Country Profile: LIBYA

North Africa

Monday, 23 November 2009 00:00

This country profile was published in November 2009 in our annual 'Africa in 2010' issue. The next edition, 'Africa in 2011' will be on sale in November 2010.

On 1 September 2009, Libya celebrated the 40th anniversary of the September revolution that brought Colonel Muammar Qadhafi to power in 1969. The Colonel, who presided over the celebrations, even though he has no formal role in Libya’s ‘stateless’ state, had every reason to feel pleased. He has overcome the international isolation of the past and has guided the restoration of  relations with Europe and the US, whilst his country, flush with oil revenues, is in the throes of renewed development and plans to become a major investor abroad.  Libya chairs the UN General Assembly and  Qadhafi is completing his year as head of the  African Union, much of which he has devoted to trying to accelerate his notion of political unity throughout the continent despite considerable  resistance from other African heads of state. 

Saif al-Islam, Qadhafi’s second son and the Western-friendly voice of reform, competes for influence with his siblings, especially his younger brother, al-Mu’atassim, an army officer now in charge of security and the oil sector. Saif was made head of the ‘Popular Leaderships’, which brings  together political leaders from the various business and tribal groups. This makes him nominally the second-most powerful person in the country, though the tussle to succeed the country’s mercurial leader is far from resolved.  

Energy policy was becoming more radical in 2009 even before the departure of former premier Shukri Ghanem from the  National Oil Company. Saif al-Islam is thought to have been behind Ghanem’s return to his position in late October. The partnership between them may presage a resumption of the reformist agenda in the country. 

The government forced its major foreign oil partners to renegotiate their production contracts to their disadvantage in 2008 and 2009. It also obliged the Canadian oil company, Verenex, to hand over its oil assets at a reduced price by refusing to permit their sale to the China National Petroleum Corporation. With Ghanem back at the helm, the ‘resource nationalism’ of recent times may be blunted. There are, however, hints that Libya might join Russia’s proposed ‘gas OPEC’, alongside Algeria and Qatar.

 After a year of oil-price-induced economic  decline in 2009, with growth estimated at 1.8%, the economy has been forecast to rebound with 5.2% growth in 2010.  The Colonel’s 2008 proposals to do away with much of government structure, distributing oil wealth directly to the population, was shelved in 2009, but it is thought that they will re-emerge again. Qadhafi, who still makes all the substantive decisions in Libya despite his lack of a formal position, has no intention of relinquishing the  idiosyncratic political system of “direct democracy” that he created in the 1970s.

Nor is he prepared to relinquish power to a chosen successor or some alternative political system. The regime’s major  Islamist opponent has now abandoned anti- regime violence and few organised threats persist.  Qadhafi’s international interlocutors, whether in the United States or Europe, seem happy to tolerate him and his system, despite Libya’s  assertive and erratic behaviour.  

Britain earned a measure international  opprobrium for releasing Lockerbie detainee,  Abdelbasset al-Maghrahi on compassionate grounds, after warnings of dire diplomatic consequences if he died in prison. Libya will probably be as demanding a partner in the future, given its close security relationship with the US, its new treaty with Italy and the soon-to-be-signed framework agreement with the European Union.