Photo Essay: How Qaddafi Got His Groove Back

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Photo Essay: How Qaddafi Got His Groove Back

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Posted September 2008  

Long before anyone had ever heard the name Osama bin Laden, Lt. Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was the West’s public enemy No. 1. Now, after a historic visit from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the world wonders if the bizarre Libyan strongman is truly a changed man.

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Qaddafi’s redemption: Scorned for decades as an erratic, megalomaniacal dictator, Libyan leader Lt. Col Muammar el-Qaddafi has given up his weapons of mass destruction, renounced terrorism, welcomed Western oil companies, vowed to reform his country’s statist economy, and promised to put Libya on a democratic path. But is the bad boy of international politics truly capable of change?

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Rebel with a cause: The most—perhaps the only—humble moment of Qaddafi’s life was his birth in 1942, as the only child of a family in the animal-herding Qaddafa tribe of Libya. From his youth, Qaddafi admired then Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, an anticolonialist and Palestinian sympathizer. Muammar’s student years were spent organizing fervent protests that got him kicked out of school, and setting up a Libyan chapter of the left-leaning Free Officers movement that would soon catapult him into political power. In 1969, the 27-year-old Qaddafi led a handful of fellow members in a successful coup against the ruling King Idris.

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Arab dreams: From his first moment in power, Qaddafi focused much of his attention abroad. A proclaimed believer in Arab nationalism, Qaddafi sought to make himself a power broker in Middle Eastern and African affairs—even hoping to unify the Arab world during consultation with Egypt and Sudan in 1970. His interventionist tendencies often took Libya to the brink of war, occupying parts of Chad from 1973 to 1987 and feuding with Egypt over its growing Israeli ties in 1977. Above, Qaddafi with Nasser in 1969.

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Eastern promise: Armed with Nasser’s anticolonial doctrine, Qaddafi also became a fast ally of the Soviet Union, which recognized his revolutionary government just three days after King Idris was overthrown. Qaddafi’s Soviet relationship provided quick access to weapons and diplomatic ties with other nonaligned states, further distancing him from an increasingly skeptical United States. Today, Libya retains a Soviet air, boasting large city squares and massive housing projects. Above, Qaddafi with Soviet leaders in 1976.

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Green revolution: Qaddafi’s unusual ideology is most concretely laid out in his Green Book, written in the mid-1970s and found today in several languages, including Russian, Arabic, and English. With it, Qaddafi sought to create a nation of “Green Minds,” believing in Third Universal Theory, or Jamahiriya, an odd mix of Islam and populist democracy. “Countries like the United States, India, China, the Russian Federation are in bad need of this Jamahiriya system,” he advised in 2006.

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Personality cult goes a long way: Although Qaddafi never explicitly sought or claimed a title in his new government, he grew a cult of personality that turned him into “the leader” whose name is only cautiously mentioned on the streets. Qaddafi famously rejects electoral democracy, favoring instead what he believes is true democratic governance: a leader of the people, such as himself. In the West, Qaddafi writes, voters “move silently toward the ballot box, like the beads in a rosary, to cast their votes in the same way that they throw rubbish in dustbins.”

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Bad company: Qaddafi’s dream of Arab unity brought him into close relations with Syria, Algeria, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), all of which rejected peaceful efforts to negotiate with Israel. During a turbulent 1970s and 1980s, Qaddafi was accused of financing terrorist operations that culminated in the La Belle nightclub bombing in Germany, a popular spot for U.S. soldiers in the region. In 1989, France accused Libya of involvement in bringing down a flight carrying French nationals from Brazzaville, Congo, to N’Djamena, Chad. Above, Qaddafi is seated with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid, and PLO leader Yasir Arafat in 1989.

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When Muammar met Ronald: With Qaddafi’s influence and interference growing in the region, the United States became increasingly worried about his regime. U.S. President Ronald Reagan, determined in his conviction that Qaddafi was a “mad dog” of Africa, closed the U.S. Embassy in 1980 and shot down Libyan planes over disputed territory in the Gulf of Sidra. Just 15 days after Reagan bombed the capital, Tripoli, and the city of Benghazi in 1986 in retaliation for the La Belle bombings and new terrorist attacks on Israeli air counters in Rome and Vienna (for which the American president blamed Libya’s leader), Qaddafi responded by throwing a press event on the birthday of Nasser. “Shit, shit on Reagan,” shouted an angry audience at the event.

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Revenge on a plane: It was in 1988 that Qaddafi took on his most notorious intervention. On December 21, Pan American Flight 103 went down after an in-air bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Almost immediately, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya, even as Qaddafi denied responsibility, refusing to turn over the suspects indicted in British and U.S. courts. Above, a piece of the explosive device that brought down the plane.