Libya - The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi

by Alison Pargeter

  How Libya will navigate its way through this myriad of complexities remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the path will be long and difficult. Getting over a leader as all-encompassing as Qaddafi is not going to be easy. While he may have resembled other dictators, the Colonel was also utterly unique. He was a ruler like no other in the contemporary era. From his outspoken and bizarre world view, to his unstinting dedication to furthering his revolution, to his boundless self-confidence and his reckless fearlessness in dragging the country through one foreign policy exploit after another, there has been no one else quite like him. He was also a man who managed to make four decades of Libya's history read like his own biography.

  Yet for all his eccentricities, as well as the ridicule he often inspired, underneath the showman was a shrewd leader who knew his people well. This simple Bedouin, who had come from nothing and who was inspired by the harsh beauty of the deserts he so loved, learned quickly how to manipulate the intricacies of Libya to his advantage. His ability to do so meant that for more than forty years this ‘prophet’ of the Jamahiriyah held the whole country in the palm of his hand. If it had not been for the outside intervention of NATO forces, Qaddafi would most likely still be in power today, or still in control of Tripoli, at least. The Qaddafi dynasty would have lived on.

  In the end, however, the Brother Leader's worst fears were realized. He was destroyed by his own, with the help of the Western powers he had spent his life railing against. When it came, the end was brutal and inglorious. He left nothing in his wake; all that he had striven for was reduced to dust, his beloved Jamahiriyah relegated to the unforgiving rubbish heap of history. Worse, for all the years he had dedicated to the cause of pan-Arabism – his ultimate dream – it was only with his death that Libya felt it could finally take its rightful place in the Arab world. It is a sad legacy for a man who genuinely believed that he had the solution not only to the problems of Libya, but to the ills of all mankind.

  Never were there more apt words than those of Percy Bysshe Shelley:

  I met a traveller from an antique land

  Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

  And on the pedestal these words appear:

  ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  (‘Ozymandias’)

  Endnotes

  Introduction

  1. Telephone interview with Mohamed Abdelmalik, European Representative of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, November 2011.

  2. Yossi Melman, The Master Terrorist: The true story behind Abu Nidal, Mama Books, New York, 1986, p. 3.

  3. Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi – A life in fashion’, Vanity Fair, 12 August 2009, available at: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/qaddafi-slideshow200908#

  Chapter 1: Land of the Conquered

  1. Angelo Piccioli, The Magic Gate of the Sahara, Dar Al-Fergani, Tripoli, undated, p. 1.

  2. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, Al-Qaddafi and the 4000-Day Journey of Secret Work, unknown publisher, Benghazi, undated, p. 82.

  3. Herodotus, The Histories, Book Four, 174, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, p. 294.

  4. ibid., 187, p. 298.

  5. ibid.

  6. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State formation, colonization and resistance, 1830–1932, State University of New York Press, New York, 1994, p. 17.

  7. ibid.

  8. The Ottomans seized the port from the Knights of Malta, who had been given it as a present by the Spanish, who had invaded and occupied it five years earlier. Indeed, by this time the Tripoli coast was becoming prey to the European naval powers, which were extending their reach down into the southern Mediterranean.

  9. Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p. 16.

  10. In 1850 even the main population centres were very sparsely populated. Tripoli city and Misarata had 12,000 inhabitants each, and Benghazi and Derna only 5,000 (Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, p. 15).

  11. Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1954, p. 4.

  12. Piccioli, pp. 50–51.

  13. Evans-Pritchard, p. 4.

  14. ibid.

  15. The Order courted the most important Bedouin sheikhs of the area in order to get their permission to build a lodge, which required a community and land that could provide food, water and transportation. These lodges were not insignificant constructions. Among other things, they had to comprise a mosque, a school, residents' quarters and lodgings for guests. In order to convince the local tribesmen to host such a zawiya the Sanussi ensured that, once built, every zawiya became the public property of the tribe. In this way the zawiyas became centres for tribal unity – something that fostered greater loyalty to the Order (Mohamed Yousef Al-Magarief, Libya Bayn Al-Madi Wal-Hadir: Safahat min Al-Tarikh Al-Siyasi [Libya Past and Present: Chapters in political history], Part 1, Volume 1, Centre for Libyan Studies, Oxford, 2004, p. 68).

  16. George Joffe, ‘Qadhafi's Islam in local historical perspective’ in Dirk Vandewalle (ed.), Qadhafi's Libya, 1969–1994, St Martin's Press, New York, 1995, p. 143.

  17. Lisa Anderson, ‘Nineteenth-century reform in Ottoman Libya’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 16:3 (1984), pp. 325–48.

  18. Some of the locals welcomed this new commercial presence, seeing it as a refreshing alternative to the years of Ottoman domination. This included some wealthy merchants from Tripoli's Jewish community who dominated the import-export trade with Italy and who spoke Italian, as well as rich Libyan trading families, such as the Muntasirs, from Misarata. Most, however, were less enamoured with this Italian encroachment on their territory.

  19. The Italians met with greater success in Tripolitania, where there was no such organized or unified force that could repel the foreign invaders. Although there was a resistance force in Tripoli (which in 1913 comprised some 15,000 fighters), these forces were weak and undermined by factionalism among urban notables, as well as by the continued collaboration of some wealthy locals with Italian forces. The situation in the Fezzan was complicated by the presence of French troops, which had tried to expand their presence in Africa up into Borku and Tibetsi, the area that straddles Chad and Libya. Moreover, the Italians struggled against the local tribes and, despite triumphing over the main oases in the south in 1913, were pushed out by the end of the following year.

  20. Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, pp. 28–29.

  21. John Wright, Libya: A modern history, Croom Helm, London and Canberra, 1981, p. 35.

  22. Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya, p. 42.

  23. J. Wright, p. 37.

  24. Quoted in ibid., p. 38.

  25. William N. Connor, The English at War, Secker & Warburg, London, 1941, p. 45.

  26. Freya Stark, The Coast of Incense, John Murray, London, 1953, p. 163.

  27. In 1939 there were estimated to be some 14,000 Libyan exiles in Egypt, most of them semi-nomadic, impoverished and utterly miserable, who were desperate to return to their homeland (V. Peniakoff, Popski's Private Army, Jonathan Cape, London, 1950, p. 26).

  28. K. S. Sandford, Lord Tweedsmuir, W. B. Fisher, H. J. Fleure, L. M. Kiral, St John Cook, A. M. Frood, ‘Problems of Modern Libya: Discussion’, Geographical Journal, 119: 2 (June 1953).

  29. Quoted in Al-Magarief, Libya Bayn Al-Madi Wal-Hadir, p. 300.

/>   30. Nina Epton, ‘Libya on the eve’, Spectator, 13 October 1950.

  31. Jane P. C. Carey and Andrew G. Carey, ‘Libya: No longer “Arid Nurse of Lions” ’, Political Science Quarterly, 76:1 (March 1961).

  Chapter 2: Ripe for Revolution

  1. The white crescent and star design on a black background was based on the banner of the Sanussi order, while the red strip represented Fezzan and the green represented Tripolitania.

  2. Mohamed Yousef Al-Magarief, Libya Bayn Al-Madi Wal-Hadir: Safahat min Al-Tarikh Al-Siyasi [Libya Past and Present: Chapters in political history], Part 1, Volume 1, Centre for Libyan Studies, Oxford, 2004, p. 280.

  3. Jane P. C. Carey and Andrew G. Carey, ‘Libya: No longer “Arid Nurse of Lions” ’, Political Science Quarterly, 76:1 (March 1961).

  4. Al-Wasat magazine, Issue 194, 16 October 1995.

  5. Alec Kirkbride, ‘Libya – which way facing?’, African Affairs, 56:22 (1957).

  6. ibid.

  7. Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1954, p. 155.

  8. Al-Magarief, Libya Bayn Al-Madi Wal-Hadir, p. 244.

  9. Alison Pargeter, ‘Anglo-Libyan relations and the Suez Crisis’, Journal of North African Studies, 5:2 (Summer 2000).

  10. Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p. 50.

  11. Pargeter, ‘Anglo-Libyan relations and the Suez Crisis’.

  12. Evans-Pritchard, p. 156.

  13. Ruth First, Libya: The elusive revolution, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1974, p. 80.

  14. The National Congress had expected to secure a landslide victory in the west of the country. However, when the results were announced the government had secured forty-four out of the fifty-five seats on offer, and while the party had done well in urban constituencies in the west, it had failed to win any real support in the Tripolitanian hinterlands. While this was most likely because the party's progressive political platform went way beyond the comprehension and aspiration of most rural folk, to whom the king's more traditional style of ruling was probably far more reassuring, the party cried ‘foul’ and took to the streets to protest.

  15. Mustafa Ahmed Ben Halim, Libya: The years of hope, AAS Media Publishers, London, 1995, p. 61.

  16. Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, p. 63.

  17. ibid., p. 72.

  18. Carey and Carey.

  19. John Wright, Libya: A modern history, Croom Helm, London and Canberra, 1981, p. 100.

  20. H. M. Bulugma, Benghazi through the Ages, unidentified publisher, 1972, p. 69.

  21. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State formation, colonization and resistance, 1830–1932, State University of New York Press, New York, 1994, p. 79.

  22. PREM 11/1148, Tripoli to Foreign Office, 4 August 1956.

  23. FO 371/126039, Report of Meeting between King Idris and Fletcher, January 1957.

  24. Department of State, Central Files, POL LIBYA-US, Memorandum of Conversation/1/Tobruk, 30 August 1967.

  25. J. Wright, p. 103.

  26. M. Bianco, Gadafi: Voice from the desert, Longman, New York, 1975, p. 43.

  27. ‘Thawrt Al Fateh Kma Yaraha Mustafa Ben Halim, H10 [The Fateh Revolution as seen by Ben Halim, Part 10]’, undated, available at: http://www.aljazeera.net/programs/pages/bdbbd41b-d67f-48a7-8dd6-ea659576e1e1

  28. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, Al-Qaddafi and the 4000-Day Journey of Secret Work, unknown publisher, Benghazi, undated, p. 44.

  29. Department of State, Central Files, POL LIBYA-US, Memorandum of Conversation/1/Tobruk, 30 August 1967.

  30. First, p. 102.

  31. ibid.

  32. Bianco, p. 50.

  33. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, p. 98.

  34. First, p. 102.

  35. Bianco, p. 48.

  36. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, p. 19.

  37. ibid., p. 10.

  38. ibid., p. 185.

  39. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1987, p. 56.

  40. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, p. 27.

  41. ibid., p. 37.

  42. ibid., p. 237.

  43. Blundy and Lycett, p. 56.

  44. Muammar Qaddafi, Qassat Al-thawra fi libya … Asa'at Al-Ikhira [The Story of the Revolution in Libya … The Last Hours], formerly available in Arabic at: http://www.wata.cc/forums/showthread.php?t=48343 (accessed March 2009).

  45. ibid.

  46. Emhamed Magrayef was a member of Qaddafi's Revolutionary Command Council.

  47. Abdelfatah Younis Al-Obeidi joined the 2011 revolution soon after the uprising in Benghazi. He became head of the rebels' military forces until he was killed in July 2011 by one of the Islamist brigades, who, it is believed, objected to the role he had played in Qaddafi's regime.

  48. Qaddafi, Qassat Al-thawra fi libya …

  49. N. J. Dawood (trans.), The Koran, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1968.

  50. Qaddafi, Qassat Al-thawra fi libya …

  51. Bianco, p. 58.

  52. ibid., p. 53.

  53. Ben Halim, p. 54.

  54. Pargeter, ‘Anglo-Libyan relations and the Suez Crisis’.

  55. Bianco, pp. 65–6.

  Chapter 3: The Rise of the Jamahiriyah

  1. The other young revolutionaries who, along with Qaddafi, made up the RCC were: Abdelsalam Jalloud, Mustafa Kharroubi, Bashir Hawadi, Mukhtar Abdullah Qarawi, Khweildi Al-Humaidi, Mohamed Najm, Ali Awad Hamza, Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, Abdelmonem Al-Houni, Mohamed Al-Magarief and Omar Abdullah Al-Meheishi. While some of these figures were to disappear from the political scene in the first few years of the revolution, others were to play a major role at the core of Qaddafi's regime until the end.

  2. M. Bianco, Gadafi: Voice from the desert, Longman, New York, 1975, p. 4.

  3. Khalifa Mohamed Al-Tilisi, Ma'ajam Sukan Libya [Encyclopaedia of Libya's Population], Dar Al-Raban, Libya, 1991, p. 302.

  4. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1987, p. 34.

  5. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, Al-Qaddafi and the 4000-Day Journey of Secret Work, unknown publisher, Benghazi, undated, p. 80.

  6. Bianco, p. 4.

  7. Quoted in Dr Mohamed Al-Magarief, ‘Inqilab Biqiyadat Mukbur [Coup led by an informant]’, Part 12, August 2008, available in Arabic at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/adab/mugariaf/mm12088a.htm

  8. ibid.

  9. Bianco, p. 4.

  10. ibid., p. 8.

  11. Quoted in Al-Magarief, ‘Inqilab Biqiyadat Mukbur’.

  12. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, p. 77.

  13. Blundy and Lycett, p. 43.

  14. ibid., p. 44.

  15. Education Division of the Leader's Comrades Forum, p. 157.

  16. Blundy and Lycett, p. 45.

  17. Quoted in Michael Cockerell, ‘Lieutenant Gaddafi in Swinging London’, Standpoint, January/February 2012, available at: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/4254

  18. Blundy and Lycett, p. 46.

  19. ibid.

  20. Bianco, p. 25.

  21. Quoted in Ruth First, Libya: The elusive revolution, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1974, p. 121.

  22. John K. Cooley, Libyan Sandstorm: The complete account of Qaddafi's Sandstorm, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1983, p. 12.

  23. Blundy and Lycett, p. 62.

  24. ibid., p. 70.

  25. Omar I. El Fathaly and Monte Palmer, Political Development and Social Change in Libya, Lexington Books, Massachusetts, 1980, p. 130.

  26. More than 300 high-ranking police officers were detained, as were over 250 army officers who held the rank of major or above (John Wright, Libya: A Modern History, Croom Helm, London and Canberra, 1981, p. 135).

  27. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelmonem Al-Houni, Part 3’, Al-Hayat, 25 February 2011, ava
ilable at: http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/237875

  28. This was formalized in a constitutional proclamation issued on 11 December 1969, which named the RCC as the highest authority in the land and that gave it sovereign power to promulgate laws and to decide the state's general policies.

  29. Quoted in J. Wright, p. 148.

  30. Fathi Al-Deeb, Abdul Nasser Wal Thawrat Libya [Abdul Nasser and the Libyan Revolution], Dar Al-Mostaqbel Al-Arabi, Cairo, 1986, p. 253.

  31. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelmonem Al-Houni, Part 4’, Al-Hayat, 26 February 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/238228

  32. Al-Deeb, p. 253.

  33. ‘Ghassan Sherbil interviews Abdelmonem Al-Houni, Part 2’, Al-Hayat, 24 February 2011, available at: http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/237570

  34. ibid.

  35. Al-Deeb.

  36. ibid.

  37. First, p. 137.

  38. Bianco, p. 91–92.

  39. Al-Houni interview, Part 4.

  40. ibid.

  41. ibid.

  42. Blundy and Lycett, p. 85.

  43. ibid., p. 86.

  44. J. Wright, p. 180.

  45. Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, p. 85.

  46. El Fathaly and Palmer, p. 122.

  47. Mohamed Al-Magarief, ‘Safahat min Tariq al-nidham al-inquilabi fi Libya [Pages from the History of the Coup Regime in Libya]’, Libya Watanona Website, undated, available at: http://www.libya-watanona.com/adab/mugariaf/mm121010a.htm