"(...) The Jamahiriyya’s African policy had a darker side. Gaddafi’s support for Idi Amin is the outstanding example, though even that seems less grotesque when weighed against the support of various Western governments for Mobutu Sese Seko. There was also Libya’s involvement in Chad’s civil war (and attempted annexation of the Aouzou Strip) and its sustained involvement in the Tuareg question in Niger and Mali. At the same time, it gave strong financial and practical support to the African Union, opposed the installation of the US military’s ‘Africom’ ( http://www.africom.mil , Denglisch) on the soil of any African country and funded a wide range of development projects in sub-Saharan countries. Gaddafi planned to exploit the immense water reserves under Libya’s Sahara, and to provide water to the Sahel countries, which could have transformed their economic prospects, but this possibility has now almost certainly been killed off by Nato’s intervention, since Western (and perhaps particularly French) water companies are lining up alongside Western oil firms for their slice of the Libyan action.

Gaddafi’s African policy gave Libya a firm geopolitical position and consolidated its strategic hinterland while also benefiting Africa. That many African countries appreciated Libya’s contribution to the continent’s affairs was made clear by the AU’s opposition to Nato’s intervention and its sustained efforts to broker a ceasefire and negotiations between the two sides of the civil war. These efforts were dismissed with scorn by Western governments and press, with African opposition to the military intervention cynically derided as Libya’s clients doing their duty to their patron, a self-serving judgment that was unfair to South Africa in particular. That the Arab League, whose support for a no-fly zone was invoked by London, Paris and Washington to claim Arab legitimation of Nato’s intervention, had a membership almost entirely confined to Western powers’ client states was never mentioned. (...)"
Hugh Roberts
Who said Gaddafi had to go?
in: London Review of Books (New York : NYREV Inc., 1979-)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5655695
Vol. 33 No. 22 · 17 November 2011, pages 8-18
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n22/hugh-roberts/who-said-gaddafi-had-to-go


"Jamahiriyya" (Text) = Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo..._Arab_Jamahiriya_.281977.E2.80.932011.29