for subversion, and he supported and sponsored international terrorism. Qaddafi realized that his country’s vast petroleum resources could finance huge internal development projects and the purchase of sophisticated weaponry. In 1970 and 1971 he demanded and won large increases in the price that foreign oil companies paid for Libyan crude oil, raising the per barrel price from $2.23 to $3.45. Within two years the government had acquired a controlling interest in all oil companies operating in Libya, and by early 1974 the level of control had risen to approximately 60 percent. During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War Qaddafi joined other Arab oil producers in imposing an embargo against the countries that supported Israel, an embargo that chiefly was aimed at the United States.46
Qaddafi targeted moderate Arab governments for their opposition to his vision of a united Arab nation under Libyan leadership, their positive relations with the West, and, for some, their willingness to discuss peace with the Zionist enemy. He also sought the overthrow of moderate governments in sub-Saharan Africa as the precursor to the establishment of a Libya-dominated league of radical, anti-Western, and anti-Zionist states.47 In the 1970s Qaddafi’s growing isolation within the Arab world and in Africa flamed his penchant for subversion, which included instigating coups, supporting opposition groups, aiding insurrections, and planning assassinations. Qaddafi’s subversive activities not only disturbed Western governments but led to extremely poor relations with three of his African neighbors: Tunisia, Chad, and Sudan.
In 1974 President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia first accepted but then canceled a proposed union with Libya. He later accused Qaddafi of carrying out several acts of subversion, including plots to assassinate Tunisian officials and incite armed rebellion. The most spectacular accusation came in 1980 when Libya was charged with fomenting a guerrilla uprising. At Qaddafi’s direction several Tunisian insurgents attempted unsuccessfully to capture the town of Gafsa in central Tunisia. To counter Qaddafi’s aggression the United States increased its military assistance to the Bourguiba government.48
Libya’s interest in Chad was based on ethnic and religious ties, which gave rise to longstanding territorial claims. Qaddafi coveted a portion of Chadian territory bordering Libya—the Aouzou Strip—and in 1973 dispatched troops to occupy the area, which was reputed to be rich in mineral deposits. In 1975 Libya annexed the Aouzou Strip and, from this base, Qaddafi supported northern Muslim tribesmen in their protracted rebellion against the predominantly non-Muslim Chadian government. In early 1979 fighting reached N’Djamena, the capital, and, with Libyan backing, the rebel leader Goukouni Oueddei was installed as the head of the Transitional National Unity Government (GUNT). Oueddei became, in effect, the president of Chad. Qaddafi supported Oueddei and his private army, the People’s Armed Forces (FAP), which was locked in a struggle against the Armed Forces of the North (FAN), a competing rebel army commanded by Hissene Habré, Oueddei’s fellow tribesman and a former prime minister. By 1980 Habré’s troops, who were backed by France, Egypt, and Sudan, controlled most of N’Djamena and several important towns in the northern half of the country.49 In October of that year Qaddafi ordered his armed forces into the fray and sent shock waves across most of Africa when he publicly declared that Libya considered “Niger second in line to Chad.”50 By the end of the year approximately sixty-five hundred Libyan troops were serving in Chad. Buttressed by the Libyan intervention, Oueddei’s forces launched a major offensive that resulted in the capture of N’Djamena in December. In a fateful decision Oueddei and his Libyan allies decided not to pursue the remnants of Habré’s army, which managed to escape to Sudan.
After the victory Qaddafi announced the merger of Libya and Chad. His statement generated such a negative reaction among African heads of state that an ad hoc committee of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) met in emergency session in January 1981. The OAU issued a communiqué that condemned the merger and called on Qaddafi to withdraw his troops from Chad immediately.51 After months of intense diplomatic pressure Qaddafi canceled plans for the merger and redeployed his troops to the Aouzou Strip.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s President Jafar an-Numayri of Sudan accused Qaddafi of subverting his regime by instigating several coup attempts, by sponsoring acts of sabotage (including the bombing of the Chadian embassy in Khartoum), by fomenting unrest in the western province of Darfur, and by supporting the rebellion in southern Sudan. The two leaders also sparred bitterly over foreign affairs. Qaddafi condemned Numayri for failing to denounce Sadat’s peace initiative and, in 1980, Numayri reproved Libya’s incursion into Chad. The following year, in the aftermath of the bombing of the Chadian embassy in Khartoum, the Sudanese government expelled all Libyan diplomats.52 Numayri was thoroughly obsessed with what he perceived as a genuine Libyan threat to his regime. In response he strengthened his ties with Egypt; he provided weapons and logistical support to Chadian rebel Hissene Habré and several anti-Qaddafi exile groups; he negotiated a military aid package with the United States valued at over one hundred million dollars; and he offered Washington the use of Sudanese military bases in the event Sudan was threatened by an outside force.
Qaddafi was also accused of meddling in the affairs of several other African countries, particularly the nations of the Sahel (the huge grassland region south of the Sahara Desert). Presidents Moussa Traoré of Mali and Seyni Kountché of Niger charged Qaddafi with plotting to overthrow their governments. The popularly elected government of Ghana expelled Libyan diplomats, accusing them of subversive activities. The governments of Senegal and Gambia severed diplomatic relations with Libya, accusing the Qaddafi regime of imprisoning their citizens and forcing them into military training against their will. They reported that Libyan agents hired Muslim tribesmen from drought-battered areas to work in the Libyan oil fields and then forced them to serve in Qaddafi’s “Islamic Legion.” After completing their basic training these “legionnaires” often slipped back to their native countries and performed acts of sabotage and insurrection.53 The widely respected former president of Senegal, Leopold Senghor, stated that Qaddafi’s campaign of aggression was “designed to destroy Africa south of the Sahara and create a vast Libyan empire.”54 Similarly, the U.S. State Department called Qaddafi’s announcement of a merger with Chad a valid expression of his “expansionist goals to absorb his Arab and Muslim neighbors in a Libyan-dominated state.”55
Exacerbating his estrangement from his fellow African leaders, Qaddafi came to the aid of two of the world’s most reviled dictators—Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Empire and Uganda’s Idi Amin Dada—during their struggles to remain in power. When Bokassa was overthrown in 1979 two hundred Libyan soldiers were serving in his army. In late 1978 and early 1979 Qaddafi airlifted more than two thousand soldiers and a substantial amount of sophisticated military equipment to Uganda in a vain attempt to help Amin defeat a combined invasion force of Tanzanian troops and Ugandan exiles. After escaping from the capital at Kampala (which was soon captured by the invading army), the deposed “President for Life” found temporary asylum in Tripoli. Approximately six hundred Libyans were killed and most of their equipment lost during the Ugandan operation—an unmitigated military debacle.56
Many African countries reacted strongly to Qaddafi’s record of aggression. Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, and Senegal severed diplomatic relations with Libya in 1980. That same year Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Nigeria vigorously protested the conversion of Libyan embassies into “people’s bureaus” staffed by revolutionary zealots instead of professional diplomats. Each country responded by expelling the Libyan delegations from their countries. Furthermore, Kenya and Upper Volta (renamed Burkina Faso in 1984) refused to permit Libya to establish