There was a period of unreality in Libya whilst King Idris al Senussi ruled his country, mostly from his remote and modest palace in Tobruk. In Tripoli the Italians remained for a good while. The fashionable clothes shops, jewellers, hairdressers, cafes and restaurants still lived on. On Sundays, Italian families attended the late morning service in the cathedral and strolled past the cafes in their Sunday best greeting friends and being seen. The efficient municipal trash collections and the numerous police guarded the public from vermin and crime, but on the fringes of the city tin shacks were appearing as the Libyans migrated into town in the hope of work in the oil bonanza.

The British military presence was palpable. There was an infantry regiment in residence, a Royal Air Force Station shared the civil airport and the Royal Tank Regiment occupied a barracks in the town of Homs. From time to time British troops and aircraft appeared from elsewhere and honed their desert fighting skills in training areas or their low-level bombing techniques over bombing ranges in the tribal hinterland. Not far out of town the USAF guarded their Wheelus Field where their undoubted air power could be heard and seen.  In Benghazi there was another British military presence, smaller, but similar to that in Tripoli and in the remote east, near Tobruk, the RAF maintained a sizeable presence at el Adam.               

Why was all this military hardware and soldiery there? There were two reasons. One was strategic and had to do with the Cold War. The other? Libya had no other source of income to speak of until it became oil rich. With limited natural resources and a small population Libya could muster little of value other than its strategic position.  The subsides and economic help Britain and the US paid and gave to the new Libya were essential but increasingly hard for the King to defend in the face of growing opposition and anti-Israeli fervour.

In this context there was one event which had a lasting effect on Libya but which received little attention at the time. Nasser sent one of his close associates, Major General Ahmed Hassan el Faki as the Egyptian Ambassador to Libya. El Faki arranged for over 500 Egyptian teachers to work in Libya, drawing salaries from Egypt as well as Libya. He also arranged for army personnel from Egypt to be seconded to Libyan Army, including a senior officer. The teachers were to have a notable effect on young Libyan minds, not least on the young Muammar Ghaddafi.

King Idris was a holy man and neither warlike nor charismatic. He had passed much of his life in his remote oases’ strongholds in the Libyan desert from which he was evicted by the Italians. He was revered by his followers who endowed him with near saintly powers. The mechanics of modern power were alien to him. He failed to produce an heir and I know, because I had an insight into his last few years in power, he tried to abdicate at least once and was dissuaded by his close advisers supported by a gathering of his favoured tribes.

There was an ornate and Italianate palace in Tripoli but King Idris preferred to live in his modest palace in Tobruk. Perhaps he felt safe there. He was close to the RAF staging post at El Adem and there were RAF personnel in town. He was also near Jaghbub where the mausoleum of his revered ancestor was preserved (until Gaddafi had it destroyed.). He was surrounded by the large and loyal al Abaidat tribe and within striking distance of the lordliest of the Sa’adi tribes. He favoured them and they protected him. He did not trust his army. He was too aware that senior army officers get ambitious and use their regiments to cease power. His regular army was unreliable being recruited as it was from fractious tribes. He was right, for amongst its officers were Ghaddafi and his fellow plotters. 

If we can imagine King Idris in his palace in Tobruk and ask ourselves what he would need an army for we might identify his potential problems and ambitions, asses his strengths and weakness and make some plans.

 What were his challenges?

Personal security would be amongst his first considerations, especially as so much power was vested in him as monarch.  The wider issues which were papered over during the rush to Independence were still alive. Inter-tribal strife and was always likely. The powerful tribal leaders and sheiks with ambitions to whom he had promised much needed management. The Berbers, especially those in the Western Mountains, were clamouring for a hearing. The Tuaregs and the Tebu were small but demanding minorities who occupied a lot of territory in the remote south. Not least was the tendency for senior Libyan Army officers to make a power grab at the head of their trusted and adoring regiments.

Controlling Libya’s long, inhospitable, and truly remote southern border was a challenge and still is. In this context there was a foreign policy to consider. So far it has been the west, the Italian, the British and the French who have dominated the story. When we look at Libya’s foreign policy from King Idris’s (or Khalifa Haftar’s) perspective we need to turn our minds towards Sahel, that is the countries where the Libyan Desert and the Sahara encroach on the northern outliers of Equatorial Africa.

What of his available resources when he assumed power and his strengths and weaknesses? The population was small. His army was ill equipped to project his power over great distances. There were few Libyans trained to lead. It was personal and internal security he prioritised, so he divided his forces into a regular army and a variety of armed police forces. He raised the Cyrenaican Defence Force from officers of the old Libyan Arab Force who were members of the seven Sa’adi tribes of Cyrenaica and recruited from their own tribesmen. The CDF was trained by British Army personnel and was, in effect, a hybrid between a police force and an army. It was often referred to as the King’s Pretorian Guard, accurately so it seemed to me. It would parade once a year along the Benghazi Corniche past my office in good marching order but with little militantly hardware.

The police force was numerous. There were two entities, the elite Federal Police and the local police who patrolled the towns and sometimes the hinterland. They eventually ranged from several lightly armed territorial forces to the mobile National Security Force equipped with helicopters and armoured cars. Units of the prestigious Cyrenaican Defence Force (CDF), assisted and advised by British military specialists, were garrisoned at several places in Cyrenaica. The primary mission of the armed police was to counterbalance dissidents within the faction-torn armed forces and thus preclude a coup against the monarchy.

He established the Royal Libyan Military Academy in 1957 to train officers and with substantial British help his army slowly grew. By September 1969, a crucial year as we will see, its strength was around 6,500. That was near enough half the size of the CDF and the various police forces.

How did he keep his armed forces in hand until 1969? He used them as a form of patronage by promoting officers from powerful tribes and families and he moved them around from post to post to prevent them subverting their troops to serve their political ambitions. He declined to supply the Army with tanks, artillery, and armoured personnel carriers which they might use against him as easily as they could against a hostile enemy.

This led to a decision which is difficult to fathom. With oil revenues to spend but few trained military technicians decided to buy a sophisticated air defence missile system and train a few specialists to operate it.   In 1968 the Libyan government ordered it from Britain at a cost of almost US$300 million. There were other claims for the money. King Idris abdicated and the contract was cancelled.

There was a great deal of controversy surrounding the King’s role in the dying days of the Kingdom of Libya. This is my version which is founded on some insights gained from acquaintances close to events. There may be other views but by 1979 the King was old and tired and he truly looked it. To my knowledge he had attempted to abdicate at least once before and was dissuaded by his divan with the aid of a tribal demonstration of support. In 1969 his dilemma was serious. In my view he was clear sighted enough to see that Crown Prince Hassan was not capable of replacing him and had realised that his favourite, Omar Shelhi, was tainted by corruption. I am sure that he was aware that a number of factions were plotting a coup and may have decided to pre-empt them.

There were a number of interested parties, most of whom were sure there would be a coup. The Americans were watchful because their oil companies were heavily committed and their base at Wheelus was still important for their strategic plans. The CIA was represented in Libya at the time and it is strange that it could have no knowledge of the various plotters.

The Americans may have assumed that the British diplomats were au courant with the possible plotters and might be relied on to arrange for the Royal Enniskillen Fusiliers, who were stationed just outside Benghazi at the time, to intervene if the wrong coup took place. Both the British and the Americans were anxious to keep Nasser’s hands off the oilfields.

I suspect that Nasser’s men in Libya were confident that the outcome would be in their favour. One aspect which may have some relevance is that Nasser was by now ill and tired. His revolution had almost run its course in Egypt and his personal grip on events was loosening. 

Amongst the most plausible of the speculations which surround the last days of the reign of King Idris is that he, like many others, knew there was an army coup in the offing. The hypothesis is that he expected Azziz Shelhi, the army chief of staff, to mount it and so decided to leave Libya to allow him a free hand. Azziz Shelhi was, however, the brother of Omar Shelhi who was by now thought to be thoroughly corrupt.

The King decided to take himself off to a spa in Turkey for medical treatment and a rest. He was determined to abdicate and hoped to retire to the summer palace in Tobruk. He called his prime minister and the head of the senate to Turkey and handed them the instrument of abdication naming the Crown Prince as his successor. It was to take effect on 1st September 1969. The arrangement was forestalled by the young army officers surrounding Muammar Gaddafi who were to assume power on behalf of the people. There was no real way of asking the people.

The King was left high and dry in Turkey with no money to pay his hotel bills, which the Turkish government kindly settled. He went to Egypt and died in 1983. He is buried in Medina, Saudi Arabia. His government in Libya had achieved success in a number of fields, notably in education, for which it has received little recognition. The country he took over lacked expertise and infrastructure. He was at first forced to rely on the British and American military bases and aid as a source of income. He also needed western technology and expertise to find and exploit the oil beneath the desert, but his government had handled the oil companies wisely and well.

He was tired, old and weak. From the letter of abdication of King Idris dated 4th August 1969. “Most men’s work is not completely devoid of imperfections, and when some years ago I felt weak. I offered my resignation, but you returned it. I obeyed your wish and withdrew it. Now, due to my advanced years and weak body I find myself obliged to say for the second time that I am unable to carry this heavy responsibility.”

He had for some time wished to relinquish the burden of kingship and the great powers which had been thrust upon him were exercised by a small group of people who let him down in the end. The formation of the State of Israel and then an unwise decision by the British to go to war against Egypt over the Suez Canal had raised a revolutionary fervour amongst some young Libyans.

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