CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE

The Arab North

Authoritarian rule was the order of the day in North Africa at the beginning of the 1980s. In Morocco, despite the trappings of democracy, King Hassan did more or less what he wished. Algeria was a one-party state still dominated by the FLN and the army, the victors of the independence struggle against France. Only Tunisia observed genuine democratic practices, though the ageing Bourguiba exercised wide authority even though there were increasing signs of unrest at his clinging on to power. In Libya the idiosyncratic and ultimately dictatorial Gaddafi controlled every facet of policy. Both Sadat and his successor Mubarak in Egypt favoured personal, populist rule rather than genuine democracy. It was in any case an uneasy decade for the Arab world as a whole; its attention was focused on the continuing crisis over Palestine and Israel and the states of North Africa tended to turn in upon themselves and became less engaged in African affairs than thay had in the immediate years after independence. Arab aid for Africa, it is true, had been hugely increased in direct response to the events of 1973 and the fourfold increase in the price of oil but most of this aid, channelled to Africa through the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (ABEDA), came from the oil rich Gulf States and the 1980s were to witness a fall in such aid as recession cut back international demand for oil.

The five North African Arab states had been members of the OAU since its inception but their participation in African, as opposed to Arab, affairs had sharply diminished and though periodic gestures towards Arab-African solidarity were made, the interchange between these states and sub-Saharan Africa had become formal rather than especially warm or close. There were exceptions. Throughout the decade Libya intervened in Chad to turn a civil war into an international confrontation. Egypt, whose leadership role in the 1960s had made it highly popular throughout the continent, was more preoccupied with the after-effects of its Camp David Accords with Israel than upon its relations with the rest of the Arab world.

Only two Arab states could claim to have been nations for centuries and this gave to each of them a stability that was lacking in the states that had been artificially created on the demise of the Ottoman Empire. These two were Egypt, with its 5,000-year old history, and Morocco. Increasing indebtedness became a problem at this time. Morocco had no oil and so the high oil prices worked against it although it received some grants from Saudi Arabia. It incurred substantial debts over the late 1970s and early 1980s for major infrastructure adjustments in relation to its phosphates industry, which provided the bulk of its export earnings, and during 1983 was obliged to request a rescheduling of its US$14 billion worth of debts. During 1985–86 first Algeria and then Tunisia became deeply indebted but instead of rescheduling, which would have excluded them from commercial money markets, they embarked upon refinancing operations: that is, more borrowing. In 1987 Egypt had to reschedule its debts. Morocco, at least, learnt its lesson. When it rescheduled in 1983 debt-servicing was taking two-thirds of its export earnings but after nine years of regular rescheduling it had reduced its debt-service ratio to 33 per cent of export earnings, which it could manage, and so was able to announce in 1992 that it would not need to reschedule again.

Afro-Arab co-operation, which had reached its height during the OPEC crisis of the 1970s and had been established on an apparently firm basis in 1977 at Cairo, in fact lapsed through much of the 1980s. The natural differences in aims, concerns and backgrounds between Arabs and Africans meant that an alliance of interests had to be worked at constantly if it was to bear fruit. Following the election of President Mubarak of Egypt as chairman of the OAU for 1989–90, his Minister of State, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, said it was an opportunity to revive earlier Afro-Arab co-operation. In an interview with the International Herald Tribune1 Boutros-Ghali said President Mubarak could ‘play a role’ in reinforcing the co-operation that had been established in Cairo in 1977. He made the point that ‘more than 70 per cent of Arab territories are in Africa and more than 80 per cent of the Arab population live in the continent. A better co-ordination between the OAU and the Arab League may help in the synchronization between the African and Arab world. Furthermore, we both have non-alignment in common’. In February 1990, the new OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim told the OAU Council of Ministers that it was important not to lose sight of the common destiny that links African and Arab peoples. Increased co-operation between them could set an example for North–South co-operation. He proposed the creation of ‘concrete co-operation programmes’. Nothing practical was to follow. In March 1989, in a gesture towards greater co-operation, the OAU Council of Ministers had reaffirmed its support for the creation of an independent State of Palestine although this was a modification of its stronger resolution of 1973.

During this period the states of North Africa became increasingly concerned with the deepening cultural crisis in Islam. The revolution that had brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran provided the impetus, though a number of other factors were at work, to increase an Islamic rejuvenation that, however, was seen in many quarters as a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. During the nineteenth century the spread of Western imperialism had undermined Islam by subordinating it to Western power, consumerism and political ideas with the result that a decline in Islam as a cohesive force in the region had followed. At the end of World War I the Middle East had also come under Western influence, not quite colonized but divided into European spheres of influence and, after 1945, that of the United States as well. The creation of the State of Israel in the geographic centre of the Arab world had acted as a spur to this Islamic revival and by the 1980s, when the European empires had come to an end, change was heralded by the growth of fundamentalism: the determination to revert to a stricter form of Islam. The new fundamentalists clashed with the modernizers and secularists who provided the core of the North African political class. These latter had embraced a materialist, semi-Westernised lifestyle and did not wish to return to the restrictions that fundamentalism would impose upon them. It was the failure of this secular, modernizing leadership to spread the new wealth to their whole populations that provided the opportunity for the fundamentalists. Angry young men rejected the turn to the West, the failure to solve the Palestine issue, the tyranny of entrenched elites and leadership; they believed that only a reversion to fundamentalism could sweep away this leadership and revitalize Arab-Islamic society.2

EGYPT

Through the 1980s Egypt was entirely preoccupied with Arab-Middle East affairs and no longer played the role of bridge to sub-Saharan Africa, which it had filled with such success in the 1960s and 1970s. As President Sadat discovered, the Camp David Accords did not settle the Palestine question while his economic policies were unpopular. Moreover, Sadat violated conventional proprieties and ignored growing corruption in high places. As a result, Islamist and leftist opposition to his regime increased. In September 1981, responding to the growing opposition, Sadat had some 1,500 of his critics, including highly respected individuals such as Umar Tilmisani of the Muslim Brotherhood and the journalist Muhammad Heikal, arrested. He then nationalized all the private mosques to deprive populists of their pulpits. He was assassinated on 6 October 1981. His successor, Hosni Mubarak, worked through the 1980s to rehabilitate Egypt with the rest of the Arab world, following its almost total isolation as a result of the Camp David Accords. Mubarak faced an intensified campaign by fundamentalists to have the Sharia (Islamic law) fully adopted as part of the legal system. Immediately on coming to power, Mubarak had 2,500 people arrested in connection with the assassination of Sadat but most of these were soon released. He enlisted the support of the moderate Islamists and the Brotherhood to oppose the advance of the extremists. In April 1982, five people were executed for the assassination of Sadat but no disturbances followed. In September 1984, 174 of 301 who had been arrested in connection with the Sadat killing were acquitted of plotting to overthrow the government while 16 were sentenced to hard labour for life. Thereafter, Mubarak followed a moderate line with regard to Islam. Only in 1989 was Egypt’s isolation that had followed Sadat’s recognition of Israel brought to an end when it was readmitted to the Arab League. On the home front Mubarak faced huge problems which included rapid population increase (close to one million a year), high unemployment, periodic shortages of basic foods, a foreign debt of US$50 billion to be serviced, over-bureaucratization, the reluctance of foreign companies to invest in Egypt, a frustrated younger generation and the steady growth of militant Islamic fundamentalism. Nonetheless, by the end of the decade Mubarak was riding high as Egypt re-entered the mainstream of Arab politics.

THE MAGHREB COUNTRIES

An advance in the long-projected Maghrebi Union took place in June 1989 with the formation of a joint Parliament, shared by the five member states (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia). Morocco and Algeria finally agreed on the border demarcation between their two states. However, this apparent move towards greater integration looked less promising towards the end of 1989. There were two postponements, as doubts about the union surfaced, before the Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA) (Arab Maghreb Union) Summit was held in Tunis over 22–23 January 1990. The agenda included strengthening relations with other regional groups and especially the European Union. The leaders agreed to give UMA a greater role in co-ordinating their regional policy and international relations. It was agreed to set up a permanent secretariat although this went contrary to the founding principles of UMA, which had been intended as a loose structure avoiding a large, expensive bureaucracy. Despite the summit, the members of UMA appeared lukewarm in their endorsement of the union and resistant to giving it powers to resolve problems. These included Morocco’s policy in Western Sahara (SADR), Algerian-Moroccan relations, Gaddafi’s foreign policy and the dispute between Mauritania and Senegal.

MOROCCO

The Moroccan claim to Western Sahara dominated that country’s relations with its immediate neighbours and Africa through the OAU for most of the 1980s. In February 1976 Spain, in effect, had handed over Spanish Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania and both countries had at once sent troops to occupy the parts of Western Sahara contiguous to their own territories. POLISARIO had fought against both countries, so successfully in the case of Mauritania, which was ill-equipped and too poor to conduct a war outside its own territory that it was obliged to give up its claim in 1979 and withdraw. Fighting between the Moroccan forces and POLISARIO reached a climax over the years 1979–81. At issue, once Mauritania had withdrawn from the contest, was the Moroccan claim to a part of the territory, which had a certain historical basis, and the POLISARIO demand for a democratic election to decide the future of the territory. The consequent Sahara War exposed the weakness of the OAU. In 1980 Cuba recognized the Sahara Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as proclaimed by POLISARIO and Cuba’s action was followed by recognition from a further 36 countries, most of them African. The future of SADR was then debated by the OAU and though member countries were fearful of dividing the organization, 26 of the 50 members recognized SADR, and this ought to have meant SADR’s admission to the OAU. Morocco, however, insisted that SADR’s admission required recognition by two-thirds of the membership, yet despite this the OAU did admit SADR to membership in 1982. Morocco and 18 other countries that supported its stand then walked out to present the organization with its greatest crisis since its foundation. The crisis was apparently resolved in June 1983 when the SADR delegation voluntarily abstained from taking its seat and Morocco then ended its boycott. In 1984, however, Mauritania, one of the original claimants to Western Sahara, recognized the SADR whose delegate then did take its seat in the OAU. At this point Morocco left the OAU.

The OAU and the UN now saw the Western Sahara as a colonized territory whose people should be able to determine their future by means of a referendum. Although Morocco again agreed to take part in a referendum about the future of the territory, it subsequently found ways repeatedly to defer the referendum, which it was to do successfully to the end of the century. POLISARIO, which by the beginning of the 1980s had 10,000 troops (although only half of these would be engaged in fighting at any given time), used hit-and-run tactics against centres of population, forcing the phosphate mines at Bou Craa to operate at reduced capacity. At this time (the early 1980s) POLISARIO appeared to be winning the war while Morocco was reduced to maintaining garrisons in the centres of population, yet King Hassan continued to receive wide support for the war which by then had become a Moroccan nationalist crusade. In 1981 POLISARIO switched its bases from Algeria to Mauritania and, following an attempted coup in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian government broke diplomatic relations with Morocco. By 1982, however, Morocco had obtained control over the principal centres of population in Western Sahara – El Aiun, Smara, Bojador – and the huge phosphate deposits at Bou Craa. The Moroccans now built defensive lines in the form of endless sand walls round the triangle of these towns and Bou Craa. The first phase of the walls was completed in 1982. In 1984 they were extended to the Mauritanian border and ran for more than 600 kilometres.

The war became highly sophisticated. Morocco accused Algeria and Libya of providing POLISARIO with Soviet-made missiles, which were used to shoot down Moroccan planes. In October 1981, for example, a Moroccan Hercules transport and a Mirage F-A fighter were brought down by SAM-6 or SAM-8 missiles at high altitudes. The Moroccans suggested that Cuban or East German ‘advisers’ working with POLISARIO were responsible for firing the missiles. The war continued through the decade with varying degrees of intensity. In November 1987, for example, POLISARIO issued a communiqué claiming that 63 Moroccan troops had been killed and 91 wounded in a desert battle. A Moroccan army communiqué, in reply, stated that 245 guerrillas and 72 Moroccan soldiers had been killed in two battles. This fighting immediately preceded the arrival of a UN mission to ascertain the prospects of holding a referendum. POLISARIO then declared a truce. In August 1988 Morocco and POLISARIO accepted a UN plan for a ceasefire and a referendum to give the people of Western Sahara the choice of independence or integration with Morocco, but after nine months the truce and the UN effort broke down. At the end of September 1989 POLISARIO mounted a series of attacks on Moroccan positions and on 7 and 11 October waged substantial battles against the Moroccans at Guelta Zemmour and Hamza. Both sides claimed they had inflicted heavy casualties on their opponents.

The war continued on a reduced scale in 1990. Algeria, the most involved outsider, pressed for a solution according to UN and OAU resolutions. Further negotiations conducted during June in Geneva led the UN to announce that a referendum would be held in 1991 at an estimated cost of US$250 million. By the end of the decade Morocco was no closer to solving the Western Sahara question in its favour and though it had large numbers of troops stationed in the territory at considerable expense, it had fallen out with the OAU as a result of its unilateral action which was in flagrant violation of UN resolutions as well as against the wishes of the inhabitants of Western Sahara. Neither did it appear to be obtaining any benefits from the creation of the UMA even though in 1988 Algeria had suddenly ended its support for POLISARIO to resume diplomatic relations with Morocco as part of a move to make the UMA work.

ALGERIA

President Houari Boumedienne of Algeria died of a rare disease on 27 December 1978 and, following an interregnum, Col. Chadli Benjedid was elected President. Benjedid pursued a less austere policy than his predecessor; opponents of Boumedienne including Ben Bella, who went into exile, were released from prison. The process of switching from the French language to Arabic was speeded up. In the legislative elections of 1982 the ruling FLN received 72.65 per cent of the votes. The Algerian role in obtaining the release in 1981 of the American hostages who had been seized in Iran at the time of the Islamist revolution in that country led to a brief period of good relations with the US but the goodwill was soon dissipated when the US sold tanks to Morocco at a time when Algeria and Morocco were at loggerheads over Western Sahara. During the first half of the 1980s Algeria solved a number of outstanding border disputes with Niger and Tunisia although in the west it continued its support for POLISARIO so that the quarrel with Morocco retarded progress on the creation of a greater Maghreb Union. At least in the early 1980s it appeared that Algeria’s economy would continue successfully along the lines of the socialist revolution established under Boumedienne.

A clash between the secular FLN, which had ruled Algeria since independence, and increasing demands by fundamentalists for a more Islamistoriented state came to dominate the politics of the decade. When the government had tried to appease Islamic sentiment during the 1970s it had met opposition from both the Army, which saw itself as the guardian of the revolution, and the Berbers, who regarded moves towards fundamentalism as an Arab attempt to oppose their own moves towards cultural assertion. Growing militancy culminated in clashes between secular students and fundamentalists in November 1982 when about 200 fundamentalists were arrested. Subsequently 5,000 people attended a Friday prayer meeting in Algiers, which turned into a protest meeting. President Benjedid warned that secular forces could be mobilized against Muslim extremists should this be necessary. This particular crisis ended in May 1985 when 30 of those who had been taken into custody received prison sentences of 3–12 years, 60 were acquitted and the rest released after receiving sentences for less than the time they had already been in detention. Thereafter, Benjedid maintained a low-key approach to the fundamentalists and for a few more years the government appeared to contain the fundamentalist pressures. On the political front Benjedid had won the presidential elections of 1984; he was sole candidate, with 95.4 per cent of the vote. In 1985 Benjedid visited Washington and achieved a rapprochment with the United States. Tension with Morocco was also eased following a meeting in May 1987 between King Hassan II and President Benjedid. More emollient than his prickly predecessor, Benjedid managed to improve relations with Libya. However, Algeria’s relations with France were always difficult and in 1987 a dispute over the price of Algeria’s natural gas exports led to considerable friction. By this time Benjedid was moving away from socialism and central planning and embarking upon a series of economic reforms.

Growing discontent with both the political and economic restraints of socialism persuaded Benjedid to begin liberalizing the system; but he had embarked upon his changes too late and in 1988 the worst riots seen in Algeria since 1962 occurred and led to 500 deaths. Although the government blamed the Islamic fundamentalists, the true reason for the unrest was economic hardship resulting from the fall in oil prices. The government used the military to suppress the disturbances but also responded to the unrest by improving consumer supplies. These riots signalled the end of three decades of old-style socialist centralism as Algeria, under a more pragmatic leadership, seemed ready to turn the country into a pluralist society. The government’s commitment to market liberalization and a shake-up of the bureaucracy was deeply worrying to the many people who feared for their jobs in the huge state sector. A new national constitution, published in 1989, dropped all mention of socialism and introduced political pluralism or multipartyism and conceded the right to strike. In July 1989 the National Assembly passed a political associations law that required political parties to avoid programmes based on language or religion while a second law required a political party to obtain a minimum of 10 per cent of votes in a constituency to qualify for registration. However, these laws were regarded as favouring the continuance of FLN dominance at the expense of the Muslims and the Berber minority. In 1990, true to its older radical tradition, Algeria refused to support the US multinational force against Iraq. The process of democratization was speeded up in 1990: exiles were allowed to return home and a large number of political parties appeared – 25 had been registered by mid-year. On 12 June 1990 elections for town councils and provincial assembles were held and the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) (Islamic Salvation Front) made sweeping gains and took 54 per cent of the votes against 28 per cent for the ruling FLN. It now appeared that Benjedid’s reforms – political relaxation and a return to multipartyism – had produced a major confrontation between secular politics and Islamic fundamentalism. The groundwork had in fact been laid for the catastrophe of the 1990s.

The meteoric rise of the FIS was the outstanding event of the last years of the decade. Mouloud Hamrouche had been appointed Prime Minister by Benjedid on 9 September 1989 and, after announcing his government, had promised liberal reforms and a greater say for the opposition. He also admitted that the economy was in a state of disintegration and vowed to improve the investment climate of the private sector. His programme was approved by the Legislature by 281 to three on 30 September. Hamrouche had also changed the composition of his government, replacing ministers with military and party backgrounds with technocrats, a move made easier by the earlier decision of Benjedid (in March) to make the military withdraw from the FLN Central Committee. Although strict conditions had been applied to new parties, which could not be based upon a single region or a religion, this did not hold back the rapid spread of FIS influence. A further law stated that a party gaining over 50 per cent of the votes in a constituency would obtain all the seats. At the time this was seen as favouring the FLN. But by March 1990 Hamrouche was constrained to reverse this law when it appeared that the FIS would obtain a landslide. By then it had become apparent that the FIS posed the old FLN and the reforming government with its greatest challenge. The FIS had widespread support, was suspected of anti-democratic tendencies and was committed to the introduction of Sharia. Many Algerians agreed with FIS demands for a fairer society and more religious observance, but many also feared that polarization of the two sides would take place and did not want to see the curtailment of individual freedoms that went with FIS Islamic ideas, and especially as these applied to the position of women. As the new decade began the ruling FLN found itself on the defensive, the Berber minority, represented by the Culture and Democracy Party, was fearful that government Arabization policies would threaten its own distinct culture while the FIS was garnering nationwide support for an Islamist revival.

The much-lauded socialist experiment that the FLN had launched under Boumedienne appeared to fall apart during the 1980s and determining what went wrong is far from easy. ‘Algeria was once the most admired country in the Arab world. There were few who loved it or enjoyed going there – it was too hard and unsmiling for that – but for what it had achieved it was respected. People believed it was going to be a success.’3 The Algerian struggle against France in the 1950s and early 1960s had been tough and uncompromising and, as such, an inspiration to other independence struggles at that time. But in the process, in which perhaps one million Algerians had been killed, the country had become inured to hardship. The FLN had created the new Algerian nation in the cauldron of the war against France and could subsequently rely upon the sense of unity that had emerged from the struggle. The creation of a centrally planned socialist state under Boumedienne during the 1970s unravelled in the 1980s. ‘What makes Algeria particularly interesting is that it displayed all the different faults of the Arab countries. Its government suffered from the hypocrisy, corruption and ruthlessness of the other Arab governments, and in running its economy it combined inflexible socialism with over-ambitious development schemes and, later, a short-sighted desire to win favour with its own people. It so happened that the effects of all its mistakes and shortcomings hit the country at the same time, and in a particularly acute fashion, and in a very short period brought it to ruin.’4 The FLN in all practical senses was a dictatorship but admirers of the country’s post-independence achievements were too ready to overlook this fact because its socialism was fashionable, especially during the years when Algeria was in the forefront of demanding a New International Economic Order and was using its oil wealth to launch major development projects. As a result it was regarded as an enlightened dictatorship.

The process of heavy industrialization implemented through the 1970s was financed by oil wealth, but the industrial plants that were purchased from foreign contractors in fact were not profitable. There were a number of reasons for this. Most of their products were unable to compete with cheaper imports or as exports. The principal reason lay with the lack of indigenous expertise capable of making the newly established plants develop and expand naturally to pay their way. Moreover, in order to safeguard its socialist experiment the government used its oil revenues to finance the losses, which the new industries incurred. At the same time that this industrial revolution was put in place, agriculture was neglected. Two events occurred at the end of the 1970s, shortly after the death of Boumedienne, to have a major impact upon Algeria. The first of these was the Iranian revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power and signalled a growth of Islamic fundamentalism right across the Arab world. The other event was the second major rise in oil prices that took place over 1979–80. At the end of the 1970s, relaxing the austerity to which it had accustomed the Algerian people, the Boumedienne government had increased social spending. The oil price rise allowed Benjedid to spend more lavishly. The government relaxed import restrictions and luxury goods such as bananas, foreign cheese, washing machines, refrigerators and cars appeared in the country and were subsidized by a process of adjusting prices. Moreover, to finance its expansive consumer-oriented policies, the government began borrowing on the international market in 1984 and then, when the oil price collapsed from US$30 a barrel to US$10–15, increased its borrowing still further. Government borrowing was accompanied by a rise in unemployment and by the end of the decade as many as 25 per cent of the male workforce were unemployed while among the 17–23 age group as many as 70 per cent were unemployed. The young unemployed, more than any other factor, threatened the government’s ability to control the situation. These young unemployed had no money, were bored and bitter and felt they had little future. They were ripe for revolution.

By 1988 the Islamic politicians were becoming more prominent and influential and were instrumental in prolonging the riots of October. Abbasi Madani and Ali Belhadj, the leaders of FIS, which at this point was still in embryo form, were university lecturers and would preach in mosques when allowed to do so. Tradesmen and unemployed workmen now joined the ranks of FIS in growing numbers and became more aggressive in their demands for change. As a result, by June 1990, when the first free vote since independence was allowed for the town councils and provincial assemblies, FIS won 54 per cent of the vote. In the aftermath of this victory, the FIS shut kindergarten schools (to keep mothers at home), turned cinemas into mosques, separated the sexes on buses, had separate counters established in post offices for men and women and had verses of the Koran posted up in the streets. But though the FIS made plain the direction it intended to take, the public as a whole was not greatly impressed. However, in the run-up to the June 1991 national parliamentary elections, FIS tactics, which included using municipal buses to transport their supporters to meetings and denying polling cards to opponents, demonstrated clearly that a real confrontation between FIS and the FLN was about to take place. One outcome of any dictatorship is to teach opponents to adopt equally dictatorial methods.

TUNISIA

Tunisia had become more secularized than any other Arab state in Africa. During the 1980s the main problems faced by its government were economic or concerned with the succession to Bourguiba rather than about Islamic fundamentalism. The decade began uncertainly: Bourguiba, the hero of independence, was old, while divisions in Tunisian society were becoming more marked. In February 1980 the Prime Minister Hedi Novira suddenly became ill and was replaced by the Minister of Education, Mohamed Nzali, who proved a more tolerant leader than his predecessor. He took back into government some ministers who had resigned in 1977 over the government’s approach to the growing economic discontents of that time and the confrontation with the Union Générale Tunisienne de Travail (UGTT) (General Union of Tunisian Workers) when six ministers had resigned in sympathy with the sacked Minister of the Interior, Tahar Belkhodja. This labour unrest of 1977–78 had been the worst crisis the government had had to face since independence. As a result, in July 1979 the National Assembly had made its first tentative move towards political liberalization. At the extraordinary meeting of the Parti Socialiste Destourien (PSD) (Destour Socialist Party) of April 1981, which had been called to examine the 1982–86 Development Plan, President Bourguiba said he was not opposed to the emergence of other political parties as long as they rejected violence and religious fanaticism. His statement was interpreted as a clear move towards multipartyism.

In December 1981 Habib Achour, the leader of the UGTT who had called the general strike in January 1978 and, following widespread riots and disturbance, had been imprisoned for subversion, was now released and resumed the leadership of the UGTT. In mid-1982 the one-party system was brought to an end. In November 1983 the Mouvement des Démocrates Socialistes (MDS) and the Mouvement d’Unité Populaire (MUP) were officially recognized. Sharp rises in food prices and an end to subsidies on flour and other staples led to riots at the beginning of 1984. The army restored order but at the cost of 89 deaths, nearly 1,000 wounded and 1,000 arrests. Other causes of unrest included growing fundamentalist opposition to the government and high levels of unemployment. A crisis with Libya came close to a violent confrontation when Gaddafi expelled 25,000 Tunisian workers and Tunisia retaliated by expelling a number of Libyans.

By 1986, however, the dominant political question was the succession to the ageing Bourguiba. The elections of November 1986 were won, unopposed, by the ruling Patriotic Union, which was led by the PSD, since the new opposition parties boycotted the election on the grounds that its fairness had not been guaranteed. A year later, on 7 November 1987, Gen. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali (whom Bourguiba had appointed prime minister a month earlier) replaced the President on the grounds that he was no longer able to carry out his functions (he was then 84 years old). The new President removed from office favourites of Bourguiba and entrenched his own position. The deposition of Bourguiba was welcomed by Algeria, Tunisia’s closest African ally, as well as by France and the United States, its most important Western backers. The move came at a time of deteriorating political conditions in the country. One of Bourguiba’s last actions as President had been to initiate moves against Islamic fundamentalists whom he saw as a major threat to stability. During 1988 President Ben Ali pursued a policy of reconciliation: this included an amnesty for some political figures and the calling of elections for April 1989. The PSD was renamed the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD)(Constitutional Democratic Rally). A press freedom law was passed in July 1989. Ben Ali worked to improve relations with Libya and Egypt with the result that Libya relaxed its border controls to allow Tunisians to seek work in Libya for the first time since the 1985 expulsions. Ben Ali was returned unopposed in the 1989 elections with 99 per cent of the vote and the RCD won 141 seats in the assembly. A mid-year amnesty led to the release of 5,400 political prisoners. By 1990, however, President Ben Ali faced growing opposition from the Islamic Nahda Party (which was fundamentalist) and had not been granted political recognition.

Tunisia possessed one of the more sophisticated economies in Africa and from 1987 began to adopt a policy of economic liberalization while also seeking to establish stronger ties with the European Community. Its main foreign exchange earners were petroleum, phosphates, clothing, tourism and agricultural products. However, agriculture was in decline in terms of its contribution to GDP: in 1988 this stood at only 11.8 per cent while the sector employed 21.6 per cent of the work-force. Its principal products – grapes, olives, dates, oranges, figs – were all exported as were fish and crustaceans which earned three per cent of foreign exchange. Manufacturing accounted for 14.1 per cent of GDP and employed 16.3 per cent of the workforce; its principal products were clothing, food, iron and steel, phosphates-related activities and vehicle assembly. By the end of the 1980s the tourist industry had become the second largest in Africa after Egypt. This economy was geared to supply the markets of the European Community and Tunisia had become increasingly anxious about the long-term effects of a single European market. Nonetheless, at this time, Tunisia was classified as a middle-level developing country with a per capita income of US$1,260. Its debts, however, were too high: at US$6,899 million they were equivalent to 71.9 per cent of GNP.

LIBYA

Gaddafi’s role during the 1980s, infuriating as it was to both his African neighbours and farther afield on the continent, and even more his capacity to anger the world’s number one superpower the United States, tells us a good deal about African attitudes to the West and still more about Western attitudes towards Africa. Armed with his surplus oil wealth, Gaddafi did what no other African leader was able or willing to do: by supporting terrorist or revolutionary groups around the world he acted like a big power and that was his principal crime in the eyes of the West, and especially Washington. While, apparently, it was acceptable for the United States to support the Contras against the legitimately elected government of Nicaragua, it was not acceptable for Gaddafi to support the Islamic Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines. It was his usurpation of a big power role that was unforgivable.

Gaddafi’s relations with Africa to the south were a complex mixture of motives and Libya’s oil wealth provided him with a surplus that allowed him to intervene with offers of aid not available from any other African state. His uncertain volatility made him at best an awkward person with whom to deal while his readiness to stand up to and defy the West, especially the United States, gave him an acceptable cachet of approval that money alone would not have provided. An American appraisal of Gaddafi in 1983 stated: ‘Virtually all African and Arab moderate regimes are targets of Libyan-supported subversion. Unable to persuade or bribe other states into submitting to a Qadhafi-led “Islamic revolution”, and unable to use his army to force stronger states to submit to his will, Qadhafi has armed, funded, and trained a wide range of dissident groups to achieve his ends. Subversion has become the principal tool by which he hopes to fulfil his ambitions.’5 Later in the same (anonymous) article, the author continues: ‘Virtually every state in Africa and the Middle East has been the object of Qadhafi’s meddling.’ It should be pointed out that many of Gaddafi’s actions in Africa were comparable in both style and scope to those of major powers; they were concerned with the spread of Libya’s influence and the propagation of ideas in which Gaddafi believed (just as the major powers tried to extend their influence throughout the years of the Cold War).

Gaddafi’s activities in a dozen African countries through the 1970s and 1980s included Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Niger, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Somalia. Libya was an important source of finance for POLISARIO in Western Sahara. During the early 1970s Gaddafi supported liberation groups such as that in Portuguese Guinea (as did half the states of Africa through the OAU), and by the mid-1970s was supplying money, arms and training for liberation movements in Eritrea, Rhodesia, Morocco and Chad. He also provided aid for sympathetic regimes such as those in Togo, Uganda or Zambia. Accusations of subversion against Gaddafi often implied a capacity to undermine that was inherently unlikely. Leaders such as Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, while happy enough to receive aid from Gaddafi, were as a general rule quite capable of safeguarding their own political interests. He played a significant role in persuading a number of African countries – Chad, Congo, Mali, Niger – to break diplomatic relations with Israel at the time of the 1973 OPEC crisis, threatened to boycott the OAU and suggested that its headquarters should be moved from Addis Ababa unless Ethiopia broke relations with Israel. He provided Zambia with aid after Kaunda had closed its border with Rhodesia.

In September 1976 Gaddafi produced new maps purporting to show that 52,000 square miles of territory belonging to Algeria, Chad and Niger were really part of Libya. Algeria and Niger took no action but Chad closed its border with Libya since part of the territory consisted of the Aozou Strip that lay to the immediate south of Libya. By 1977 a number of African states were sufficiently disturbed by the direction of Libyan policies that they attempted to exercise restraint upon Gaddafi; this was notably the case in relation to Chad when at the OAU Gabon summit meeting of July a group was formed consisting of Algeria, Cameroon, Mozambique, Gabon, Nigeria and Senegal to mediate the border dispute between Libya and Chad. In the same year Gaddafi withdrew his support from the Eritrean rebels and aligned himself firmly with the military Dergue of Haile Mariam Mengistu in Ethiopia. This was surprising since Ethiopia was Christian while the Eritreans were mainly Muslims. Gaddafi, however, wished to exert pressure upon what he saw as an alliance of Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia against him. In May 1977 Mengistu visited Tripoli to discuss financial aid for his arms purchases from the USSR. At this time Libya was maintaining more than 30 embassies throughout Africa and a constant stream of African leaders visited Libya whose financial assistance had become an important factor for the continent’s often embattled economies. Over 1978–79 Gaddafi saw the collapse of his Ugandan axis as Amin’s tyrannical regime imploded. Libya airlifted between 1,500 and 2,500 troops to Kampala as the Tanzania-supported invasion force reached the Ugandan capital. The Libyan troops arrived too late to affect the outcome, for by then the Ugandan army was disintegrating and Amin was obliged to flee. Some 400 of 1,500 Libyan troops who attempted to defend the capital were killed and the rest were expelled back to Libya. This adventure proved a humiliating defeat for Gaddafi.

During the 1980s Gaddafi’s principal involvement to the south was in the civil war in Chad in support of his claim to the Aozou Strip although he also continued his interventions elsewhere. By this time, however, African countries had become increasingly wary of his offers of friendship. Early in 1980 Libyan forces were involved in an attack upon Gafsa in Tunisia in support of opponents of Bourguiba while later that year, first President Leopold Senghor of Senegal accused Gaddafi of supporting a coup attempt against him, then President Sir Dawda Jawara of The Gambia made a similar accusation and both countries broke diplomatic relations with Libya. In 1981, Nigeria expelled the staff of the Libyan ‘People’s Bureau’ although it continued to maintain diplomatic relations with Libya while other countries – Uganda, Niger and Mali – accused Libya of plotting against them. Somalia severed diplomatic relations with Libya for its ‘animosity to the Somali people’. A consequence of this growing hostility to Gaddafi’s destabilizing activities and interference was a humiliation for Libya when in 1982 a number of African leaders objected to holding the OAU annual conference in Tripoli since to do so would automatically mean that Gaddafi would become chairman of the organization for the ensuing year.

Gaddafi blamed the United States for using its influence to pressure African states into taking this line. In March 1982, after consultations with Congress and certain governments, President Ronald Reagan decided to ban the import of Libyan oil and prevent certain listed items being exported to Libya. A Department of State communiqué stated: ‘We are taking these measures in response to a continuing pattern of Libyan activity which violates accepted international norms of behaviour. Libya’s large financial resources, vast supplies of Soviet weapons, and active efforts to promote instability and terrorism make it a serious threat to a large number of nations and individuals, particularly in the Middle East and Africa.’6 (A list of proposed sanctions followed.) In 1983 Gaddafi visited Lagos as part of a tour of West Africa, when he also visited Benin and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso). In 1984 all five Libyan diplomats in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius were expelled, accused of interfering in the island’s affairs. The broad pattern of Gaddafi’s activities did not alter although his ability to offer inducements did as the price of oil plummeted during the 1980s from the all-time high it had achieved at the beginning of the decade.

By the 1970s substantial numbers of French troops were in Chad to support the government while between 2,000 and 3,000 Libyan troops backed the FROLINAT opposition movement in the north. In February 1979 Hissène Habré ousted President Malloum in a coup to set off a civil war between Muslims and black southerners. Chad’s neighbours became increasingly worried at Libya’s growing involvement in the country, few trusted Gaddafi’s intentions, and the pressures they exerted added to those of France induced Gaddafi to withdraw from Chad in 1981. An OAU force led by Nigerians intervened to peace keep in 1982. The war was to continue throughout the decade and witnessed renewed interventions by both Libya and France. During 1985, having broken its agreement with France of September 1984 that both countries should withdraw their forces from Chad at the same time, Libya consolidated its grip in the north while Habré strengthened his hold over the central government.

Of all Gaddafi’s interventions in Africa, apart from those concerning his immediate Arab neighbours, none was so important or so long lasting as that in Chad. During the two decades of the 1970s and 1980s of recurring civil war in Chad between the Muslim north and black south, Gaddafi became ever more deeply involved: first, in support of the northern insurgent groups against the government, which had inherited power from the departing French in 1960; then, as a claimant to the Aozou Strip which occupies the northern extremity of Chad to the immediate south of the Libyan border. This long civil war included three separate French interventions as well as US financial support for Gaddafi’s opponents, and brought misery and disruption to one of the remotest, poorest countries in the world. Chad was a textbook illustration of how colonial decisions could continue to influence developments long after independence. In the case of Chad they resulted from the artificial creation of this huge country of just under half a million square miles that brought together but did not unite totally disparate peoples in terms of their ethnicity, culture and religion, and failed to settle the Franco-Italian border dispute concerning the Aozou Strip that formed the basis of Gaddafi’s claim. Only towards the end of the 1980s did it appear possible that a resolution to the conflict might be found. Thus, in May 1988 Gaddafi announced his willingness to recognize the Habré government and to launch a ‘Marshall Plan’ to reconstruct the war-damaged areas of Chad while, at least for the time being, Habré appeared ready to accept the de facto Libyan control of the Aozou Strip. On 3 October 1988 Libya and Chad resumed diplomatic relations even though Libya retained control of the Aozou Strip to which Chad had not renounced its claim. The following year (31 August 1989) Libya and Chad signed an agreement in Algiers under which they would try for a year to resolve their differences before going to arbitration; in the meantime the Aozou Strip would be administered by an African observer force.7 In December 1990 Habré was ousted in a coup and replaced by Idriss Deby. This change led to an immediate improvement in relations between Chad and Libya, which then provided support including arms for the new Deby government. The two countries agreed to submit the border dispute over the Aozou Strip to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague and it went before the court in 1992. On 3 February 1994 the ICJ ruled by 16 to one in favour of Chad’s claim to the Aozou Strip. Gaddafi accepted the Court’s decision and on 31 May 1994, at a ceremony in Tripoli, Libya and Chad signed a joint communiqué, which formally handed over to Chad the Aozou Strip; Libyan troops had been withdrawn from the Strip over the preceding few days. Gaddafi and Deby signed a ‘treaty of friendship, neighbourly terms and co-operation’ in Tripoli on 3 June and Deby called for a new era of co-operation between Chad and Libya. One of Africa’s longest and most costly confrontations had come to an end and, to the surprise of his many critics, Gaddafi had accepted the ruling of the ICJ without any attempt to reverse it.

LIBYA’S RELATIONS WITH THE MAJOR POWERS

During the 1980s Libya succeeded, as no other small state, in infuriating the major powers, beginning with the United States. Gaddafi gave a bravura performance as though his special task was to demonstrate how Libya had an equivalent role in the world to that of the big powers in supporting selected causes. As much as anything his actions were a criticism of the all-pervasive influence that they exercised.

Throughout the decade tensions between Libya and the United States were high and reached crisis proportions in 1986 with the US bombing of Libya, and again in 1988–89 with the Lockerbie crash. In August 1982 the US Mediterranean fleet exercised in the southern Mediterranean off Libya’s coast though no incident occurred. Early in 1983 the US sent four airborne warning and control systems planes (AWACS) to Egypt because it feared a Libyan invasion of Sudan was intended. Whether or not US demonizing of Libya during the 1980s was justified, the results were not always what the State Department could have intended. Despite Gaddafi’s unpopularity with his neighbours, whether Arab or African, or their often deep suspicions of his motives, his ability to infuriate the United States was enjoyed by countries that too often felt humiliated by their dependence – and sometimes subservience – to the Western powers. As a result, Gaddafi’s anti-US tirades and pinpricks gave him a standing and popularity that otherwise he would never have achieved. In the October 1983 issue of the Department of State Bulletin, a lengthy article ‘The Libyan Problem’ provided a US critique of Gaddafi. ‘The Libyan regime contributes to instability in a wide range of states in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere in a manner disproportionate to Libya’s small population. Its enormous oil wealth is at the disposal of an absolute ruler, Muammar al-Qadhafi, whose ambition is to expand his power beyond the limits of Libya by persuasion, force or subversion in the name of his self-styled revolution.’ It was the extension of Gaddafi’s activities into Latin America, where he provided arms and other assistance to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Salvadoran guerrillas, as well as giving support to leftist groups throughout the region, that infuriated Washington. The State Department claimed that Libya was trying to undermine the position of the United States. In a speech of 1 September 1983 (the fourteenth anniversary of his coup) Gaddafi said: ‘When we ally ourselves with revolution in Latin America, and particularly Central America, we are defending ourselves. This Satan (the United States) must be clipped and we must take war to the American borders just as America is taking threats to the Gulf of Sidra and to the Tibesti Mountains.’8

Over the years 1975–83 Libya’s military forces were increased from 22,000 to 85,000 while Libya spent huge sums on the acquisition of arms. Prior to 1973 arms had come from the West. In 1974, however, Gaddafi had signed a major contract with the USSR to be followed by further agreements in 1977, 1978 and 1980, the agreement of the latter year being worth US$8 billllion. By 1983, of US$28 billion of arms purchases, US$20 billion came from the USSR. On the other hand, the US State Department was doubtful that Libya had the military personnel to handle all these weapons although by this time there were 4,000 foreign advisers in the country, half of them from the USSR. Relations between the US and Libya were cool through 1985, but deteriorated sharply at the end of the year, when the US accused Libya of two bomb attacks at Rome and Vienna airports on 27 December. In January 1986 President Reagan imposed further sanctions on Libya and made support for terrorism the principal reason for his move. A US report of 1986 suggested Gaddafi had secretly given US$400 million to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and sent a team of advisers to Managua. The kernel of the US case against Gaddafi was his supposed support for terrorism around the world, including targets in the United States. In a speech of June 1984 Gaddafi had told a Libyan audience that ‘we are capable of exporting terrorism to the heart of America’. And in another speech on 1 September 1985 (the sixteenth anniversary of his coup) Gaddafi said: ‘We have the right to fight America, and we have the right to export terrorism to them…’9

In March 1986 a US task force on terrorism under the chairmanship of Vice-President George Bush argued that military action could be used as a deterrent against future acts of terrorism. As it was, between 1981 and January 1986 US naval forces had carried out exercises off the Libyan coast on no less than 18 occasions, seven of them including operations inside what Gaddafi had called the ‘line of death’ across the mouth of the Gulf of Sidra. On 24 March, from the Sixth Fleet task force of 30 ships, planes from carriers began a total of 375 flights over the Gulf while three ships led by the cruiser Ticonderoga crossed the ‘line of death’ and remained in what were claimed as Libya’s waters for 75 hours. Libyans and Americans each fired a number of missiles and two Libyan ships were sunk. On 5 April the explosion of a terrorist bomb in a West Berlin discotheque, La Belle, frequented by US servicemen provided the excuse Washington had been looking for. The bomb killed a US sergeant and a young Turkish woman and injured 230 people including 50 US service personnel. President Reagan blamed Gaddafi for the bomb: ‘Our evidence is direct, it is precise, it is irrefutable.’ As a consequence, over 14–15 April, US military planes from bases in Britain and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for Libya’s alleged responsibility for terrorist activities in Europe. Libyan casualties were 130, civilian and military, including Gaddafi’s adopted daughter. Gaddafi accused President Reagan of being ‘the world’s number one terrorist’. The repercussions from this raid continued for several years: the standing of Gaddafi was strengthened – he had not been eliminated – while that of the US suffered from accusations of bullying and terrorism as well as ineptness.

Despite his unpopularity, Gaddafi’s defiance of the United States was generally popular in the Third World. He had become to Washington what, a generation earlier, Nasser had been to London, a permanent thorn in the flesh, with the result that Washington was constantly on the lookout for an excuse to punish Gaddafi and if possible topple him from power. In the week following the raid, five US oil companies departed from Libya. By September 1986 at the Non-Aligned Summit in Harare, Gaddafi was sufficiently back to his old form to tell members that most of them were aligned to the West and that the movement was irrelevant.

During the 1980s a number of Libyan nationals in Europe who refused to return home were assassinated by Libyan ‘hit-squads’. Britain, France, West Germany and the US therefore regulated the activities of the Libyan People’s Bureaux in their countries. Britain’s relations with Libya through the 1970s had generally been poor. In an effort to improve these, the British Minister of Health, Kenneth Clarke, visited Libya in February 1983 at a time when there were about 8,000 Libyan students studying in Britain and English was the second language in Libyan schools. However, the Libyans regarded London as a centre for dissident opposition movements and were fearful that opponents of the regime such as the National Front for the Salvation of Libya would influence an increasing number of the Libyan students in Britain. In consequence the Libyan regime began to organize its own followers in Britain and told them to eliminate opposition to Gaddafi. In September 1983 the anti-Gaddafi National Front for the Salvation of Libya held its first demonstration in London and the pro-Gaddafi revolutionary committees among students at once organized a counterdemonstration. There followed a steady escalation of violence between the two sides and this came to a head in 1984. In February 1984 representatives of the revolutionary students took over the Libyan People’s Bureau in St James’s Square, London, and orthodox Libyan diplomats were sent home. At a press conference on 18 February four revolutionary committee men who had taken over the Bureau ‘accused Britain of harbouring people bent on undermining the Libyan revolution and pledged to eliminate all Gaddafi’s opponents in the country. Though no one in Britain appeared to take them at their word or even to understand what they were driving at, the quartet stated uncompromisingly that, the “sole purpose of the takeover” was to escalate revolutionary activities in Britain.’10

An anti-Gaddafi demonstration outside the Libyan People’s Bureau in St James’s Square on 17 April 1984 led to a tragedy when a number of shots were fired from the Bureau against the demonstrators and WPC Yvonne Fletcher was killed. The British police besieged the Bureau for 10 days, after which the occupants were allowed to return to Libya under diplomatic immunity.

In the following year Gaddafi attempted to improve relations with Britain while the general British approach to Libya, despite the shooting of WPC Fletcher, was business as usual. In April 1986 Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher supported the US raid on Libya, not least because Gaddafi had supported Argentina’s Gen. Galtieri during the Falklands War and had also provided assistance to the IRA in Northern Ireland. Despite this, Gaddafi was conciliatory towards Britain for the balance of the 1980s, perhaps because of low world demand for oil and the consequent weakness of the Libyan economy. However, this more ameliorative attitude did not last. Libya opposed the Gulf War against Iraq at the beginning of the 1990s and subsequent deteriorating relations with Britain culminated, on 17 June 1991, with a meeting of the General People’s Congress (GPC) when Gaddafi said: ‘To hell with Britain and relations with it until the day of judgement… To hell with Britain and America, as children would say.’11 Any hopes of rapprochment disappeared once the US, Britain and France had been convinced that the Lockerbie bomb of 21 December 1988 that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 with a total loss of 270 lives was a Libyan terrorist act. An article in the London Sunday Telegraph of 16 April 1989 implicated Libya in the bombing. This coloured their relations with Libya through the 1990s.

Gaddafi’s relations with France were equally strained over the decade. The Libyan intervention in Chad caused permanent tension with France until a settlement of the dispute was finally reached at the end of the 1980s. In Tunisia, following the Gafsa incident of February 1980, when guerrillas raided the Tunisian mining town of that name to incite a rebellion and Tunisia blamed Libya, France sent military forces to support the Tunisian government. In reaction, Libyan mobs burned the French embassy in Tripoli and its consulate in Benghazi. This affair brought to the surface Gaddafi’s deep resentment of French neo-colonialist activities. Relations were further set back in 1984 following an agreement by the two countries to withdraw simultaneously from Chad. The French kept their side of the agreement but the Libyans remained in Chad, much to the chagrin of France’s President François Mitterand who was left looking foolish. Yet another cause of Franco-Libyan tension was the destruction of the French flight UTA 772, which exploded over Niger in 1989 as the result of a bomb, killing 171 people. In 1991 France issued arrest warrants for four Libyans that it claimed were responsible for the bomb outrage.

Libya’s relations with the USSR were more circumspect; the principal tie between the two countries was the purchase of Soviet arms by Libya. This relationship was to change as world demand for oil collapsed so that Libya no longer enjoyed the surpluses that had enabled it to purchase large Soviet arms shipments. In 1983 the USSR proposed a full treaty of friendship between the two countries, for Moscow needed the sale of arms to Libya to continue. However, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988 posed a difficult problem for Gaddafi since he made a point of insisting upon Muslim solidarity. An American appraisal of Libyan-Soviet relations at the beginning of the 1980s made these closer than the reality: ‘Libya is the foremost Soviet arms customer, and in recent years Qadhafi has increasingly provided the Soviet armed forces access to Libyan facilities. Libya serves Soviet aims without a formal relationship, for Soviet arms find their way through Libya to subversive groups and terrorists whose arms serve Soviet interests.’12 During the Libyan confrontation with the US in 1986, the USSR was careful to keep at arm’s length. Moscow had not ratified the treaty of friendship it had proposed in 1983 when Maj. Abdul Salam Jalloud had visited Moscow. By the end of the 1980s the USSR was pressing Libya for the immediate settlement of debts for arms, a sum of approximately US$5 billion. Thus, Libya’s relations with the USSR and the Communist bloc were deteriorating just as the Cold War came to an end.

By the end of the 1980s Libya had more enemies than friends yet Gaddafi had an unique capacity to reverse bad relations, at least to his own satisfaction, and in 1989 he contrived to move Libya out of the isolation into which his policies had forced it. He initiated a process of conciliation towards Libya’s Arab neighbours: he lifted restrictions on foreign travel for Libyans, which proved highly popular; participated in moves to make UMA more effective; concluded a peace accord with Chad; achieved a reconciliation with Egypt; and managed to improve relations with both France and Italy. At home Gaddafi needed to protect his position as undisputed leader in the face of the growth of militant Islamist groups; he did this by breaking up the army and replacing army units with General Defence Committees, which assumed control of the ‘Armed people’. Although this move had a powerful propaganda impact outside Libya it brought the military under the control of People’s Committees and eliminated the possibility of a coup so that all real power rested with Gaddafi. Nonetheless, Islamic opposition to Gaddafi became an important factor in January 1989 when clashes occurred at al-Fatah University in Tripoli between pro-fundamentalist students and the security forces. The disturbances were quelled but further violence erupted on 20 January between members of the Revolutionary Committee and worshippers at a Tripoli mosque, and 4,000 people attending mosque services in the city were arrested. In fact Islamic radicalism had existed underground throughout the 1980s although any political expression of it resulted in severe punishment including public executions. The greatest support for such radicalism was found among young people. Possibly Gaddafi’s biggest breakthrough in 1989 was the rapprochment with Egypt. At the Casablanca Arab League Summit of 24–26 May, which Gaddafi had attended under pressure from Algeria’s President Benjedid, Gaddafi and Egypt’s President Mubarak embraced. Since Libya’s relations with Algeria and Tunisia had also improved Libya agreed to assist funding UMA.