Country profilesLibya

Humanitarian profile

Oil has kept Libya, which was run for decades by idiosyncratic Muammar Gaddafi, comfortable economically but people from far poorer nations to its drought-prone south have used it as a transit route to reach a better life in Europe. Waste, corruption, arms purchases and donations to developing countries to boost Gaddafi’s standing there had eaten into revenues, but oil and gas reserves should last for decades. However, Libya imports three quarters of its food. Much of the country is covered by the Sahara desert.

Country snapshot

To most of the world, Muammar Gaddafi, killed in 2011 after a six-month uprising, used to define Libya.

He ruled the oil-rich North African country since a coup in 1969 and saw himself as a visionary who had brought his own socialist-Islamic political system to his people.

The United States branded Libya a state sponsor of terrorism but removed the designation in 2006 after Gaddafi turned his back on past activities. He was welcomed back into the international fold and restored ties with the West.

However, he retained an unpredictable streak, calling in 2010 for a jihad - which his officials interpreted as a trade embargo rather than holy war - against Switzerland. One of his sons had been accused there of mistreating two servants.

Anti-authoritarian protests that begun in the Arab world in late 2010, spread to several Libyan cities in early 2011. The use of violence against the popular uprising against Gaddafi prompted the U.N. Council to pass a resolution authorising Nato air strikes to protect civilians.

In August 2011, after several months of violent fighting between pro-Gaddafi forces and the protesters, the rebels stormed into Tripoli, and several weeks later Gaddafi was killed.

The country is currently governed by the National Transitional Council (NTC), which the U.N. General Assembly has recognized as the legitimate interim governing body of Libya.

In October 2011 the NTC officially declared the country liberated and said it would hold elections to a Public National Conference within eight months. After a new interim government is appointed and a new constitution drafted, it will be put to a referendum. Once approved, general elections will be held within six months.

Libya’s challenges are to diversify the economy for the day its rich oil reserves run down, and to ensure a stable political transition.

Government

Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libya was the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (state of the masses) which enjoyed direct democracy through people’s committees and had no head of state.

Muammar Gaddafi, born in 1942, had a tight grip on power in an authoritarian state but had no official role – though he was often referred to as the "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution".

He toppled the monarchy in a 1969 coup when he was a young colonel, inspired by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser’s pan-Arabism.

Gaddafi’s political philosophy, the Third Universal Theory outlined in his Green Book, rejected democracy, capitalism and communism in favour of a mixture of socialism, Islam and tribal tradition. He was a strong Arab nationalist but efforts to unite with other Arab countries had failed.

After Gaddafi was killed in 2011 and the country liberated, the Transitional National Council has been operating under a temporary constitution. It plans to transition toward elections, a new government and the drafting of a constitution.

Economy

Oil keeps Libya going. It has major reserves of oil and gas, which are still relatively undeveloped.

The industry was nationalised by Gaddafi but his political experiments, as well as international sanctions, led to many years of economic decline.

The government dominated a socialist-oriented economy through control of oil and gas revenues which account for nearly all export earnings, half of GDP and pay for most public sector wages.

In the past, a lot of revenue had been lost through waste, corruption, arms purchases and donations to developing countries to try and boost Gaddafi’s standing.

Reforms had gathered pace with the end of international isolation and the lifting of U.N. sanctions in 2003 and U.S. sanctions by 2006.

Foreign companies were once again getting involved in the oil and gas sector. Libya has the ninth-largest known oil reserves.

The National Oil Corporation (NOC) aims to boost production to 3 million barrels a day by 2017 at the latest, almost triple the 2008 level.

Libya imports three quarters of its food. Import restrictions and price controls have led to periodic shortages of basic goods and foodstuffs.

History

A former Roman colony in the desert, Libya was invaded by Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs and Ottoman Turks, from whom the Italians grabbed it before World War One.

They adopted the name Libya, which the Greeks had used for all of North Africa except Egypt.

After Rome’s defeat in World War Two in 1943, the country which sits between Egypt and Tunisia passed into brief U.N. trusteeship until independence in 1951 as a monarchy.  

Oil was struck eight years later. Most wealth stayed with the elite, fuelling popular resentment that produced fertile ground for Gaddafi’s bloodless coup in 1969.

He soon nationalised the industry and used some of the oil cash to fund foreign guerrilla groups such as the Irish Republican Army and Palestine Liberation Organisation. He hoped to topple capitalism and Marxism, export his ideology and further Arab unity.

He declared a "people's revolution" in 1977 that set up the current political system but brought chaos and economic decline. Ties with the West worsened.

In 1984, Britain cut off relations after a policewoman was shot dead outside Libya’s embassy.

In 1986, after a Berlin disco bombing killed two U.S. soldiers, the United States imposed sanctions and its planes bombed targets in Libya including Gaddafi’s house, killing his adopted daughter among others.

Gaddafi also tried to take over part of northern Chad and influence his neighbour’s politics, but without lasting success.

Domestically, he has faced coup attempts and responded with crackdowns in which an unknown number of people have been executed. He has opposed Islamic fundamentalism, fearing it could be a rallying point for his opponents.

A low point with the West followed the bombing of Pan AM Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 which killed 270 people and led to U.N. sanctions in 1992.

After being shunned as a pariah and isolated internationally, Gaddafi changed tack and tried to rebuild ties with the West.

Libya handed over two Lockerbie suspects in 1999 who were tried in The Hague under Scottish law. One of them, Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, was jailed for life but transferred to Libya in 2009 on health grounds. The hero’s welcome he received stoked controversy.

In 2003, Libya declared an end to plans to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Sanctions were lifted and Western leaders paid visits to Gaddafi in his trademark desert tent. Washington and Tripoli exchanged ambassadors in 2009 for the first time since 1973.

Libya is now paying compensation to the families of victims of Lockerbie and of the 170 people killed when a French airliner blew up over the Sahara in 1989. It is also paying compensation to the families of the victims of the Berlin disco bombing.

A new obstacle to relations with the European Union was resolved in 2007 with the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had been sentenced to death for allegedly deliberately infecting over 400 children in a hospital with the HIV virus. European leaders denied reports they had paid Libya hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a deal.

Gaddafi chaired the African Union for 2009-10 and renewed calls for a United States of Africa which would include the Caribbean.

In 2009, a court jailed two Swiss businessmen for visa offences. They had been arrested after a diplomatic row broke out over Gaddafi's son, who had been briefly held in Switzerland on charges of mistreating domestic workers.

Libyan officials deny any link between their arrest and Hannibal Gaddafi's detention in Switzerland.

In 2010, Russia – which armed Libya in Soviet days - agreed to sell it weapons worth $1.8 billion.

Colonel Gaddafi’s rule was brought to an end in 2011 when, after several months of violent protests across the country he was killed, and the Transitional National Council, recognized by the UN, was formed in November that year.

Legal snapshot

The legal system is based on Italian and French civil law systems and Islamic law. There are separate religious courts.

Special "revolutionary courts" and military courts operate separately to try political offences and crimes against the state.

There is a Supreme Court but it has no power to review legislation.

The 1977 Declaration of the Establishment of the People's Authority is the closest thing to a constitution.

Libya does not recognise the authority of the International Criminal Court. It has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction.

It ranked 130th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2009 index measuring perceived levels of public-sector corruption (1st position is perceived as least corrupt).

Media rights body Reporters Without Borders says press freedom is virtually non-existent.