Homer knew it, the Greeks named it, and for 2,500 years Libya was easy pickings for plundering Phoenicians and Romans, Arabs and Spaniards. Turks and Italians. In dismantling the tinny empire of Mussolini—the last of Libya's conquerors—the U.N. gave the ancient Libyan people their first real independence in 1951. Free Libya's legacy from its past includes rich Roman ruins, live German land mines, and a fierce resentment among Libya's predominantly Arab 1,130,000 population against all things foreign. All things, that is, except foreign money, particularly U.S. dollars. Libya gets more foreign aid per capita than any other nation in the world.
Nearly three times the size of Texas, Libya is 95% arid rock and sand; 99% of its people are illiterate, tending sheep, camels and goats to eke out a per capita income of less than $100 a year. More than $85 million in U.S. aid has poured into Libya in the past eight years to help the young nation to its feet. There is a special reason for U.S. generosity: Libya's government, headed by its near-absolute monarch, King Idris I, permits the U.S. Air Force to operate Wheelus field outside Tripoli, the largest U.S. airbase outside the U.S., where 12,000 Americans are stationed, and 2,500 Libyans employed.
Black Gold. The effects of American aid to Libya are everywhere: the desert is beginning to bloom under U.S. irrigation engineers in places such as Wadi Caam, barren since the Roman aqueducts crumbled away. Last year the U.S. built 37 schools and equipped five teachers' training colleges (the nation has only 25 college graduates). In what may prove the greatest boon of all to the Libyan standard of living, after four years of probing the desert crust for oil, Esso Standard (Libya) last month drew an astonishing 17,500 bbl. a day in a test run of its first Zelten field well, hopefully spudded in Zelten Two.
Despite all this, one knowledgeable U.S. diplomat admits that "the U.S. would never win in any popularity contest in Libya." Like all newly independent nations, Libya is extremely sensitive about its dependence. "We advise the American people to study the psychology of the Libyans," warned the newspaper At-Talia recently. "Any assistance given at the expense of our dignity and pride will be regarded as an offense and not a help."
Libyans also resent supervision of aid projects by U.S. teams, as the daily Fezzan grumbled: "We receive from America a sum of money that we are not allowed to spend as we see fit. The money is channeled to us through uneconomical agencies that keep highly paid foreign employees and fleets of cars." The sight of U.S. housewives flitting by in outsize station wagons is apt to outrage a poor and proud mule-borne Libyan male who keeps his own wife shrouded in a baracan. Well aware of Libyan sensitivities, embassy and Air Force work hard to avoid riling the people.