Abstract
The September 1, 1969 coup in Libya that brought Libya’s young military officers to power put an end to the Sanusi kingdom—at the time universally considered as anachronistic. But while the general expectation in the West and much of the Middle East had been that a number of senior military leaders would take over in the North African country, the coup leaders turned out to be overwhelmingly young officers and captains with no links to the monarchy or to senior military figures. Although the first few days brought the unavoidable confusion over who constituted its leadership, from the first official communiqués onward, it was clear that Libya’s new rulers were inspired by Arab nationalism and by a resentment of the West’s role in regional politics. They also seemed determined to chart a new political course for Libya within the Arab world and within the world at large.
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Notes
Ruth First, Libya: The Elusive Revolution (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1974), 110–16.
Qadhafi, Mu’ammar al-, As-Sijil al-qawmi bayanat wa ahadith al-aqid Muammar al-Qadhdhafi (Tripoli: Marakiz ath-thaqafiya al-qawmiya, 1969–70).
See Judith Gurney, Libya: The Political Economy of Oil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 48–49 for details.
Hervé Bleuchot, Chroniques et documents libyens, 1969–1980 (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983), 86–89.
On the revolutionary committees, see Habib el-Hesnawi, The Revolutionary Committees and Their Role in the Confirmation and Consolidation of the People’s Authority (Tripoli: Green Book Center, 1987); Al-Lijan ath-thawriya (in Arabic) (Tripoli: al-Markaz al-‘alami li-dirasat wa-abhath al-kitab al-akhdar, 1985);
and the relevant chapters in Hanspeter Mattes, Die Volksrevolution in der Sozialistischen Libyschen Arabischen Volksgamahiriyya (Heidelberg, Germany: Kivouvou Verlag, 1982).
SQ 1980–81, 567–81; see also Ahmad Ibrahim, Revolutionary Organization (Tripoli: Green Book Center, 1983). Ibrahim specifically condones violence as a tactic. He later became secretary (minister) for education and scientific research and remains (in 2007) Assistant Secretary of the General People’s Congress.
Elizabeth Mayer, “In Search of sacred Law: The Meandering Course of Qadhafi’s Legal Policy,” in Qadhafi’s Libya, 1969 to 1994, ed. Dirk Vandewalle (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 114–15.
For more information, consult Dirk Vandewalle, “The Failure of Liberalization in the Jamahiriyya,” in Qadhafi’s Libya, 1969 to 1994, ed. Dirk Vandewalle (New York: St. martin’s, 1995).
The most complete analysis of the fortunes of the Revolutionary Committees can be found in Hanspeter Mattes, “The Rise and Fall of the Revolutionary Committees,” in Qadhafi’s Libya, 1969–1994, ed. Dirk Vandewalle (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 89–112.
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Vandewalle, D. (2008). Libya’s Revolution in Perspective 1969–2000. In: Vandewalle, D. (eds) Libya since 1969. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-61386-7_2
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