Source: MAPS IN MINUTES™ © RH Publications (1997)

A country on the north coast of Africa, bounded by Tunisia and Algeria on the west, Niger and Chad on the south, and Sudan and Egypt on the east.

Physical

The north‐west region, Tripolitania, is cultivable near the coast, which has a Mediterranean climate; while inland the ground rises to a high desert of mainly limestone rocks. In Cyrenaica, the north‐east region, some of the coast is high tableland, with light rain supporting forests. Southward the ground is low and sandy, though studded with oases. There are reserves of oil in huge quantities. The south of the country lies within the Sahara; but to the west, in the Fezzan region, there are a few large oases among the otherwise bare, stony plains and scrub‐covered hills.

Economy

The economy, exports, and industry are dominated by crude oil and oil products. Agriculture is limited by the arid nature of most of the country; principal crops include cereals, fruit, and vegetables.

History

During most of its history Libya has been inhabited by Arab and Berber nomads, only the coastlands and oases being settled. Greek colonies existed in ancient times, and later under the Romans; under the Arabs the cultivated area lapsed into desert. Administered by the Turks from the 16th century, Libya was annexed by Italy after a brief war in 1911–12. The Italians, however, like the Turks before them, never succeeded in asserting their full authority over the Sanussi tribesmen of the interior desert.

Heavily fought over during World War II, Libya was placed under a military government by the Allies before becoming an independent monarchy in 1951 under Emir Sayyid Idris al‐Sanussi, who in 1954 granted the USA military and air bases. Idris was overthrown by radical Islamic army officers in 1969, and Libya emerged as a radical socialist state under the charismatic leadership of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. It used the wealth generated by exploitation of the country’s rich oil resources to build up its military might and to interfere in the affairs of neighbouring states. Libyan involvement in Arab terrorist operations blighted its relations with western states and produced armed confrontations with US forces in the Mediterranean. In April 1986, there were US air strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi. President Gaddafi condemned the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990, taking a neutral stance. But Libya again clashed with the USA during 1992 over its refusal to extradite two Libyans accused of organizing the bombing of a PanAm aircraft over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988. In April 1992 the UN Security Council imposed sanctions over this issue. In 1994 a peace settlement with Chad was agreed concerning the Aouzou Strip, in Northern Chad, which Libya had seized in 1973. Sanctions were lifted in 1999 when the Lockerbie suspects were handed over to the UN; and there was a further thaw in relations with the West in 2003 with the abandonment of Libya’s nuclear weapons programme. The USA restored full diplomatic relations in 2006. Following the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, popular protests against the Gaddafi regime began in February 2011 and quickly gained momentum. With UN-approved aerial protection from NATO, the protesters first resisted military attack from the regime’s troops and then gained the upper hand. Tripoli fell in August 2011 and Gaddafi was killed in October as his final bastion of Sirte fell. A transitional government was formed and transferred power to an elected assembly in 2012. Although work continued to draft a new constitution, assert government authority, and overcome regional factionalism, the security situation deteriorated rapidly in 2014, with fighting between rival militia groups in several parts of the country. In September 2014 Islamist groups took over central Tripoli and established a rival government. UN effortsto broker a peace agreementled to the formation of a Government of National Accord in early 2016, but neither of the administrations in Tobruk and Tripoli backed it. The anarchic situationinLibya has encouraged people smugglers to use its shores to ship migrants across the Mediterranean to Italy, with around 650,000 making the crossing between 2014 and 2018.