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| Libya
Libya, for years the classic pariah state, took a final step toward ending its international isolation in May 2006, when the US restored full diplomatic relations with the North African country it once regarded as a leading state sponsor of terrorism.
The key triggers for Washington were Libya’s acceptance of responsibility for its officials’ actions in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and Libya’s decision in 2003 to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology. UN and US trade sanctions on Libya have been lifted, a goal long pursued by international energy companies anxious to resume exploration of the country’s largely undeveloped oil and gas fields.
Beginning in 1970, the Libyan hydrocarbon sector was steadily nationalized by Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, who had seized power in a 1969 coup. The mercurial Qaddafi went on to expound an idiosyncratic brand of “Arab socialism,” laid out in his Green Book, and declared Libya a “jamahiriyya,” a neologism meaning a state managed directly by its citizens. But his rule has been, and remains, strictly dictatorial. Opposition political activities are banned on pain of death; starting in 1980, Qaddafi dispatched agents to assassinate dissident “stray dogs” in exile. There are scant signs that his regime will loosen its grip.
Libya was once a magnet for Egyptian and other Arab workers, but sanctions and mismanagement had produced a stagnant economy by the 1980s. The regime has now dropped many restrictions on foreign investment, and energy conglomerates have returned.
Libyan foreign policy has undergone phases of intense pan-Arabism—Qaddafi once offered “Arab passports” to all Arabs—and equally intense commitment to pan-African unity. The regime’s foreign adventurism has included two major invasions of Chad, though such territorial ambitions seem to have gone the way of the nuclear program, now that the colonel has come in from the cold.
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