48 Exit from Authoritarianism the state’s security apparatus and conscripted into the military. Under the guise of erecting a socialist republic for the masses, Gaddafi created Revolutionary Committees4 to enforce loyalty and root out dissenters. Anyone suspected of doubting their leader was branded a traitor and convicted without a trial. Ordinary Libyans, students, communists, and Islamists did not take this treatment lying down, and protested vehemently through marches, petitions, and strikes. The Revolutionary Committees reacted with a vengeance, beating, imprisoning, and hanging organizers in grotesque public executions. Early resistance suffered further as students and activists were conscripted and forced to die in a pointless war with neighboring Chad between 1978 and 1987. In 1973, Gaddafi dissolved all preexisting laws, placing the nation under a brand of Islamic shariah law, and eliminated the private sector. In 1975, he published the first of his three-part Green Book outlining his vision of social revolution, which children were forced to study in schools. In 1977, he dubbed Libya the Jamahiriyya, and claimed to serve as Libya’s figurehead under popular rule, led by the General People’s Committees. Claiming that Libya’s Amazigh and Tuareg ethnic populations (sometimes referred to as Berbers) were a colonial invention, he instituted an Arabization program that outlawed their distinct identities and cultural symbols.5 And despite his brash talk against Western powers and capitalism, Gaddafi was deeply reliant on foreign weaponry, trade, and technologies to enforce totalitarian power (Bassiouni 2013; Wright 2012: 206). In turn, the Gaddafi family amassed extraordinary wealth and absolute power for itself. 2.2 exiting gaddafi’s jamahiriyya By expelling foreign powers, nationalizing industry, and routing out government officials who had served King Idris, Gaddafi created a wave of exiles and emigration of businessmen, doctors, and technocrats in the 1970s. At the same time, the regime also needed to equip and train its own nationals to run the oil sector. For this, the regime sent people abroad, particularly to the United States 4 5 Due to his concerns about coup-proofing his regime, Gaddafi’s bloated military apparatus was generally underequipped and undermined by the deliberate rotations in leadership; meanwhile, the best equipped forces, such as the Military Intelligence, the 32nd Brigade (katiba) led by Gaddafi’s son Khamis, the Revolutionary Guard (al-Hiras al-Thawri), and the Jamahiriyya Security Organization (Hayat Amn al-Jamahiriyya), were dedicated to rooting out domestic dissent and protecting the Gaddafi family (Bassiouni 2013: 133–42). The Tuareg and Tabu have been subjected to neglect, coercion, and cooptation by Gaddafi, as well as the suppression of their culture, for decades. As Wehrey (2017) writes, the regime imposed the “systematic marginalization of two major non-Arab communities in the south, the Tabu and the Tuareg, to whom the Libyan dictator promised full citizenship rights in return for service in his security forces, particularly in the case of the Tuareg. These promises never materialized. . ..” In 1994 he revoked the Tabu people’s citizenship, denying them basic access to employment and healthcare, and the Tuareg were routinely conscripted by Gaddafi for use in his security forces. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press