Islamic Legion
The Islamic Legion ( Arabic الفيلق الإسلامي, DMG al-Failaq al-Islāmī ), sometimes called the Islamic Pan-African Legion , was a Libya- sponsored paramilitary unit founded in 1972. The Legion was part of Muammar al-Gaddafi's dream of creating a Great Islamic State Sahel . In the 1980s, Libya offered those willing to recruit $ 833 to $ 1,666 a month.
founding
Gaddafi, who came to power in a coup in Libya in September 1969 , was not only a Pan-Africanist but also believed in the superiority of Arab culture. His hostility to the Chadian government of President François Tombalbaye was at least based on Tombalbaye's African and Christian ancestry. Gaddafi had the Tubu ethnic group expelled from the Libyan province of Fezzan to Chad. Gaddafi supported the Sudanese government of Gaafar Nimeiry , called it the "Arab Nationalist Revolutionary Movement" and even offered at a meeting in 1971 to unite the two countries. However, Gaddafi's plans for the peaceful creation of an “Arab Union” were thwarted when Nimeiry declined his offer and signed the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972 , which ended the first Sudanese civil war that was fought with the Christian- animist South . Gaddafi's definition of "Arabic" was broad and included the Tuareg in Mali and Niger , as well as the Zaghawa in Chad and Sudan.
In 1972, Gaddafi founded the Islamic Legion as an aid to unifying and Arabizing the region. The Legion's focus was first on Chad and then on Sudan. In the Sudanese province of Darfur , Gaddafi supported the founding of the "Arab Association" (Tajammu al-Arabi), which, according to Gérard Prunier, was a "militant racist and pan-Arab organization that weighed on the Arab character of the province". These two organizations shared members and sources of supply, so the distinction between the two is often unclear.
The Legion
The Islamic Legion consisted largely of immigrants from poorer countries in the Sahel , but also of thousands of Pakistani recruits in 1981 with false promises of civilian jobs. In general, the members of the Islamic Legion had mostly immigrated to Libya without ever wanting to fight, and they had often received inadequate military training and suffered from a lack of support. A French journalist in Chad described them as "foreigners, Arabs or Africans, mercenaries against themselves, wretches who had come to Libya in the hope of a civilian job, but instead found themselves more or less compulsorily engaged in combat in an unknown desert."
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies , the unit was divided into an armored, an infantry and a command brigade . They were equipped with T-54 and T-55 tanks, armored personnel carriers and EE-9 Cascavel wheeled tanks. The Legion reportedly participated in fighting in Chad in 1980 and was praised by Gaddafi for its success there. However, it is also believed that most of the pro-Libyan fighters who fled the Chadian attacks in March 1987 were members of the Legion.
Gaddafi also sent Islamic legionaries to Uganda , Palestine , Syria and Lebanon , but the legion is mostly associated with the Libyan-Chadian War , where an estimated 7,000 legionnaires took part in the Second Battle of N'Djamena in 1980 and their style of fighting mostly noticed because of their unsuitability. During the 1983 offensive, the Marxist regime in Benin is said to have sent fighters to the Islamic Legion. At the beginning of the 1987 Libyan offensive in Chad, the Legion also had a 2,000-strong detachment in Darfur. The Legion's almost constant cross-border raids contributed greatly to the ethnic conflict in Darfur, in which approximately 9,000 people died between 1985 and 1988.
The Legion was finally dissolved by Gaddafi in 1987 after the final defeat in the "Toyota War" in Chad and the Libyan withdrawal from that country, but the effects of the Legion are still felt in the region. So some of the intended Janjaweed have been trained -Anführer as legionnaires in Libya, as many Darfuri the Sudanese "Ummah Party" had in the 1970s and 1980s into exile in Libya -Anhänger.
The Legion had a profound influence on Tuareg life in Mali and Niger. A series of severe droughts had forced many young Tuaregs to emigrate to Libya, where many were recruited into the Legion and indoctrinated into rejecting their tribal leaders and fighting the governments that excluded the Tuareg from power. After the Legion was dissolved, these men returned to their countries of origin and played an important role in the Tuareg rebellions that shook these two countries from 1989 to 1990.
Aftermath
Gaddafi's efforts to form a united Arab force continued thereafter; again and again there were plans to found an Arab legion. According to the Libyan press, their goal would be to field around 1 million male and female fighters for the "Great Arab Battle": the battle for the liberation of Palestine, overcoming the reactionary regimes, destroying the borders, gates and obstacles between the countries of the Arab population and Creation of a single Arab People's Republic (Arabic: Jamahiriya , in another spelling also 'Jamahiriya') from the ocean to the Gulf . In March 1985 it was announced that the National Command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces had been established in the Arab nation, with Gaddafi as its leader. Smaller radical Arab groups from Lebanon, Tunisia , Sudan, Iraq , the Gulf States and Jordan were represented at the establishment, as well as MPs from the Syrian Baath Party and radical Palestinian groups. It is estimated that each of these participants designated approximately 10 percent of their men for service under the new command. Until April 1987 there was no information about the existence of this militia.
Web links
swell
- Azam, J.-P., C. Morrisson, S. Chauvin & S. Rospabé: Conflict and Growth in Africa . OECD , 1999, ISBN 92-64-17101-0 .
- 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: Military Marxist Regimes in Africa . Routledge , 1986, ISBN 0-7146-3295-3 .
- Nolutshungu, Sam C .: Limits of Anarchy: Intervention and State Formation in Chad . University of Virginia Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8139-1628-3 .
- Prunier, Gérard , Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide , Cornell University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8014-4450-0
- Simons, Geoff: Libya and the West: From Independence to Lockerbie . IB Tauris , 2004, ISBN 1-86064-988-2 .
- Thomson, Janice E .: Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe . Princeton University Press , 1996, ISBN 0-691-02571-1 .
- Wright, John: Libya, Chad and the Central Sahara . C. Hurst & Co., 1989, ISBN 1-85065-050-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ S. Nolutshungu, Limits of Anarchy , p. 127
- ^ Leader of the Revolution. Gaddafi is gathering new troops of mercenaries - his "Islamic Legion" is supposed to fight in Chad. In: Spiegel Online . Retrieved June 10, 2018 .
- ↑ Prunier, pp. 43-45
- ↑ Flint and de Waal: Darfur: A Short History of a Long War , p. 23
- ↑ a b S. Nolutshungu, p. 220
- ↑ J. Thomson: Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns , p. 91
- ↑ J.-P. Azam et al., Conflict and Growth in Africa , p. 168
- ↑ G. Simons, Libya and the West , p. 57
- ^ J. Wright, Libya , p. 140
- ↑ J. Markakis & M. Waller, Military Marxist Regimes , p. 73
- ↑ Prunier, pp. 61-65
- ↑ London Review of Books Vol26
- ↑ Terrorism Monitor Vol3 ( Memento of the original from October 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ J.-P. Azam et al., P. 14th
