Africa

by Guy Arnold

  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 o
ften 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