Muammar Gaddafi: The Enigma of the 'Brother Leader'

Of all of Africa’s many charismatic, yet polarizing leaders, there is perhaps no one quite as mysterious as the late Muammar Gaddafi. The self-proclaimed “Brother Leader,” who led the North African state of Libya from his entry into power in a bloodless coup in 1969 until a shocking death in 2011, was a man who inspired deep admiration and respect in the minds of his supporters, and unprovoked feelings of intense hatred and disdain in the hearts of his detractors.

From his extravagant robes to his signature sunglasses and his band of female bodyguards, Muammar Gaddafi was as eccentric as he was enigmatic. Embraced by South African president Nelson Mandela for support for various Black liberation movements both within and outside of Africa, but labelled the “Mad Dog of the Middle East” by American President Ronald Reagan for his defiantly anti-Western foreign policies, Gaddafi’s 42-year reign as Libya’s leader would see him win the allegiance and adoration of many African leaders while simultaneously becoming a universal figure of hate all around the Western world.

To some a revolutionary and visionary hero, to others a dictator and promoter of terror, Mohammed Gaddafi was in many ways the perfect embodiment of the old adage: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

The Rise of a Revolutionary

Born in 1942 to a poor nomadic community near the Libyan city of Sirte, Muammar Gaddafi’s early years were very humble indeed. As a young man, he would develop a strong admiration for larger-than-life political figures such as France’s Charles de Gaulle and China’s Chairman Mao. However, his biggest political idol by far would be the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. A fully-fledged Arab nationalist, Nasser was a strong proponent of Pan-Arabism and his bright vision for the future was one in which all Arab countries would come together and unite to break the Western world order.

Deeply inspired by the ideas of Nasser, Gaddafi would join the Libyan Royal Academy of Benghazi, where he began the creation of a revolutionary group known as the Free Unionist Officers Movement, which would be modelled after Abdel Nasser’s Egyptian Free Officers Movement.

In September 1969, a 28-year-old Muammar Gaddafi and his band of revolutionaries successfully orchestrated a bloodless coup against the highly unpopular monarchical regime of King Idris, who had ruled the country since independence but had long been seen by many regular Libyans as deeply corrupt and overly subservient to Western interests.

Upon seizing power, the Free Unionist Officers Movement would become the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), and Muammar Gaddafi would become Colonel Gaddafi. As the leader of the RCC, Colonel Gaddafi would effectively become Libya’s de facto head of state and go on to be the single most important force in the shaping of his nation’s destiny.

The Green Book and the Jamahiriya

Following the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser shortly after the Libyan Revolution, Gaddafi would take it upon himself to fulfil his hero’s Pan-Arabian vision. All through the 70s, he would attempt to create greater political union between Arab and Islamic African states by proposing a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements between his government and the governments of Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Syria, Chad, and Morocco.

Gaddafi’s Pan-Arabian initiatives would ultimately prove unsuccessful and, after declaring that the Arab world was “finished,” he fully abandoned Pan-Arabism in favour of Pan-Africanism.

Drawing inspiration from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, Gaddafi famously documented his entire political philosophy in a three-part publication known as The Green Book, which, in theory at least, would serve as the structural underpinning of his new nation’s entire political system.

The Green Book would contain Gaddafi’s Third Universal Theory, which, according to him, was the blueprint for the creation of a perfectly egalitarian society which was free from the economic inequalities of free-market capitalism and the authoritarian tendencies of Marxist communism.
In very simple terms, Gaddafi’s Third Universal Theory could be best described as a complex mixture of ideas drawn from classical liberalism, Marxist socialism, and Islamic theology.
The philosophy would reject the widely accepted Western models of representative democracy in favour of direct democracy.

According to The Green Book, societies run by elected congressmen and members of parliament were not true democracies, as the voices of the masses were drowned out by layers and layers of complex bureaucratic processes which were completely alien to the average voter. According to Gaddafi, a truly democratic society was one in which decisions were taken not by elected legislators, but by popular congresses and committees made up of the voters themselves.

Putting Gaddafi’s political theory to the test, the Libyan state was converted in 1977 from the Libyan Arab Republic to the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which, in accordance with The Green Book, would be a direct democracy in which the Libyan people would rule themselves through 187 Basic People’s Congresses. Each of these Basic People’s Congresses would then send representatives to the General People’s Congress (GPC), which, on paper at least, would be Libya’s most powerful political unit, as all major political decisions had to be approved by it.

But while the Jamahiriya was a democratic utopia on paper thanks to its unique legislative structure, the reality would be a lot different in practice. The General People’s Congress would do nothing more than rubber-stamp all of Gaddafi’s policies, which would lead Gaddafi’s political opponents to condemn the regime as being nothing more than a dictatorship in democratic clothing.

Gaddafi’s Green Book would also place him at odds with Islamic scholars at home and abroad due to his failure to fully accept all of the tenets of Islamic Sharia Law. Gaddafi would declare Sharia Law inappropriate for the Jamahiriya, as he considered the protection of private property under Islamic Law to be incompatible with the socialist principles of his Third Universal Theory. This declaration would lead many scholars to accuse him of the sin of idol worship, as they considered that he was essentially elevating his Green Book to place it on an equal footing with the teachings of the Quran.

Economic Prosperity and Pan-Africanism

Despite his gripes with Islamic clerics and his domestic political opponents, Gaddafi would for many years be hugely popular with the masses thanks to his regime’s rollout of a wave of nationalizations in the oil industry, which would see Libya become the first developing country to secure a majority stake in its own oil revenues.

Thanks to his burgeoning oil revenues, the Gaddafi regime would:

Make significant investments into the country’s infrastructure.
Greatly improve its health care and education systems.
Seize thousands of acres of land owned by foreigners and the old royal family and redistribute them to local farmers.
Subsidize the construction of public housing for many of Libya’s poor.

During the course of Gaddafi’s reign:

Libya’s overall literacy rate would rise from 10 percent to 88 percent.
Life expectancy would rise from 57 to 74.
The infant mortality rate would fall from an African average of 125 deaths per thousand live births to 15 deaths per thousand live births.

In the year before Gaddafi’s death, Libya’s estimated GDP per capita of $20,620 would be the highest in all of Africa, as Libya would also be ranked as the only African country with a High Human Development Score in the 2010 Human Development Index—posting a better score than Russia and China as well as Eastern European countries such as Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia.

Unlike virtually every other African country, Gaddafi’s Libya was financially self-sufficient and not indebted to any international banks or financial institutions. His regime would also embark on a number of groundbreaking infrastructure projects, the most prominent of which would be the world’s largest irrigation system known as the Great Man-Made River. This $25 billion irrigation project was developed to move fresh water across Libya’s dry lands through a 4,000-kilometre network of water pipes.

Beyond its domestic endeavours, Muammar Gaddafi would also embark on developing significant Pan-African projects. The “strongman of Tripoli” would:

Contribute $300 million to the commissioning of the original African Satellite Communication Organization (RASCOM), which would be instrumental in relieving African countries from the dependence on European satellite systems and save African governments a combined total of over $500 million per year.
Make further contributions to a number of other major African infrastructure projects for the construction of roads and railways.
Set up a $5 billion fund to be used for the development of five-star hotels, religious buildings, mobile phone companies, and mining companies all across the African continent.

Fully embracing his ideological switch from Pan-Arabism to Pan-Africanism, Gaddafi would begin calling on African governments to work towards the creation of a United States of Africa, complete with its own united military, single currency, and single passport. Putting his money where his mouth was, he would be the most important driving force behind the creation of the African Union (AU) in 2002, hosting a number of important meetings in the Libyan city of Sirte and pushing Africa’s two largest economies of South Africa and Nigeria towards greater cooperation.

Gaddafi would also specifically push for the inclusion within the constitution of the African Union of a roadmap for the creation of an African Monetary Fund, an African Central Bank, and an African Bank of Investment. His government would also cover the African Union membership costs of poorer African countries and, at some point, Libya’s total contribution to the AU’s annual budget would amount to about a third of the total.

In the months leading up to his death, he would also announce more specific plans for the creation of an African Dinar, which would be a new currency backed by gold, which he reckoned could mount a serious challenge to the dominance of the US Dollar and the European Union’s Euro.

A Network of Enemies

While Gaddafi’s Pan-African exploits and popular domestic policies would win him the praise and adoration of many, his authoritarian style and his international adventurism would see him make a long list of enemies at home and abroad.

Domestic critics of the regime would be routinely subjected to brutal punishments and allegations of summary executions, disappearances, and massacres would be widespread. One of such incidents would be the 1996 Abu Salim Prison Massacre, in which an estimated 1,200 prisoners were reportedly murdered with impunity by Libyan security operatives.

Gadhafi’s Pan-African ambitions would also see him butt heads with a number of African leaders who would grow suspicious of his aggressively expansionist foreign policies.

The 1970s would see Gaddafi’s government involved in a violent territorial dispute with the neighbouring Republic of Chad over the Aouzou Strip. This dispute would eventually lead to a series of Libyan invasions into Chad, which would only be stopped after the US and France deployed troops in support of the Chadian President in the so-called Toyota War.
In 1977, Gaddafi’s forces were also engaged in a short border war with Egypt known today as the Four Day War. This conflict was allegedly due to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s refusal to commit to greater political union with Libya in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Gaddafi would be a friend and supporter of the much-reviled Ugandan President Idi Amin. As a favour to his friend, Idi Amin, Gaddafi would send thousands of troops to fight against Tanzania in the 1978 Uganda–Tanzania War.
From the late 70s and throughout the 90s, Gaddafi publicly supported a long list of polarizing African politicians such as Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Liberia’s Charles Taylor (one of the major beneficiaries of Gaddafi’s generosity, who led one of the rebel groups that overthrew Samuel Doe), Sierra Leone’s Foday Sankoh, and even the infamous Central African Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa. Gaddafi’s provision of military and financial support to various subversionary movements would see him raise the suspicions of many, until their shock and horror he would even be proclaimed the “King of Kings of Africa” in a 2008 event attended by over 200 traditional African rulers.

Although Gaddafi’s association with many of Africa’s most prominent problematic characters would raise eyebrows around the continent, his eventual downfall would not be brought about by his actions in Africa but his actions outside of the continent.

From the early years of his regime, various investigations showed Gaddafi to be a major sponsor of a number of militant groups designated as terrorists by Western governments.

In 1975, Gaddafi was alleged to have afforded $3.5 million to the accounts of Thomas McMahon and other members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
In 1988, Gaddafi would be accused of ordering the Lockerbie Bombing, which would see 270 passengers die on board Pan Am Flight 103 in what would ultimately go down as the deadliest terror attack in British history.
On the 19th of September 1989, an airliner operated by French airline UTA would be destroyed by a cargo bomb, which would lead to the death of all 170 passengers. The French government would immediately blame Libya for the attack, and six Libyan nationals would be declared guilty by the French courts.
Gaddafi’s international exploits would also see him make enemies around the Middle East, and specifically in the State of Israel, thanks to his fully-fledged support for the Palestinian cause. He would be alleged to have been a major sponsor of the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Massacres, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed at the Munich Olympics.

Downfall and the Aftermath

With an ever-growing list of domestic and international enemies, the Arab Spring of the early 2010s would ultimately set the scene for the demise of the “Brother Leader.”

While Gaddafi would for many years proclaim the democratic virtues of his Jamahiriya, in reality, pretty much all forms of dissent against the regime would be discouraged and repressed, and all forms of political organization outside of the Basic and General People’s Congresses would be declared illegal.

On the 15th of February 2011, peaceful anti-government protests were met with violence and oppression by Libya’s internal security forces.
The Libyan security forces continued to respond to the protests with violence, which would only make matters worse as the commotion began to spread to most cities.
The UN Security Council referred the Gaddafi regime to the International Criminal Court, imposed an arms embargo and a travel ban, and also froze the assets of the Gaddafi family.
On the 17th of March 2011, France, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom escalated the situation by proposing the now infamous UN Security Council Resolution 1973. This resolution ultimately served as a legal basis for military intervention in Libya with the stated aim of protecting the civilian population.
NATO forces were then deployed to enforce the UN resolution in a US-led operation under the codename Operation Odyssey Dawn.
The NATO-led operation ultimately ended in the violent and shocking death of Muammar Gaddafi on the 20th of October 2011.

But while the UN and NATO claimed that the intervention would bring peace and democracy to Libya, the result would be the exact opposite. Ex-US President Barack Obama would describe his government’s failure to deal with the aftermath of Gaddafi’s death as the “worst mistake of his presidency.”

Indeed, since the fall of Gaddafi, Libya has been completely destabilized with several rival factions vying for control of the country in a brutal civil war. The political instability and fight for control over the country’s rich oil deposits have also made Libya a hot spot for human trafficking and illegal migration.

According to the UN, over 200,000 people have been internally displaced and over 1.3 million are now in need of humanitarian assistance. With an estimated number of casualties since 2011 ranging from two-and-a-half to twenty-five thousand deaths, the very same nation which, thanks to its immense oil wealth and relatively small population, had once enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in Africa has now been reduced to a hotbed of fighting, medical shortages, power outages, kidnappings, and forced labour.

While Gaddafi’s regime may be rightly denounced for its support of terrorist activities and repression of dissenting voices, it is hard not to sympathize with a growing number of commentators who continue to insist that, all things considered, the region was probably better off with him than without him.

Looking to the future, one can only hope and pray that the Libyan people manage to bring an end to the current conflict on their own terms and begin the long walk towards stability and reconciliation once again.