Muammar Muhmmad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (1942-21 October 2011) was the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1969 to 2011. Taking power in a 1969 coup that overthrew the Kingdom of Libya, Gaddafi became a ruthless dictator who supported both the Soviet Union and Arab/Palestinian terrorists. He was overthrown and killed in the Libyan Civil War in 2011.
Biography[]
Gaddafi in the 1970s
Gaddafi was born to an impoverished Berber goat herder and became involved in politics while in Sabha in school. He enrolled in the Royal Military Academy and became a Colonel in the Libyan Army, before founding a revolutionary cell in the army and seizing power from King Idris I of Libya in 1969. He became the leader of the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and proclaimed the Libyan Arab Republic in its stead, with himself as the President.
President/Colonel Gaddafi sought to remove Western capitalism from his country, allying with the communist Soviet Union and proclaiming Libya an "Islamic socialist" nation. Sharia was made the basis for the legal system and nationalized oil companies to fund his army. In 1977, Gaddafi replaced the Libyan Arab Republic with the "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya", ruled much in the same style, through an authoritarian, fascist and socialist dictatorship. He waged a war with Chad in the 1980s, but failed to take over the country. Gaddafi also formed a union between Libya and Syria briefly, but this quickly broke down.
The Colonel believed that if he could not spread Islamic terrorism, he would support it. Gaddafi gave shelter to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and other terrorist groups who were anti-Israel and anti-United States, and was directly held responsible for a bombing in a Berlin nightclub that killed 29 American servicement in 1986. At the same time, Libya came under attack by the US Navy after Gaddafi attempted to protect international waters as his water. In Operation Eldorado Canyon, the USAF bombed Libya in revenge for the discotheque bombing in Berlin, having broken through "The Line of Death" (the line marking Gaddafi's claims to Libyan waters) in the Second Battle of the Gulf of Sidra. Libya was also held responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, in which a Pan American Airlines flight was bombed, killing all aboard the plane in addition to many people on the ground below in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland.
From 1999, Gaddafi sought better relations with the west, and paid his debts to the families of the Berlin discotheque dead. He also admitted to many terror attacks, and from then on encouraged pan-African integration and economic privatization. As he took steps towards democracy, Libya slowly became a much more integrated nation.
However, in 2011 riots in neighboring Tunisia spread to Libya, whose people were tired of their long-time dictator. The National Transitional Council (NTC) began an insurgency that started the Libyan Civil War in early 2011, and Gaddafi and his sons commanded the Libyan Army against the Free Libyan Army. When he violated a UN No-Fly Zone created by UN Security Council Resolution 1973, the United States and several European and Arab nations began Operation Freedom Falcon, a collection of smaller operations (USA's Operation Odyssey Dawn, France's Operation Harmattan, etc.) that involved the bombing of Libya to aid the rebels. In the end, Gaddafi's army was weakened by the bombings, defeats, and desertion, and on 21 October 2011 Gaddafi was captured in the Battle of Sirte along with his son Mutassim Gaddafi. His Minister of Defense, Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr was killed by a grenade blast, and his son was mortally wounded.
Death[]
The "King of Kings" by Gerd Mosbach, depicting the death of Gaddafi
A wounded Gaddafi was taken prisoner by National Transitional Council rebels, with a militiaman from Misrata stabbing him in the anus with a knife and beating him savagely. He was pulled onto a pickup truck but fell off as it pulled away from the scene; he was dead at that point. His corpse, along with those of Yunis Jabr and Mutassim Gadaffi, were publicly displayed, with his body being mutilated and hanged in public.