A virtual guide to Libya, a country in North Africa's Maghreb region. About 90% of the country is covered by the Libyan desert (part of the Sahara) where agriculture and therefore life is possible only in a few scattered oases.

The fourth-largest country in Africa is about the size of Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and the UK combined. Libya's main population centres are spread along the more fertile strip at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

Background:
Since he took power in a 1969 military coup, Col. Muammar Abu Minyar al-QADHAFI has espoused his own political system - a combination of socialism and Islam - which he called the Third International Theory. Viewing himself as a revolutionary leader, he used oil funds during the 1970s and 1980s to promote his ideology outside Libya, even supporting subversives and terrorists abroad to hasten the end of Marxism and capitalism.

Libyan military adventures failed, e.g., the prolonged foray of Libyan troops into the Aozou Strip in northern Chad was finally repulsed in 1987. Libyan support for terrorism decreased after UN sanctions were imposed in 1992. Those sanctions were suspended in April 1999.

The unrest that began in several Middle Eastern and North African countries in late 2010 erupted in Libyan cities in early 2011. QADHAFI's crackdown on protesters spawned a civil war that triggered UN authorization of air and naval intervention by the international community. QADHAFI's regime was toppled in mid-2011 and replaced by a transitional government.