Libya's Pre-1996 History Revisited: Part 7

A Wall Street Journal editorial recently proposed that the Democratic Obama-Clinton Administration consider the option of some kind of “humanitarian military intervention” in Libya in 2011 in response to the recent deadly attacks on demonstrators inside Libya by the current Libyan regime’s security forces. Yet most people in the United States know very little about the hidden history of Libya. Guy Arnold’s 1996 book, The Maverick State: Gaddafi and the New World Order, for example, observed:

“During the 1970s when he was at the height of his influence and oil wealth, Gaddafi became involved in a number of African countries, providing either financial support to regimes of which he approved or more clandestine support to liberation or opposition movements…

“…Libya was an important financial backer of the Polisario guerrillas in Western Sahara during the 1970s as they fought for independence from Mauritania and Morocco…

“…By the mid-1970s Gaddafi was supplying money, arms and training for liberation movements in Eritrea, Rhodesia, Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau), Morocco and Chad; and aid for sympathetic regimes such as those in Togo, Uganda and Zambia…

“…In an article of 11 August 1972, the Beirut daily Al-Bayraq advanced the following figures for Libyan financial support: al-Fatah--$50m; Tunisian opposition--$13m; Moroccan opposition--$20m; for revolutionaries in Chad--$10m; for American black movements (spread over three years)--$24m; and for the IRA (over two years)--$10m…”