uniting Libya and Tunisia

Welcome, Kaiser, and great post! :)

I'd never heard of this. Well, let's look at what the always-reliable wiki says on why it didn't happen OTL:

Failure of the Djerba Declaration

Although it is unknown why exactly the Djerba Declaration dissipated before even being put to referendum, several theories have been put forth. To begin, there were fundamental ideological differences between the way in which Tunisia and Libya were governed. Bourguiba's Tunisia was a committed to liberalization and the secularization of Tunisia, modeled after the French colonial example. Education was a top priority for him, as were women's rights, state-run health care, and building the country's infrastructure. For these reasons he has been compared to Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Qaddafi, on the other hand, ran a more Fundamentalist Islamic state. He did not want the secularization and westernization of his nation, and he was politically very anti-Western.
As a consequence of the ideological differences, there was also a considerable divergence as to what the merger would look like. As understood by Bourguiba, the states themselves would not dissipate, but rather their borders would become "cooperatively permeable" through "functional integration,"[18] in a similar manner to the contemporary Arab Maghrib Union, formed over a decade later. Conversely, Qaddafi was more interested in a complete merging of Libya and Tunisia into the Arab Islamic Republic. He saw Libya as a revolutionary movement rather than a territorial state. Qaddafi felt that they were one people, and that the borders were only a product of the ruling elites and imperialist divides by conquerors.[18]
Finally, there were the regional political difficulties. As has been mentioned before, Libyan-Egyptian relations were steadily deteriorating following 1973. In light of the reduced Egyptian threat, Algeria felt it no longer necessary and even undesirable to merge with Libya and was not in favour of Tunisia doing so either.[19] Thus, within twenty four hours of the Republic's announcement, Algeria threatened Tunisia with military intervention if Tunisia went ahead with the unification.[20] There were also accusations of Tunisian foreign ministers being bribed by Libya. Whatever the case may be, the unification of Libya never ended up happening and relations between the two countries steadily deteriorated.



Sounds like with the right geopolitical POD you could make it happen. Also, butterflying Qadaffi couldn't hurt.



The resultant AIR could either stabilize or destabilize the NA balance of power depending on Egypt and Algeria.



I wonder how a secularized oil-rich state in NA might affect things sociopolitically, particularly if Tripoli attempts to recapture its tourism role from the Italian colonial and British protectorate periods of the early to mid 20th?
 

yourworstnightmare

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Perhaps if Tunisia had been an Italian colony, Tunisia and Libya could have gotten their independence together after WW2 and enter a federation.
 
Meh, the ole Brother Leader tried to form lots of these, with Egypt, with Tunisia, Algeria, Syria... none of them had really good chances, they were all really based on Gaddafis personality cult.
 
Actually I am not quite sure if there could be only Tunisia&Libya, or should it also be Algeria.
Butterflying Qadafi at first sounds good, but I thought of getting him on lesser position, after some time people of the new state get disapointed and vote for him right around time when George W. Bush is president in the US, and them accusing him of possesing nuclear weapon.
Sounds too ASB or not?
Any suggestions and opinions are welcomed.
 
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