Islamic Legion

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The Islamic Legion (Arabic الفيلق الإسلامي al-Failaka al-Islamiya^[1]) was a Libyan-sponsored pan-Arab paramilitary force, created in 1972. The Legion was part of Muammar al-Gaddafi's dream of creating the Great Islamic State of the Sahel.^[2]

Contents 1 Creation 2 The Legion 3 References 4 Notes

[edit] Creation

Gaddafi, who had come to power in September 1969, was not only a Pan-Africanist, but an Arab cultural supremacist. His hostility to the government of Chadian president François Tombalbaye was at least partly inspired by Tombalbaye's African and Christian background. It also led Gaddafi to drive the Toubou of Libya, who were considered 'black', off Fezzan and across the Chadian border. Gaddafi supported the Sudanese government of Gaafar Nimeiry, referring to it as an "Arab Nationalist Revolutionary Movement", and even offered to merge the two countries at a meeting in late 1971. Gaddafi's plans for the peaceful formation of an "Arab Union" were dashed when Nimeiry turned down his offer and negotiated the Addis Ababa Agreement ending the First Sudanese Civil War, fought with the black animist and Christian South.^[3] Gaddafi's definition of "Arab" was broad, including the Tuareg of Mali and Niger, as well as the Zaghawa of Chad and Sudan.^[4]

In 1972, Gaddafi created the Islamic Legion as a tool to unify and arabize the region. The priority of the Legion was first Chad, and then Sudan. In Darfur, a western province of Sudan, Gaddafi supported the creation of the Arab Gathering (Tajammu al-Arabi), "a militantly racist and pan-Arabist organization which stressed the 'Arab' character of the province."^[1] The two organizations shared members and a source of support, and the distinction between the two is often ambiguous.

[edit] The Legion

This Islamic Legion was mostly composed of immigrants from poorer Sahelian countries^[5], but also, according to a source, thousands of Pakistanis that had been recruited in 1981 with the false promise of civilian jobs once in Libya.^[6] Generally speaking, the Legion's members were immigrants that had gone to Libya with no thought of fighting wars, and had been provided with inadequate military training and had scarse commitment. A French journalist, speaking of the Legion's forces in Chad, observed that they were "foreigners, Arabs or Africans, mercenaries in spite of themselves, wretches who had came to Libya hoping for a civilian job, but found themselves signed up more or less by force to go and fight in an unknown desert."^[5]

Gaddafi dispatched legionnaires to Palestine, Lebanon and Syria^[7], but the Legion was to be mostly associated with the Libyan-Chadian War, where already in 1980 7,000 legionnaires participated to the second battle of N'Djamena.^[8], where its fighting record was most noted for its ineptitude.^[9] To this force Benin's Marxist regime is said to have provided legionnaires during the 1983 offensive in Chad.^[10] At the beginning of the 1987 Libyan offensive into Chad, it maintained a force of 2000 in Darfur. The nearly continuous cross-border raids that resulted greatly contributed to a separate ethnic conflict within Darfur that killed about 9000 people between 1985 and 1988.^[11]

The Legion was disbanded by Gaddafi following its defeats in Chad in 1987 and the Libyan retreat from that country. But its consequences in this region can still be felt. Some of the Janjaweed leaders were among those said to have been trained in Libya^[12], as many Darfuri followers of the Umma Party were forced in exile in the 1970s and 1980s.^[13]

The Legion was also to leave a strong impact on the Tuaregs living in Mali and Niger. A series of severe droughts had brought many young Tuaregs to migrate to Libya, where a number of them were recruited in the Legion, receiving an indoctrination that told them to reject the hereditary chiefs and to fight the governments that excluded the Tuaregs from power. After the disbandment of the Legion, these men were to return to their countries and to play an important role in the Tuareg rebellions that erupted in the two countries in 1989–90.^[14]

[edit] References

• Azam, J.-P., C. Morrisson, S. Chauvin & S. Rospabé (1999). Conflict and Growth in Africa. OECD. ISBN 9-2641-7101-0. 
• Flint, Julie and de Waal, Alex, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, Zed Books, London March 2006, ISBN 1-84277-697-5
• Markakis, John & Waller, Michael (1986). Military Marxist Regimes in Africa. Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-3295-3. 
• Nolutshungu, Sam C. (1995). Limits of Anarchy: Intervention and State Formation in Chad. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 0-8139-1628-3. 
• Prunier, Gérard, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, Cornell University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8014-4450-0
• Simons, Geoff (2004). Libya and the West: From Independence to Lockerbie. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-8606-4988-2. 
• Thomson, Janice E. (1996). Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-6910-2571-1. 
• Wright, John (1989). Libya, Chad and the Central Sahara. C. Hurst & Co.. ISBN 1-85065-050-0. 

[edit] Notes