1981 in Libya

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See also:	Other events of 1981 ; List of years in Libya

Last updated April 02, 2019

The following lists events that happened during 1981 in Libya .

1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1981st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 981st year of the 2nd millennium, the 81st year of the 20th century, and the 2nd year of the 1980s decade.

Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. The sovereign state is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the fourth largest country in Africa, and is the 16th largest country in the world. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over one million of Libya's six million people. The second-largest city is Benghazi, which is located in eastern Libya.

Incumbents

Jadallah Azzuz at-Talhi is a Libyan diplomat and politician who served as prime minister of Libya for two terms.

Events

January

6 January - a joint communiqué is issued that Libya and Chad had decided "to work to achieve full unity between the two countries". The merger plan caused strong adverse reactions internationally.

Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in north-central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. It is the fifth largest country in Africa and the second-largest in Central Africa in terms of area.

May

May 6 - Citing Libya's support of international terrorism, the United States ordered the closure of the Libyan Embassy in Washington, D.C. Ambassador Ali Houderi was summoned to the U.S. State Department, and told to withdraw the 27 diplomats and their families within one week. The U.S. Embassy in Libya had closed in 1980. Diplomatic relations were restored in 2004.^[1]

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

August

19 August - a naval dogfight occurred over the Gulf of Sirte. US F-14 Tomcat jets shot down two Libyan aircraft.

In the first Gulf of Sidra incident, 19 August 1981, two Russian made Libyan Su-22 Fitter fired upon and were subsequently shot down by two U.S. F-14 Tomcats off the Libyan coast.

October

29 October - withdrawal of Libyan forces from Chadian territory, completed by 16 November. The Libyans were to be replaced by an OAU Inter-African Force (IAF).

The Chadian–Libyan conflict was a series of sporadic clashes in Chad between 1978 and 1987 between Libyan and Chadian forces. Libya had been involved in Chad's internal affairs prior to 1978 and before Muammar Gaddafi's rise to power in Libya in 1969, beginning with the extension of the Chadian Civil War to northern Chad in 1968. The conflict was marked by a series of four separate Libyan interventions in Chad, taking place in 1978, 1979, 1980–1981 and 1983–1987. In all of these occasions Gaddafi had the support of a number of factions participating in the civil war, while Libya's opponents found the support of the French government, which intervened militarily to save the Chadian government in 1978, 1983 and 1986.

Launch of the second Five-Year Economic and Social Transformation Plan (1982-1987)

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UTA Flight 772 was a scheduled international passenger flight of the French airline Union de Transports Aériens operating from Brazzaville in the People's Republic of the Congo, via N'Djamena in Chad, to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris that crashed into the Ténéré desert, near Bilma, Niger after an in-flight explosion in September 1989 with 170 people on board. It is the deadliest aviation incident to occur in Niger and the fourth-deadliest involving a DC-10, after Air New Zealand Flight 901, American Airlines Flight 191, and Turkish Airlines Flight 981.

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Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai'i, known by the alias Abu Anas al-Libi, was a Libyan under indictment in the United States for his part in the 1998 United States embassy bombings. He worked as a computer specialist for al-Qaeda. He was an ethnic Libyan, born in Tripoli.

Muammar Gaddafi became the de facto leader of Libya on 1 September 1969 after leading a group of young Libyan military officers against King Idris I in a bloodless coup d'état. After the king had fled the country, the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) headed by Gaddafi abolished the monarchy and the old constitution and established the Libyan Arab Republic, with the motto "freedom, socialism and unity".

Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York. On 21 December 1988, N739PA, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew – a disaster known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 people on the ground. With a total of 270 people killed, it was the deadliest terror attack in the history of the United Kingdom.

The Libyan–Egyptian War was a short border war between Libya and Egypt in July 1977.

Laurence Everett Pope II is an American diplomat. He was the United States Ambassador to Chad from 1993 to 1996 and former US Chargé d’Affaires to Libya. Pope held a number of senior posts in the Department of State. He was the Director for Northern Gulf Affairs (1987–1990), Associate Director for Counter-Terrorism (1991–1993), U.S. Ambassador to Chad (1993–1996), and Political Advisor to General Zinni USMC, Commander-in-Chief of United States Central Command (1997–2000).

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References

↑ Brent L. Smith, Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams (SUNY Press, 1994) p. 141; "Libyans told to leave US", Milwaukee Sentinel, May 7, 1981, p. 2.

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[1] Brent L. Smith, Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams (SUNY Press, 1994) p. 141; "Libyans told to leave US", Milwaukee Sentinel, May 7, 1981, p. 2.

v t e 1981 in Africa
Sovereign states	Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Republic of the Congo Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Ethiopia Gabon The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Niger Nigeria Rwanda São Tomé and Príncipe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa South-West Africa Sudan Swaziland Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Upper Volta Zambia Zaire Zimbabwe
States with limited recognition	Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
Dependencies, colonies and other territories	Ascension Island Mayotte Réunion Saint Helena Tristan da Cunha Western Sahara