Ma'tan as-Sarra

Ma'tan as-Sarra is an oasis in the Al Kufrah municipality in the southeast corner of Libya. It is located in the Libyan Desert, 200 miles southeast of Kufra. A marginal oasis, with few palms and substandard water, it allowed the creation in 1811 of the last trans-Saharan caravan route. However, it historically has been little visited by Toubou and Zaghawa nomads.Burr, J. Millard and Robert O. Collins, "Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster", Markus Wiener Publishers: Princeton, 2006, ISBN 1-55876-405-4, p. 111]

In 1934, Ma'tan as-Sarra was turned over as part of the Sara Triangle to Italy by the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, who considered the area worthless sand and a cheap appeasement to Benito Mussolini's attempts at empire.

In 1972, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi felt that Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan had betrayed the Arab cause by signing the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement ending the civil war. He thus established a base at Ma'tan as-Sarra to stockpile weapons and as a staging area for Sudanese insurgents, who were trained at the bases at al-Judda'im and Ma'sar Ra's near Tripoli.Burr and Collins, 2006, p. 137] In July 1976, one thousand followers of Sudanese opposition leader Sadiq al-Mahdi left the oasis and stormed Khartoum after crossing northern Darfur and Kordofan. al-Mahdi's force was defeated only after a tank battalion struck into the city after three days of heavy fighting.

Libya also established Maaten al-Sarra Air Base, which was heavily used during the Chadian-Libyan conflict (1978-1987). The base was subject to a highly successful raid in September 1987 by the Chadian army that contributed to the signing of a ceasefire the same month.

References