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There were other puzzling aspects. While Radio Tripoli proclaimed "a revolutionary Libya, a socialist Libya," representatives of the 40-odd foreign oil companies (38 of them American) were assured on two separate occasions that their investments were safe. U.S., British and French diplomats heard promises of friendship and good faith. At the British airbase at El Adem, near Tobruk, and at the huge, $100 million Wheelus airbase, manned by some 3,000 Americans, the commanders tactfully suspended training flights, and the new regime requested that the flights remain suspended "temporarily." In every case, the spokesmen for the new regime were junior officers—lieutenants and captains. Nobody could be sure whether they were the shock troops of the revolution or its leaders. One reason for the secrecy may be the fact that the intellectual elite in Libya is so small, and most of its personalities so well known, that the mere naming of the new Cabinet will indicate whether the regime is pro-Nasserite, Marxist, or middle of the road. One rumor had it that the actual leader is a civilian, which could point toward Abdel Hamid Bakoush, an ex-Prime Minister and a bright, progressive, nationalist lawyer.
Urban Bedouin. What is at stake is a sparsely populated nation more than twice the size of Texas and even more desolate in appearance. The Turks ruled Libya from the mid-16th century until 1912, when Italy gained the upper hand. The British administered the country from the end of World War II until independence in 1951. Once one of the poorest of Arab lands, Libya has become one of the wealthiest since vast reserves of oil were discovered a decade ago. In 1960, Libya's exports consisted of such commodities as esparto grass, olive oil, sponges and camels, and amounted to a paltry $8,500,000. Last year the figure rose to more than $1 billion, 99% of it from oil. Libya now pumps more than 3,000,000 barrels of oil a day, and before long it is expected to overtake Iran and Venezuela to rank third among the world's oil-producing nations, after the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The country's sudden wealth has disrupted social patterns, and relatively little has trickled down to its 1,800,000 people. The vast oil industry employs only 8,000 workers and technicians, many of them foreigners. Only 2% of the land is under cultivation, and even workable farm land has been ignored as inflation, and the illusory promise of jobs spurred an exodus from the countryside. Even the nomad Bedouins have left the desert to live in the filth-ridden shantytowns that now encircle Tripoli and Benghazi. What little industry or trade exists, besides the oil business, is mainly controlled by Italians.
Docile King. Only in education had King Idris' government done a good job—and that may have backfired. When new schools were built, there were not enough competent Libyan teachers to staff them. The shortage was eased by importing Egyptians, many of whom were aflame with Nasserite notions of Arab unity and socialism. During the brief periods when the curfew was lifted last week, young men in Tripoli swarmed out to cheer the revolution, and schoolgirls built triumphal arches of branches and flowers on scores of streets. Libyan embassies in Damascus, Rome and Athens were seized by young Libyan students and officers studying abroad.