}} On 2 March 1977, the General People's Congress (GPC), at Gaddafi's behest, adopted the "Declaration of the Establishment of the People's Authority" and proclaimed the '''Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
( '). In the official political philosophy of Gaddafi's state, the "Jamahiriya" system was unique to the country, although it was presented as the materialization of the
Third International Theory, proposed by Gaddafi to be applied to the entire
Third World. The GPC also created the General Secretariat of the GPC, comprising the remaining members of the defunct Revolutionary Command Council, with Gaddafi as general secretary, and also appointed the General People's Committee, which replaced the Council of Ministers, its members now called secretaries rather than ministers. The
Libyan government claimed that the Jamahiriya was a
direct democracy without any political parties, governed by its populace through local popular councils and communes (named
Basic People's Congresses). Official rhetoric disdained the idea of a
nation state,
tribal bonds remaining primary, even within the ranks of the
Libyan Armed Forces. Power was still centralized within the central government's overview.
Etymology Jamahiriya ( '''') is an
Arabic term generally translated as "state of the masses";
Lisa Anderson has suggested "peopledom" or "state of the masses" as a reasonable approximations of the meaning of the term as intended by Gaddafi. The term does not occur in this sense in
Muammar Gaddafi's
Green Book of 1975. The
nisba-adjective '
("mass-, "of the masses") occurs only in the third part, published in 1981, in the phrase ('), translated in the English edition as "Historic movements are mass movements". The word ''
was derived from ,'' which is the usual Arabic translation of "republic". It was coined by changing the component '
"public"to its plural form, '"the masses". Thus, it is similar to the term
People's Republic. It is often left untranslated in English, with the long-form name thus rendered as ''Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya''. However, in
Hebrew, for instance, '
is translated as "קהילייה" ('), a word also used to translate the term "Commonwealth" when referring to the designation of a country. After weathering the
1986 U.S. bombing by the
Reagan administration, Gaddafi added the specifier "Great" ( '''') to the official name of the country.
Reforms (1977–1980) Gaddafi as permanent "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution" The changes in Libyan leadership since 1976 culminated in March 1979, when the General People's Congress declared that the "vesting of power in the masses" and the "separation of the state from the revolution" were complete. The government was divided into two parts, the "Jamahiriya sector" and the "revolutionary sector". The "Jamahiriya sector" was composed of the General People's Congress, the General People's Committee, and the local
Basic People's Congresses. Gaddafi relinquished his position as general secretary of the General People's Congress, as which he was succeeded by
Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, who had been prime minister since 1977. The "Jamahiriya sector" was overseen by the "revolutionary sector", headed by Gaddafi as "Leader of the Revolution" ('''') and the surviving members of the Revolutionary Command Council. The leaders of the revolutionary sector were not subject to election, as they owed office to their role in the 1969 coup. They oversaw the "revolutionary committees", which were nominally grass-roots organizations that helped keep the people engaged. As a result, although Gaddafi held no formal government office after 1979, he retained control of the government and the country. Gaddafi also remained supreme commander of the armed forces.
Administrative reforms All legislative and executive authority was vested in the GPC. This body, however, delegated most of its important authority to its general secretary and General Secretariat and to the General People's Committee. Gaddafi, as general secretary of the GPC, remained the primary decision maker, just as he had been when chairman of the RCC. In turn, all adults had the right and duty to participate in the deliberation of their local Basic People's Congress (BPC), whose decisions were passed up to the GPC for consideration and implementation as national policy. The BPCs were in theory the repository of ultimate political authority and decision making, embodying what Gaddafi termed direct "people's power". The 1977 declaration and its accompanying resolutions amounted to a fundamental revision of the 1969 constitutional proclamation, especially with respect to the structure and organization of the government at both national and subnational levels. Continuing to revamp Libya's political and administrative structure, Gaddafi introduced yet another element into the body politic. Beginning in 1977, "revolutionary committees" were organized and assigned the task of "absolute revolutionary supervision of people's power"; that is, they were to guide the people's committees, "raise the general level of political consciousness and devotion to revolutionary ideals". In reality, the revolutionary committees were used to survey the population and repress any political opposition to Gaddafi's autocratic rule. The Revolutionary Committees had been resembling similar systems in
totalitarian countries; reportedly, 10 to 20 percent of Libyans worked in surveillance for these committees, a proportion of informants on par with
Ba'athist Iraq and
Juche Korea, with surveillance taking place in government, in factories, and in the education sector. Opposition activists were occasionally executed publicly and the executions were rebroadcast on
public television channels. Filled with politically astute zealots, the ubiquitous revolutionary committees in 1979 assumed control of BPC elections. Although they were not official government organs, the revolutionary committees became another mainstay of the domestic political scene. As with the people's committees and other administrative innovations since the revolution, the revolutionary committees fit the pattern of imposing a new element on the existing subnational system of government rather than eliminating or consolidating already existing structures. By the late 1970s, the result was an unnecessarily complex system of overlapping jurisdictions in which cooperation and coordination among different elements were compromised by ill-defined authority and responsibility. The ambiguity may have helped serve Gaddafi's aim to remain the prime mover behind Libyan governance, while minimizing his visibility at a time when internal opposition to political repression was rising. The RCC was formally dissolved and the government was again reorganized into people's committees. A new General People's Committee (cabinet) was selected, each of its "secretaries" becoming head of a specialized people's committee; the exceptions were the "secretariats" of petroleum, foreign affairs, and heavy industry, where there were no people's committees. A proposal was also made to establish a "people's army" by substituting a national militia, being formed in the late 1970s, for the national army. Although the idea surfaced again in early 1982, it did not appear to be close to implementation. Gaddafi also wanted to combat the strict social restrictions that had been imposed on women by the previous regime, establishing the
Revolutionary Women's Formation to encourage reform. In 1970, a law was introduced affirming equality of the sexes and insisting on wage parity. In 1971, Gaddafi sponsored the creation of a
Libyan General Women's Federation. In 1972, a law was passed criminalizing the marriage of any females under the age of sixteen and ensuring that a woman's consent was a necessary prerequisite for a marriage. The regime aimed to integrate women into the workforce, stretching beyond equal pay with policies including free child care, cash benefits for a family's first child, and pensions for women after they retired starting at age 55. In the early 1980s, the Gaddafi government introduced initiatives to integrate women into the armed forces. One division, known as the "Nuns of Revolution", was an all-women special police force unit closely tied to the Revolutionary Committees. In 1984, the regime mandated conscription for women and encouraged their involvement in female military academies, which were first established in 1979. The Gaddafi regime's policies suggested a positive attitude surrounding women's rights was quite clear due to their consistent attempts at political reform, however the implementation of their policies fell into a grey area, where Libyan reforms wholly pulled women into a turbulent dichotomy consisting of political institutions pulling them in one direction, and more traditional social norms the other, continuously battling under the regime throughout the 1970s and 80s.
Economic reforms Remaking of the economy was parallel with the attempt to remold political and social institutions. Until the late 1970s, Libya's
economy was mixed, with a large role for private enterprise except in the fields of oil production and distribution, banking, and insurance. But according to volume two of Gaddafi's Green Book, which appeared in 1978, private retail trade, rent, and wages were forms of exploitation that should be abolished. Instead,
workers' self-management committees and profit participation partnerships were to function in public and private enterprises. A property law was passed that forbade ownership of more than one private dwelling, and Libyan workers took control of a large number of companies, turning them into state-run enterprises. Retail and wholesale trading operations were replaced by state-owned "people's supermarkets", where Libyans in theory could purchase whatever they needed at low prices. By 1981 the state had also restricted access to individual bank accounts to draw upon privately held funds for government projects. The measures created resentment and opposition among the newly dispossessed. The latter joined those already alienated, some of whom had begun to leave the country. By 1982, perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 Libyans had gone abroad; because many of the emigrants were among the enterprising and better educated Libyans, they represented a significant loss of managerial and technical expertise. The government also built a trans-Sahara water pipeline from major aquifers to both a network of reservoirs and the towns of Tripoli, Sirte and Benghazi in 2006–2007. It is part of the
Great Man-Made River project, started in 1984. It is pumping large resources of water from the
Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System to both urban populations and new irrigation projects around the country. Libya continued to be plagued with a shortage of skilled labor, which had to be imported along with a broad range of consumer goods, both paid for with petroleum income. The country consistently ranked as the African nation with the highest HDI, standing at 0.755 in 2010, which was 0.041 higher than the next highest African HDI that same year. Gender equality was a major achievement under Gaddafi's rule. According to Lisa Anderson, president of the American University in Cairo and an expert on Libya, said that under Gaddafi more women attended university and had "dramatically" more employment opportunities than most Arab nations.
Military Wars against Chad and Egypt As early as 1969, Gaddafi waged a campaign against
Chad. Scholar Gerard Prunier claims part of his hostility was apparently because
Chadian President François Tombalbaye was Christian. Libya was also involved in a sometimes violent territorial dispute with neighbouring Chad over the
Aouzou Strip, which Libya occupied in 1973. This dispute eventually led to the
Libyan invasion of Chad. The prolonged foray of Libyan troops into the Aozou Strip in northern Chad, was finally repulsed in 1987, when extensive US and French help to Chadian rebel forces and the government headed by former Defence Minister
Hissein Habré finally led to a Chadian victory in the so-called
Toyota War. The conflict ended in a ceasefire in 1987. After a judgement of the
International Court of Justice on 13 February 1994, Libya withdrew troops from Chad the same year and the dispute was settled. Libyans heavily opposed this war considering the fact that thousands of high schoolers were taken out of their schools and were forced into battle by the Gaddafi regime. This left many families confused and worried about their kids who did not return home from school. On 21 July 1977, there were first gun battles between troops on the border, followed by land and air strikes leading to Gaddafi to dispatch his military across the border to Egypt, but Egyptian forces fought back in the
Egyptian–Libyan War. . Relations between the Libyan and Egyptian governments had been deteriorating ever since the end of the
Yom Kippur War from October 1973, due to Libyan opposition to President
Anwar Sadat's peace policy as well as the breakdown of unification talks between the two governments. There is some proof that the Egyptian government was considering a war against Libya as early as 1974. On 28 February 1974, during
Henry Kissinger's visit to Egypt, President Sadat told him about such intentions and requested that pressure be put on the Israeli government not to launch an attack on Egypt in the event of its forces being occupied in war with Libya. In addition, the Egyptian government had broken its military ties with Moscow, while the Libyan government kept that cooperation going. The Egyptian government also gave assistance to former
RCC members Major
Abdel Moneim al-Houni and
Umar Muhayshi, who unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Gaddafi in 1975, and allowed them to reside in Egypt. During 1976 relations were ebbing, as the Egyptian government claimed to have discovered a Libyan plot to overthrow the government in Cairo. On 26 January 1976, Egyptian Vice President
Hosni Mubarak indicated in a talk with the US Ambassador
Hermann Eilts that the Egyptian government intended to exploit internal problems in Libya to promote actions against Libya, but did not elaborate. On 22 July 1976, the Libyan government made a public threat to break diplomatic relations with Cairo if Egyptian subversive actions continued. On 8 August 1976, an explosion occurred in the bathroom of a government office in
Tahrir Square in Cairo, injuring 14, and the Egyptian government and media claimed this was done by Libyan agents. The Egyptian government also claimed to have arrested two Egyptian citizens trained by Libyan intelligence to perform sabotage within Egypt. On 23 August, an Egyptian passenger plane
was hijacked by persons who reportedly worked with Libyan intelligence. They were captured by Egyptian authorities in an operation that ended without any casualties. In retaliation for accusations by the Egyptian government of Libyan complicity in the hijacking, the Libyan government ordered the closure of the Egyptian Consulate in Benghazi. On 24 July, the combatants agreed to a
ceasefire under the mediation of the
President of Algeria Houari Boumediène and the
Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat.
Revolutionary Guard Corps The
Revolutionary Guard Corps (
Liwa Haris al-Jamahiriya) or "Jamahiriya Guard" was a key Gaddafi protection force, until his death in October 2011. Composed of 3,000 men hand-picked from Gaddafi's tribal group in the
Sirte region, the Guard was well armed, being provided with
T-54 and
T-62 tanks,
armoured personnel carriers,
multiple rocket launchers,
SA-8 surface to air missiles, and
ZSU-23-4 anti-aircraft vehicles taken from the army inventory. As of 2005, its commander was
Hasan al-Kabir al-Gaddafi, a cousin of the former Libyan leader. The Revolutionary Guard developed from the
Revolutionary Committees, even if the latter had at first been introduced only into workplaces and communities, and not extended to the military. After the early 1980s, however, the Revolutionary Guard, as a paramilitary wing of the Revolutionary Committees, became entrenched within the
armed forces. They served as a parallel channel of control, a means of ideological indoctrination in the barracks, and an apparatus for monitoring suspicious behavior. The Revolutionary Guards reportedly held the keys to ammunition stockpiles at the main military bases, doling it out in small quantities as needed by the regular forces. Their influence increased after a coup attempt in May 1985, that was blocked mainly thanks to the action of the Revolutionary Guard that engaged regular army units in a series of street battles.
Islamic Legion In 1972, Gaddafi created the
Islamic Legion as a tool to unify and Arabize the region. The priority of the Legion was first Chad, and then Sudan. In
Darfur, a western province of Sudan, Gaddafi supported the creation of
Tajammu al-Arabi, which according to
Gérard Prunier was "a militantly racist and pan-Arabist organization which stressed the 'Arab' character of the province." The two organizations shared members and a source of support, and the distinction between them is often ambiguous. This Islamic Legion was mostly composed of immigrants from poorer
Sahelian countries, but also, according to a source, thousands of Pakistanis who had been recruited in 1981 with the false promise of civilian jobs once in Libya. Generally speaking, the Legion's members were immigrants who had gone to Libya with no thought of fighting wars, and had been provided with inadequate military training and had sparse commitment. A French journalist, speaking of the Legion's forces in Chad, observed that they were "foreigners, Arabs or Africans,
mercenaries in spite of themselves, wretches who had come to Libya hoping for a civilian job, but found themselves signed up more or less by force to go and fight in an unknown desert." The
Janjaweed, a group accused by the US of
carrying out a genocide in Darfur in the 2000s, emerged in 1988 and some of its leaders are former legionnaires.
Pan-African Legion In about 1980, Gaddafi introduced the Islamic
Pan-African Legion, a body recruited primarily among dissidents from Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, Mali, and Chad. West African states with Muslim populations have also been the source of some personnel. Believed to consist of about 7,000 individuals, the force has received training from experienced Palestinian and Syrian instructors. Some of those recruited to the legion were said to have been forcibly impressed from among nationals of neighboring countries who migrated to Libya in search of work. The
International Institute for Strategic Studies Military Balance estimated that the force was organized into one armored, one infantry, and one paratroop/commando brigade. It has been supplied with T-54 and T-55 tanks, armored personnel carriers, and EE-9 armored cars. The Islamic Pan-African Legion was reported to have been committed during the fighting in Chad in 1980 and was praised by Gaddafi for its success there. However, it was believed that many of the troops who fled the Chadian attacks of March 1987 were members of the Legion.
Islamic Arab Legion In an effort to realise Gaddafi's vision of a united Arab military force, plans for the creation of an
Islamic Arab Legion were being announced from time to time. The goal, according to the Libyan press, would be to assemble an army of one million men and women fighters to prepare for the great Arab battle – "the battle of liberating Palestine, of toppling the reactionary regimes, of annihilating the borders, gates, and barriers between the countries of the Arab homeland, and of creating the single Arab Jamahiriya from the ocean to the gulf". In March 1985, it was announced that the National Command of the Revolutionary Forces Command in the Arab Nation had been formed with Gaddafi at its head. A number of smaller radical Arab groups from Lebanon, Tunisia, Sudan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf states, and Jordan were represented at the inaugural meeting. Syrian Ba'ath Party and radical Palestinian factions were also present. Each of these movements was expected to earmark 10 per cent of its forces for service under the new command. As of April 1987, there was no information confirming the existence of such a militia. In 1978, Gaddafi turned to Pakistan's rival,
India, for help building its own nuclear bomb. In July 1978, Libya and India signed a
memorandum of understanding to cooperate in peaceful applications of nuclear energy as part of India's Atom of Peace policy. In 1991, then
Prime Minister Navaz Sharif paid a
state visit to Libya to hold talks on the promotion of a
Free Trade Agreement between Pakistan and Libya. However, Gaddafi focused on demanding Pakistan's Prime Minister sell him a nuclear weapon, which surprised many of the Prime Minister's delegation members and journalists. Germany sentenced a businessman, Jurgen Hippenstiel-Imhausen, to five years in prison for involvement in Libyan chemical weapons. Inspectors from the
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) verified in 2004 that Libya owned a stockpile of 23 metric tons of
mustard gas and more than 1,300 metric tons of precursor chemicals.
Gulf of Sidra incidents and US air strikes When Libya was under pressure from international disputes, on 19 August 1981, a naval
dogfight occurred over the
Gulf of Sirte in the
Mediterranean Sea. US
F-14 Tomcat jets fired anti-aircraft missiles against a formation of Libyan fighter jets in this dogfight and shot down two
Libyan
Su-22 Fitter attack aircraft. This naval action was a result of claiming the territory and losses from the previous incident. A second dogfight occurred on 4 January 1989; US carrier-based jets also shot down two
Libyan MiG-23 Flogger-Es in the same place. A similar action occurred on 23 March 1986; while patrolling the Gulf, US naval forces attacked a sizable naval force and various SAM sites defending Libyan territory. US fighter jets and fighter-bombers destroyed SAM launching facilities and sank various naval vessels, killing 35 seamen. This was a reprisal for terrorist hijackings between June and December 1985. On 5 April 1986, agents
“La Belle" nightclub in West Berlin was bombed, killing three and injuring 229. The plan was intercepted by several national intelligence agencies and more detailed information was retrieved four years later from
Stasi archives. The agents who had carried out the operation, who many Western governments claimed to be acting on Gaddafi's orders, were prosecuted by the reunited Germany in the 1990s. In response to the discotheque bombing, a
US air-strike was launched against Libya on 15 April 1986. It was code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon. Air defenses, three army bases, and two airfields in
Tripoli and
Benghazi were bombed. The surgical strikes failed to kill Gaddafi but he lost a few dozen military officers. Gaddafi spread propaganda how it had killed his "adopted daughter" and how victims had been all "civilians". Despite the variations of the stories, the campaign was successful, and a large proportion of the Western press reported the government's stories as facts. Following the 1986 bombing of Libya, Gaddafi intensified his support for anti-American government organizations. He financed
Jeff Fort's
Al-Rukn faction of the Chicago
Black P. Stones gang, in their emergence as an indigenous anti-American armed revolutionary movement. In 1986, Libyan state television announced that Libya was training suicide squads to attack American and European interests. He began financing the IRA again in 1986, to retaliate against the British for harboring American fighter planes. Gaddafi announced that he had won a spectacular military victory over the US and the country was officially renamed the "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah". However, his speech appeared devoid of passion and even the "victory" celebrations appeared unusual. Criticism of Gaddafi by ordinary Libyan citizens became more bold, such as defacing of Gaddafi posters. The raids against Libyan military had brought the government to its weakest point in 17 years. ==International relations==