Libya in the New Millennium

Abstract

While many Libyans still viewed Qadhafi with some grudging admiration at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were clear indications that the energy of his revolution had dissipated beyond the possibility of rejuvenating it as an active force in the country’s political life. Almost two generations of Libyans had grown up since the 1969 coup, many of them well educated, often in the West, and impatient with a political and economic experiment that promised few opportunities for employment beyond some of the country’s enormous and enormously inefficient bureaucracies that promised no real chance for personal advancement. Qadhafi’s exhortations for internal political activism continued, but, as described in this book, the disappointments of his grander plans for regional unity (see Chapters 7 and 8), the difficulties within the country’s oil sector, the lingering effects of the earlier economic boycotts (Chapter 5), the unresolved debacle over Lockerbie, and the seeming indifference that remained among the population all contributed to a subtle shifting of the leader’s rhetoric (Chapters 3 and 4). Unbeknown to virtually anyone beyond a handful of confidantes, the regime had started a round of quiet diplomacy with the British government in 1999, roughly at the same time that the multilateral economic sanctions had been suspended. Telling for what was unfolding in Libya, the talks with the British had been held not only by the usual assembly of a handful of trusted Qadhafi confidants, but included his son, Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi.