Marisa Woodford
Dr. Gioioso
POL 115 Intro to Global Politics
25 September 2017
Nation- and State-Building in Libya
Libya, like many other places among North Africa has dealt with grueling leaders and
having their publics make stands to charge that. October 23, 2011 was the day of the country’s
liberation, finally ending the terrible time of leader Muammar Qaddafi that lasted for over four
decades. For most of the country’s life, it has been controlled by a central power, like other
countries in the North Africa. It has been passed around from the Greeks to the Roman Empire,
to the Spanish and so on until they finally became independent in 1951. It wasn’t until 1969
when the real hard times started when Qaddafi came into power.
In 1969, Libya was one of the poorest nations in Africa; over the years of life under the
Qaddafi Regime, they were turned into Africa’s wealthiest nation. In the beginning of his
dictatorship, his main goal was “tackling the unfair economic legacy of foreign domination”
(Asser) which was oil. There were many reserved found in the country but there were
controlled by foreign companies and they set the prices of the oil in which their countries
would benefit from it. Through politics, Qaddafi argued with other actors in the countries taking
over the oil extracting in Libya and demanded that the contracts be renegotiated. After the
debate, he succeeded and helped “Libya become the first developing country to secure a
majority share of the revenues from its own oil production. In the beginning, this and him
seemed great for the country, but soon after Qaddafi started to take the country in a new
direction.
Qaddafi claimed to have created a theory to fix the issues we see in capitalism and
communism and free people from oppression. This eliminated alternative voices and political
participation from others. The system he created had a name, Jamahiriya, which translates to
“rule by the masses” where Qaddafi and his family and allies would be the only powerful ones
in the country. This did everything but free the oppressed people. Qaddafi used his power and
trust he gained from his people from movements he supported like taking back the oil reserves
and sponsoring the Great Man-Made River project to control the country and dictate them in
every aspect of their political system and economy. People who criticized the regime would be
punished by prison or even death. Bringing his regime abroad, he supported other countries
