Pan-Arabist Origins of Libya’s Chad War
Brother Muammar Libya, in its post-independence interventions in Chad, which have been dubbed “Africa’s Thirty Years’ War”, vied for possession of northern Chad’s Aouzou Strip with its uranium and other mineral wealth and also sought to create a regional sphere of influence and a buffer zone so as to remove potentially hostile Zionist and imperialist influence from its doorstep. Not only economic or military in character, however, the intervention was also informed by a pan-Arabist ideology. “As was the case with Nasser, Qadhdhafi’s foreign policy is marked by a series of futile efforts to unify the Arab world,” Israeli scholar Benyamin Neuberger would comment a decade into the conflict: During his first three years in power (1969-1972) Qadhdhafi’s pan-Arab zeal was directed to the Arab East ( Mashriq ). In February 1970, a Federal Union between Libya, Egypt and the Sudan was established. In April 1971, the Confederation of Arab Republics consisting of Libya, Egypt and Syria, was...