Muammar al-Gaddafi: Dictator of Libya: Mad dog of Middle East

Dictator of Libya | He was cruel dictator, who was famous for his eccentric habits, such as having cadre of female bodyguards’, who were fierce as well as virgin. His weird dressing style, his abnormal sex fantasies & we can go on like this. Through his atrocities & brutalities on Libyans, he had earned a nickname as “Mad dog of middle east”. He considered himself as King of Africa. Some of you have guessed it already that we are talking about Muammar al-Gaddafi, the former dictator of Libya, who ruled Libya for more than 50 years with iron hand.

Muhammar-al-Gaddafi was born in Sirte, Libya in 1942. At the time of his birth Libya was under Italian rule & in 1951 gained independence from Italians under King Idris. He got initial education in Madrasa, where he only read Quran, holy book of Muslims. Later he joined Libyan army as a soldier & in 1961 Gaddafi entered the military college in the city of Benghazi. Later he did 4 months military training in Britain as well. His senior officers regarded him as talented & capable person. In 1969, Gaddafi became Colonel in Libyan Army & with the support of his trustworthy officials he staged a coup against King Idris, when he was in Turkey for medical treatment.

As people of Libya were not happy with the policies & administration of King Idris & there was a feeling of discontentment among people. Gaddafi saw it as an opportunity & became ruler of Libya at the age of 27. He was revolutionary hero for many Libyans at that time. He started his political journey by quoting Plato & Marks.

In 1950’s, Petroleum reserves were discovered in Libya, which attracted attention of Western world & Western oil distillation & extraction companies. When Gaddafi became ruler, he demanded that foreign oil companies in Libya share a bigger portion of revenue with the country. Foreign oil companies warned him to stop the production of oil, in reply to that Gaddafi gave statement that for thousands of years humans are living without oil, we can live for more years also without that.

This restriction imposed on foreign oil companies worked out & Libya became first country to hold full control over its oil reserves. After this incident, other Arab countries also adopted this method & got full control over their oil business. Prosperity started coming in these countries with time due to Oil exploration. Soon, Libya became largest producer of oil in Africa & became richest country in Africa.

Gaddafi replaced the Gregorian calendar with the Islamic one and forbade the sale of alcohol. He wrote a book in 1979, for political science, in which knowledge of both Plato & Karl Marx were combined. However, he gave his theory as “Third Universal Theory”, which states there is a middle way between Capitalism & Communism, which will lead everyone towards prosperity & growth. This book was known as “Green Book”. According to Gaddafi, he was a supreme & if everyone follows him & his rules, then growth & prosperity can be achieved.

Qaddafi ruled Libya based on that Green Book, & to make it work he changed all the existing rules. Due to that, it became easy for government to kill & abduct anyone. It gave more power to government & for petty crimes also punishments like Execution & exile could be given. Gaddafi's inner circle of trusted people became smaller and smaller, as power was shared by himself and a small group of associates. His intelligence agents travelled around the world to intimidate and assassinate Libyans living in exile.

In 1986, a night club in Berlin got bombarded, most of the customers were American military officers. The needle of suspicion pointed towards Libyan Intelligence services & Gaddafi. This incident got Gaddafi as an enemy in the eyes of US. In 1988, Pan-Am- flight 103 got blasted in UK, & 270 passengers died, such intensity terrorist attack never happened in UK history. Two Libyan Citizens were involved in implanting bomb in flight. However, Gaddafi refused to hand over them to UK. After constant pressure, he extradited them to UK.

When US attacked Iraq & Saddam Hussain, dictator of Iraq was captured by US army. President George Bush gave a clear indication to the world that now dictatorship will no longer be tolerated & US will make sure democracy will be introduced in these countries. Western media thought that after Saddam execution, Gaddafi will become sensible & won’t challenge US & will reduce atrocities in Libyans. But this had no effect on rogue nature of Gaddafi, he used to insult high officials by puffing cigarrete smoke on their face, he continued his mischievous & terrorist activities outside Libya.

In 2010, Arab spring got sparked in Tunisia & from there it went to Egypt. Almost all the dictators in Arab countries were in fear that who will be next to get overthrown by public. However, Gaddafi was assured that nothing will happen to his position, he had huge amount of wealth, also he had distributed significant amount of wealth to public. He started Great Man-Made River Project, which was a huge project for supplying fresh river water to the desert country. People were happy with this project.

However, Arab spring had its influence on the youth of Libya, they had exposure of the world through Internet. They want to bring democracy in the country, they started revolution & one fine day they found Gaddafi, who was trying to escape & kill him mercilessly.

So, that’s how Libya got rid of Muammar al-Gaddafi, however after his death, things started worsening even more. ISIS, Libyan National Army, New General National Conference has exploited Libya & its people.