Muammar Gaddafi

Muammar Gaddafi

Tony Blair visited Gaddafi at his luxurious Bedouin tent after sanctions were lifted

Gaddafi was a huge admirer of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, who led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952

• Born in Sirte, Libya 7 June 1942
• Attended military academy in Libya, Greece and the UK
• Seized power on 1 September 1969
• The Green Book published in 1975
• Married twice, with seven sons and one daughter

Muammar Abu Meniar el-Gaddafi was born in the North African desert, south of Sirte, Libya, in 1942 (the exact date is unknown; some sources day June 1, while others say sometime in September). The son of a poor Bedouin nomad, Gaddafi lived in his family's remote desert camp until he went away to school at age 9.

While a student at a secondary school at Sebha, Gaddafi was inspired by the speeches of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and became a committed Arab nationalist. Gaddafi organized his fellow students into revolutionary study groups at Sebha; he continued the practice at the University of Libya in Tripoli, where he received a history degree in 1963. Following his graduation, Gaddafi entered the Libyan Military Academy in Benghazi, where he found many of the cadets were sympathetic to his anti-Western nationalism.

Commissioned into the Libyan army in 1965, he began laying groundwork for an overthrow of the Libyan monarch, King Idris, whom he considered a pawn of the Western European nations. Within four years Gaddafi took control of the army and on September 1, 1969, he seized power in a carefully planned coup. Assuming command of the government as chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Council, Gaddafi declared himself commander-in-chief of Libya's armed forces and its government, with the rank of colonel. Gaddafi soon began implementing his long-dreamed plans for Libya by nationalizing all foreign banks and oil companies and insisting on closing down all European military bases in Libya. In 1970 Gaddafi seized the private assets of Libya's Italian and Jewish residents, driving them from the country.

Since assuming power, Gaddafi has given strong support to a wide variety of terrorist groups and regimes, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Uganda, the Palestine Liberation Organization and its sub-groups, and the Irish Republican Army. Heavily supported by the Soviet Union, he fought an unsuccessful war against Egypt and a disastrous war against Chad and its ally France for control of the northern regions of the country. In an attempt to drive French forces out of the country Gadaffi sent an invasion force into Chad, only to see it annihilated by the poorly armed, minimally trained but highly motivated Chadian army. The survivors fled back to Libya, leaving behind large numbers of vehicles, equipment and weapons.

Gaddafi has provoked several incidents with the US, one of which led to an American retaliatory bombing raid on his headquarters in Tripoli on April 15, 1986. Gaddafi escaped with only minor injuries but his infant daughter was killed. In 1988 Libyan intelligence agents exploded a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing over 200 people.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US, Gaddafi worked to improve his relationship with the West. In exchange for his help in tracking down Islamic militants his government received concessions from the West, including the easing of various restrictions placed against it due to his terrorism of the 1980s.

In 2011, as part of the "Arab Spring", major civil unrest broke out in Libya aimed at removing Gaddafi from power. Gaddafi began a violent and repressive campaign against his own people and a civil war ensued, with Gaddafi forces on one side and rebels--a combination of students, ordinary people and army defectors-with air and logistical support from NATO, on the other. After an eight-month civil war, Gaddafi was captured by rebels in his hometown of Serte and soon afterward he was executed.

Safia Farkash	(1970 - 20 October 2011) (his death) 9 children
Fatiha al-Nuri	(1968 - 1970) (divorced) 1 child

Trivia
Overthrew the monarchy of Libya in the so-called "Green Revolution" in 1969, establishing a socialist Arab state under his leadership.
Was once (as a child) publicly slapped by one of his teachers. Many say that this is the source of his resentment for academics, apparent in many of his speeches and essays.
Libya's dictator from 1969 to 2011.
Wrote "The Green Book".
His eldest son, Saif al-Islam, was expected to be Libya's next president.
His son Saadi was a professional football player in Italy for a while.
In a quite eerie coincidence, the year of his death had been predicted by a 1980s sitcom "Second Chance" (1987). The pilot episode of the show which aired in 1987 featured the ex-Libyan leader as one of the people showing up in Saint Peter's Office on July 29, 2011 to be judged whether he will go to hell or heaven.

Personal Quotes

Those who do not love me do not deserve to live.
We will not surrender, we are not women, we will keep fighting.

Rebellion
When the winds of revolt started to blow through the Arab world from Tunisia in December 2010, Libya was not at the top of most people's list of "who's next".

The combination of water and oil gave Libya a sound economic platform

Gaddafi fitted the bill as an authoritarian ruler who had endured for more years than the vast majority of his citizens could remember. But he was not so widely perceived as a western lackey as other Arab leaders, accused of putting outside interests before the interests of their own people.
He had redistributed wealth - although the enrichment of his own family from oil revenues and other deals was hard to ignore and redistribution was undertaken more in the spirit of buying loyalty than promoting equality.
He sponsored grand public works, such as the improbable Great Man-Made River project, a massive endeavour inspired, perhaps, by ancient Bedouin water procurement techniques, that brought sweet, fresh water from aquifers in the south to the arid north of his country.
There was even something of a Tripoli Spring, with long-term exiles given to understand that they could return without facing persecution or jail.
When the first calls for a Libyan "day of rage" were circulated, Gaddafi pledged - apparently in all seriousness - to protest with the people, in keeping with his myth of being the "brother leader of the revolution" who had long ago relinquished power to the people.
As it turned out, the scent of freedom and the draw of possibly toppling the colonel, just as Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali had been toppled, was too strong to resist among parts of the Libyan population, especially in the east.
Some of the first footage of rebellion to come out of Benghazi showed incensed young Libyans outside an official building smashing up a green monolith representing the spurious liberation doctrine that had kept them enslaved since the 1970s - the Green Book.
As the uprising spread, and the seriousness of the threat to his rule became apparent, Gaddafi showed he had lost none of the ruthlessness directed against dissidents and exiles in the 1970s and 1980s.
This time it was turned on whole towns and cities where people had dared to tear down his posters and call for his downfall. Regular troops and mercenaries nearly overwhelmed the rag-tag rebels, consisting of military deserters and ill-trained militiamen brought together under the banner of the National Transitional Council (NTC). The colonel could afford to dismiss them as wayward 17-year-olds, "given pills at night, hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe".
The intervention of Nato on the rebels' side in March, authorised by a UN resolution calling for the protection of civilians, prevented their seemingly imminent annihilation - but it was months before they could turn the situation to their advantage.
Then came the fall of Tripoli and Gaddafi went into hiding, still claiming his people were behind him and promising success against the "occupiers" and "collaborators". His dictatorial regime had finally crumbled, but many feared that he might remain at large to orchestrate an insurgency.
He met his ignominious and grisly end, when NTC forces found him hiding in a tunnel following a Nato air strike on his convoy as he tried to make a break from his last stronghold, the city of Sirte, where it had all begun.
The exact circumstances of his death remain in dispute, either "killed in crossfire", summarily executed, or lynched and dragged through the streets by jubilant, battle-hardened fighters.
Though it meant the Libyan people - and other victims around the world - were robbed of proper justice, the news sparked wild celebrations across his former domain that nearly 42 years of rule and misrule had truly come to a close.

On democracy and opposition

"There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet"
"In the Middle East, the opposition is quite different than the opposition in advanced countries. In our countries, the opposition takes the form of explosions, assassinations, killings "