Libya

Abstract

Libya is a deviant state of unusual vintage. We noted in Chapter 3 that Tripoli was one of the four so-called Barbary states of north Africa from where pirates raided shipping in the Mediterranean from the early 16th century onwards. The Europeans and later also the Americans paid tribute to the rulers of the four states for protection against the pirates. President John Adams, who began the practice on the American side in 1799, gave the pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli, $18,000 per year for that purpose. When Karamanli increased the annual tribute to $250,000 President Thomas Jefferson objected and in the early 1800s sent US warships to punish the Barbary pirates and their protectors. Apart from bombarding Tripoli, the Americans also made an abortive plan to topple Karamanli and install his brother Hamad in power. In 1815 the European colonial powers finally brought the Barbary states’ involvement in international piracy to an end.¹ More than 150 years later the Americans and Europeans again had to contend with acts of deviance by what was then the independent state of Libya ruled by the flamboyant, enigmatic Muammar Qaddafi.