Poor & Proud

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.

Black Prince. Part of Libya's touchiness grows out of its realization that it could not survive six months if the U.S. and Britain (which has given Libya $64 million) withdrew their support. Libya's meager exports of esparto grass (for paper currency), olive oil, nuts and camels pay for only a fraction of its imports, and U.S. grants total more than half Libya's annual budget. Rumors rife in Libya of local mismanagement of allied funds are small encouragement to pull out U.S. technicians and let the Libyans spend away on their own. Most of the charges of corruption swirl about a fringe-bearded son of a cousin of King Idris' known as the Black Prince, whose SASCO construction company is currently building a $7,000,000 road that starts 200 miles east of Tripoli and meanders 300 miles through the empty desert to the Sebha oasis.

Touchy and resentful of U.S. aid, the Libyans are nevertheless trying to wangle more of it. The U.S. has a lease until 1971 on Wheelus Air Force Base, where under ideal weather conditions shrieking F-IOI and F-102 jet fighters land and take off in flocks of 500 a day. But the U.S. has to listen if the King's ministers want to renegotiate. For the use of Wheelus, the U.S. paid an initial sum of $7,000,000 and 24,000 tons of wheat, agreed to an annual $4,000,000 rental until 1960 and $1,000,000 a year after that for eleven years. Libya has now demanded ten times as much--a whopping $40 million a year--in rent for Wheelus, and more perks besides. The U.S. has countered with an offer of $6,000,000.

Rooftop Antennas. The man who keeps his divided country from getting out of hand is 69-year-old King Idris, who runs Libya from a honey-colored palace in

Tobruk and lives by the tenets of the Senussi sect, which holds Libya's diverse tribesmen together: no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee, no immodesty. So modest and unassuming is Idris that he ordered his own image removed from Libya's postage stamps and currency and has given two of his palaces to the state.

The King's policy is neutrality in Arab affairs, cautious friendship with the West, hatred of Israelis and Communists. If Americans on the scene often think their motives are misunderstood, they can take some comfort in the fact that no other foreigner fares much better. An active Soviet embassy, with rooftop antennas obviously monitoring Wheelus' frequencies, is allowed to operate, but it shares the frustrations of the U.S. in trying to cope with Libya's fierce pride.

Most surprising of all is Libya's care fu.lly independent course in Arab politics. Nasser's picture smiles from thousands of shopwindows, Libyans listen nightly to Cairo radio, and--as in much of the Middle East--many of Libya's schoolteachers are Egyptian. But Libya refused to take sides with Nasser against Iraq. To all demands for its fealty, Moslem and non-Moslem alike, Libya replies in the proud words of Al Raid: "We do not need imported principles."

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