ABSTRACT
Libya proclaimed its independence in December 1951, less than a decade after the expulsion of the Italians. As late as 1960, Libya was still one of the poorest independent Arab countries. The most significant political reality of sovereign Libya was the dominant role of the beduin tribes of Cyrenaica, who in 1954 made up about 45 per cent of the district’s population of 291,000. The Cyrenaicans had suffered most from Italian imperialism since they had resisted stubbornly the Fascist attempt to consolidate Italian power in the colony. The beduin in Libya were Sunni or orthodox Muslims. But a majority of the tribes of Cyrenaica in the past had claimed membership in the Sanusiyah, a Sunni mystical order with an appeal for the restoration of the original purity of the faith. The organization of Libyan military resistance was thus essentially a Cyrenaican effort, even though the volunteers forming the five infantry battalions were called the Libyan Arab Force.
