Muammar Abu Minyar
al-Gaddafi1
( ; also known simply as Colonel Gaddafi; born
1942) has been the de facto leader
of Libya
since a coup
in 1969.
From 1972,
when Gaddafi relinquished the title of prime minister, he has been
accorded the honorifics "Guide of the First of September Great
Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" or "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the
Revolution" in government statements and the official press.US
Department of State's Background Notes, (November 2005) "Libya - History", United States
Department of State
. Retrieved on 2006-07-14. With
the death of Omar Bongo of Gabon
on 8 June
2009, he became the third longest serving of all current national
leaders. He is also the longest-serving ruler of Libya since
Ali Pasha Al Karamanli, who
ruled between 1754 and 1795.
Early life
Gaddafi was the youngest born into a peasant family. Officially his
father is unkown, but his adopted father was Mohammed Abdul Salam
bin Hamed bin Mohammed Al-Gaddafi, known as Abu Meniar (died 1985).
His mother is jwesh lady, but adapted mother was Aisha Bin Niran.
Little is known about Gaddafi's childhood. He has said that when he
was five years old he had a brother that was killed by an Israeli
soldier. However, the claim has been disputed as the
IDF was not created until May 26,
1948, when Gaddafi was six. At a young age he was known to his
friends as 'al-jamil' or 'the handsome'.
He grew up in the
desert region of Sirte
.
He was
given a traditional religious primary education and attended the
Sebha
preparatory school in Fezzan
from 1956 to
1961. Gaddafi and a small group of friends that he met in
this school went on to form the core leadership of a militant
revolutionary group that would eventually seize control of the
country.
Gaddafi's inspiration was Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of
neighboring Egypt
, who rose to
the presidency by appealing to Arab
unity. In 1961, Gaddafi was expelled from Sebha for his
political activism.
Gaddafi
entered the military academy in Benghazi
in 1963,
where he and a few of his fellow militants organized a secretive
group dedicated to overthrowing the pro-Western Libyan monarchy. After graduating in
1965, he was sent to Britain
for further
training at the British Army Staff College, now the Joint
Services Command and Staff College
, returning in 1966 as a commissioned officer in the
Signal Corps.
Military coup d'état
On 1
September 1969, a small group of military officers led by Gaddafi
staged a bloodless coup d'état
against King Idris I, while he was
in Kamena
Vourla
, a Greek
resort, for
medical treatment. His nephew the Crown Prince
Sayyid Hasan ar-Rida al-Mahdi as-Sanussi
had been formally deposed by the revolutionary army officers and
put under house arrest; they abolished the monarchy and proclaimed
the new Libyan Arab Republic. The slim 27-year-old Gaddafi, with a
taste for safari suits and sunglasses, then sought to become the
new "
Che Guevara of the age". To
accomplish this Gaddafi turned Libya into a haven for anti-Western
radicals, where any group, supposedly, could receive weapons and
financial assistance, provided they claimed to be fighting
imperialism. The
Italian population in Libya almost
disappeared after Gaddafi ordered the expulsion of Italians in
1970.
A Revolutionary Command Council was formed to rule the country,
with Gaddafi as chairman. He added the title of
prime minister in 1970, but gave up
this title in 1972. Unlike some other military revolutionaries,
Gaddafi did not promote himself to the rank of
general upon seizing power, but rather accepted a
ceremonial promotion from captain to
colonel
and has remained at this rank since then. While at odds with
Western military ranking for a colonel to rule a country and serve
as
Commander-in-Chief of its
military, in Gaddafi's own words Libya's society is "ruled by the
people", so he needs no more grandiose title or supreme military
rank.
Islamic Socialism and pan-Arabism
Gaddafi based his new regime on a blend of
Arab nationalism, aspects of the
welfare state, and what Gaddafi termed
"direct,
popular democracy". He called this system "
Islamic socialism", and, while he
permitted private control over small companies, the government
controlled the larger ones. Welfare, "liberation", and education
were emphasized. He also imposed a system of Islamic morals,
outlawing alcohol and gambling. Like previous revolutionary figures
of the 20th century such as
Mao and his
Little Red
Book, Gaddafi outlined
his political philosophy in his
Green Book to reinforce the
ideals of this socialist-Islamic state and published in three
volumes between 1975 and 1979.
In 1977, Gaddafi proclaimed that Libya was changing its form of
government from a republic to a "
jamahiriya"--a
neologism
that means "mass-state" or "government by the masses". In theory,
Libya became a
direct democracy
governed by the people through local popular councils and communes.
At the top of this structure was the
General People's Congress,
with Gaddafi as secretary-general. However, after only two years,
Gaddafi gave up all of his governmental posts in keeping with the
new egalitarian philosophy.
In practice, Libya's political system is less idealistic. Real
power is vested in a "revolutionary sector" composed of Gaddafi and
a small group of trusted advisers. While he holds no formal office,
it is generally understood that Gaddafi holds near-absolute control
over the government.
From time to time, Gaddafi has responded to domestic and external
opposition with violence. His revolutionary committees called for
the
assassination of Libyan
dissidents living abroad in April 1980, with
Libyan hit squads sent abroad to murder them. On 26 April 1980,
Gaddafi set a deadline of 11 June 1980 for dissidents to return
home or be "in the hands of the revolutionary committees".
Nine
Libyans were murdered during that time, five of them in Italy
.
External relations
With respect to Libya's neighbors, Gaddafi followed
Gamal Abdel Nasser's ideas of
pan-Arabism and became a fervent advocate of the
unity of all Arab states into one Arab nation. He also supported
pan-Islamism, the notion of a loose
union of all Islamic countries and peoples. After Nasser's death on
28 September 1970, Gaddafi attempted to take up the mantle of
ideological leader of Arab nationalism.
He proclaimed the
"Federation of Arab Republics" (Libya, Egypt, and Syria
) in 1972,
hoping to create a pan-Arab state, but the three countries
disagreed on the specific terms of the merger. In 1974, he signed an
agreement with Tunisia
's Habib Bourguiba on
a merger between the two countries, but this also failed to work in
practice and ultimately differences between the two countries would
deteriorate into strong animosity.
Libya was
also involved in a sometimes violent territorial dispute with
neighbouring Chad
over the
Aouzou Strip, which Libya occupied in
1973. This dispute eventually led to the
Libyan invasion of the country and
to a conflict that was ended by a ceasefire reached in 1987.
The
dispute was in the end settled peacefully in June 1994 when Libya
withdrew troops from Chad due to a
judgement of the International Court of
Justice
issued on 13 February 1994.
Gaddafi
also became a strong supporter of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, which support ultimately harmed Libya's relations
with Egypt, when in 1979 Egypt pursued a peace agreement with
Israel
.
As
Libya's relations with Egypt worsened, Gaddafi sought closer
relations with the Soviet
Union
. Libya became the first country outside the
Soviet bloc to receive the supersonic
MiG-25
combat fighters, but Soviet-Libyan relations remained relatively
distant. Gaddafi also sought to increase Libyan influence,
especially in states with an
Islamic
population, by calling for the creation of a Saharan Islamic state
and supporting anti-government forces in
sub-Saharan Africa.
Notable
in Gaddafi's politics has been his support for self-styled
liberation movements, and also his sponsorship of rebel movements
in West Africa, notably Sierra Leone
and Liberia
, as well as Muslim groups. In the 1970s and
the 1980s, this support was sometimes so freely given that even the
most unsympathetic groups could obtain Libyan support; often the
groups represented ideologies far removed from Gaddafi's own.
Gaddafi's approach often tended to confuse international opinion.
Throughout the 1970s, his regime was implicated in subversion and
terrorist activities in both Arab and non-Arab countries. By the
mid-1980s, he was widely regarded in the West as the principal
financier of international terrorism.
Reportedly, Gaddafi
was a major financier of the "Black September Movement" which
perpetrated the Munich
massacre
at the
1972 Summer Olympics, and was
accused by the United
States
of being responsible for direct control of the
1986
Berlin discotheque bombing
that killed three people and wounded more than 200,
of whom a substantial number were U.S. servicemen.
He is
also said to have paid "Carlos the
Jackal" to kidnap and then release a number of Saudi Arabian
and Iranian
oil ministers. Tensions between Libya and
the West reached a peak during the
Ronald
Reagan administration, which tried to overthrow Gaddafi.
The
Reagan administration viewed Libya as a belligerent rogue state
because of its uncompromising stance on Palestinian independence,
its support for revolutionary Iran in the
1980–1988 war against Saddam
Hussein's Iraq
(see Iran–Iraq War),
and its backing of "liberation movements" in the developing
world. Reagan himself dubbed Gaddafi the "mad dog of the
Middle East".
In December 1981, the
US State
Department
invalidated US passports for travel to Libya, and
in March 1982, the U.S. declared a ban on the import of Libyan
oil and the export to Libya of U.S. oil
industry technology; European nations did not follow
suit.
Libya has also been a supporter of the
Polisario Front in their fight against
Spanish colonialism and Moroccan
military occupation.
In 1984,
British police constable Yvonne Fletcher was shot outside the Libyan
Embassy in London
while
policing an anti-Gaddafi demonstration. A burst of
machine-gun fire from within the building was suspected of killing
her, but Libyan diplomats asserted their
diplomatic immunity and were
repatriated.
The incident led to the breaking off of
diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya for over a decade.
The U.S.
attacked Libyan patrol boats from January to March 1986 during
clashes over access to the Gulf of Sidra
, which Libya claimed as territorial waters. On 15 April 1986,
Ronald Reagan ordered major bombing
raids, dubbed Operation
El Dorado Canyon, against Tripoli
and Benghazi killing 45 Libyan military and government personnel
as well as 15 civilians. This strike followed U.S. interception of
telex messages from Libya's East Berlin embassy suggesting Libyan government
involvement in a bomb explosion on 5 April in West Berlin's La Belle
discothèque, a nightclub frequented by U.S. servicemen.
Among the fatalities of the 15 April retaliatory attack by the U.S.
was Gaddafi's adopted daughter, Hannah. Libya responded by firing
two
Scud missiles at the
U.S. Coast Guard navigation station
on the Italian island of Lampedusa
, in retaliation for the bombing. The
missiles landed in the sea, and caused no damage.
In late 1987, a merchant vessel, the
MV Eksund, was
intercepted. Destined for the
IRA, a large consignment
of arms and explosives supplied by Libya was recovered from the
Eksund. British intelligence believed this was not the
first and that Libyan arms shipments had previously reached the
IRA. (See
Provisional
IRA arms importation.)
For most
of the 1990s, Libya endured economic
sanctions and diplomatic isolation as a result of Gaddafi's
refusal to allow the extradition to the
United
States or Britain of two
Libyans accused of planting a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over
Lockerbie
, Scotland
. Through the intercession of
South African President
Nelson Mandela – who made a high-profile
visit to Gaddafi in 1997 – and
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Gaddafi agreed in 1999 to a
compromise that involved handing over the defendants to the
Netherlands for trial under
Scottish law.: U.N. sanctions were
thereupon suspended, but U.S. sanctions against Libya remained in
force.
An
alleged plot by Britain's secret
intelligence service
to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi, when rebels
attacked Gaddafi's motorcade near the city of Sirte in February 1996, was described as "pure
fantasy" by former foreign secretary Robin
Cook, although the FCO
later admitted: "We have never denied that we knew
of plots against Gaddafi."
In August 2003, two years after
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al
Megrahi's conviction, Libya wrote to the
United Nations formally accepting
'responsibility for the actions of its officials' in respect of the
Lockerbie bombing and agreed to
pay compensation of up to US$2.7 billion – or up to US$10 million
each – to the families of the 270 victims.
The same month,
Britain and Bulgaria
co-sponsored a U.N. resolution which removed the
suspended sanctions. (Bulgaria's involvement in tabling this
motion led to suggestions that there was a link with the HIV trial in Libya in which 5 Bulgarian
nurses, working at a Benghazi hospital, were accused of infecting 426 Libyan
children with HIV.) Forty percent of the compensation was then paid
to each family, and a further 40% followed once U.S. sanctions were
removed. Because the U.S. refused to take Libya off its list
of
state sponsors of
terrorism, Libya retained the last 20% ($540 million) of the
$2.7 billion compensation package. In October 2008 Libya paid $1.5
billion into a fund which will be used to compensate relatives of
the
- Lockerbie bombing victims with the remaining 20%;
- American victims of the 1986 Berlin
discotheque bombing;
- American victims of the 1989 UTA Flight
772
bombing; and,
- Libyan victims of the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and
Benghazi.
As a
result, President Bush signed an
executive order
restoring the Libyan government's immunity from terror-related
lawsuits and dismissing all of the pending compensation cases in
the US, the White
House
said.
On 28 June 2007, Megrahi was granted the right to a second appeal
against the Lockerbie bombing conviction. One month later, the
Bulgarian medics were released from jail in Libya. They returned
home to Bulgaria and were pardoned by Bulgarian president,
Georgi Parvanov.
Gaddafi's 2009 welcome to the return of convicted
Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, who was
released from
prison on compassionate grounds, attracted criticism from Western
leaders and has disrupted his first-ever visit to the United States
to attend a
UN General
Session.
Gaddafi often resides in a tent when
travelling, but plans to erect a tent in Central Park
and on Libyan government property in Englewood,
New Jersey
during Gaddafi's stay at the UN were both protested
by community leaders and subsequently cancelled by Gaddafi.
His tent finally found a home on an estate belonging to Donald
Trump in Bedford.
September 23, 2009 marked Gaddafi's first appearance at the
United Nations General
Assemblywhere he addressed world leaders at the annual
gathering in New York. The Libyan leader while demanding
representation for the African Union, used the occasion to scold
the United Nations structure saying the 15-member body practised
“security feudalism” for those who had a protected seat. The Libyan
leader's appearance at the United Nations generated demonstrations
both for and against Gaddafi.
Openness
Gaddafi also appeared to be attempting to improve his image in the
West. Two years prior to the
September 11, 2001 attacks, Libya
pledged its commitment to fighting
Al-Qaeda
and offered to open up its weapons programme to international
inspection. The
Clinton administration
did not pursue the offer at the time since Libya's weapons program
was not then regarded as a threat, and the matter of handing over
the Lockerbie bombing suspects took priority. Following the attacks
of 11 September, Gaddafi made one of the first, and firmest,
denunciations of the Al-Qaeda bombers by any Muslim leader. Gaddafi
also appeared on
ABC
for an open interview with
George
Stephanopoulos, a move that would have seemed unthinkable less
than a decade earlier.
Following the overthrow of
Saddam
Hussein by US forces in 2003, Gaddafi announced that his nation
had an active
weapons of
mass destruction program, but was willing to allow
international inspectors into his country to observe and dismantle
them. US President
George W. Bush and other supporters of the
Iraq War portrayed Gaddafi's announcement as a
direct consequence of the Iraq War by stating that Gaddafi acted
out of fear for the future of his own regime if he continued to
keep and conceal his weapons. Italian Premier
Silvio Berlusconi, a supporter of the
Iraq War, was quoted as saying that Gaddafi
had privately phoned him, admitting as much. Many foreign policy
experts, however, contend that Gaddafi's announcement was merely a
continuation of his prior attempts at normalizing relations with
the West and getting the sanctions removed. To support this, they
point to the fact that Libya had already made similar offers
starting four years prior to it finally being accepted.
International inspectors turned up several tons of chemical
weaponry in Libya, as well as an active
nuclear weapons program.
As the process of
destroying these weapons continued, Libya improved its cooperation
with international monitoring regimes to the extent that, by March
2006, France
was able to
conclude an agreement with Libya to develop a significant nuclear power program.
In March 2004,
Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom Tony Blair became one
of the first Western leaders in decades to visit Libya and publicly
meet Gaddafi. Blair praised Gaddafi's recent acts, and stated that
he hoped Libya could now be a strong ally in the international
War on Terrorism. In the run-up to
Blair's visit, the British ambassador in Tripoli, Anthony Layden,
explained Libya's and Gaddafi's political change thus:
- "35 years of total state control of the economy has left them
in a situation where they're simply not generating enough economic
activity to give employment to the young people who are streaming
through their successful education system. I think this dilemma
goes to the heart of Colonel Gaddafi's decision that he needed a
radical change of direction."
On 15 May
2006, the US State
Department announced that it would restore full diplomatic
relations with Libya, once Gaddafi declared he was abandoning
Libya's weapons of mass destruction program. The State
Department also said that Libya would be removed from the list of
nations supporting terrorism. On 31 August 2006, however, Gaddafi
openly called upon his supporters to "kill enemies" who asked for
political change.
In July 2007, French president
Nicolas
Sarkozy visited Libya and signed a number of bilateral and
multilateral (
EU) agreements with Gaddafi.
On 4 March 2008 Gaddafi announced his intention to dissolve the
country's existing administrative structure and disburse oil
revenue directly to the people. The plan includes abolishing all
ministries, except those of defence, internal security, and foreign
affairs, and departments implementing strategic projects.
In September 2008,
US
Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice visited Libya and met with Gaddafi as part of a
North African tour. This was the first visit to
Libya by a US Secretary of State since 1953.
In January 2009, Gaddafi contributed an editorial to the
New York Times, suggesting
that he was in favor of a single-state solution to the Israeli and
Palestinian conflicts that moved beyond old conflicts and looked to
a unified future of shared culture and mutual respect.
Cooperation with Italy
On 30
August 2008, Gaddafi and Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi
signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy will pay $5 billion
to Libya as compensation for its former
military occupation. In exchange, Libya will
take measures to combat
illegal
immigration coming from its shores and boost
investments in Italian companies.
The treaty was
ratified by Italy in 6 February 2009, and by Libya on 2 March,
during a visit to Tripoli by Berlusconi. In June Gaddafi made
his first visit to Rome
, where he
met Prime Minister Berlusconi, President Giorgio Napolitano and Senate President Renato Schifani; Chamber President Gianfranco Fini cancelled the meeting
because of Gaddafi's delay. The
Democratic Party and
Italy of Values opposed the visit, and many
protests were staged throughout Italy by
human rights organizations and the
Radical Party.
Gaddafi also took part in the G8 summit in L'Aquila
in July as Chairman of the African Union. During the summit a
handshake between
US President Barack Obama and Muammar Gaddafi took place
(the first time the Libyan leader has been greeted by a serving US
president), then at summit's official dinner offered by
President Giorgio Napolitano US and Libyan leaders
upset the ceremony and sat by the Italian Prime Minister and G8
host, Silvio Berlusconi. (According to ceremony, Gaddafi should
seat three places after Berlusconi).
Pan-Africanism
Gaddafi has also emerged as a popular African leader. As one of the
continent's longest-serving, post-colonial heads of state, the
Libyan leader enjoys a reputation among many Africans as an
experienced and wise statesman who has been at the forefront of
many struggles over the years. Gaddafi has earned the praise of
Nelson Mandela and others, and is
always a prominent figure in various pan-African organizations,
such as the
Organisation
of African Unity (now replaced by the
African Union).
In February 2009,
upon being elected chairman of the African Union in Ethiopia
, Gaddafi told the assembled African leaders: "I
shall continue to insist that our sovereign countries work to
achieve the United States of
Africa."Gaddafi is also seen by many Africans as a
humanitarian, pouring large amounts of money into sub-Saharan
states. Large numbers of Africans have come to Libya to take
advantage of the availability of jobs there.
His views on African political and military unification have
received a relatively lukewarm response from other African
governments.
On 29 August 2008, Gaddafi held a public
ceremony in Benghazi in which he was self-handed the title
"King of Kings of Africa" with over
200 African traditional rulers and kings as part of a grassroots effort to encourage African heads of
state and government to join with Gaddafi toward a greater
political cohesion; this was followed on 1 February 2009 by a
coronation ceremony in Addis Ababa
, Ethiopia simultaneous with the 53rd African Union Summit, at
which he was elected head of the African Union for the year.
His January 2009 forum for African kings, however, was cancelled by
the Ugandan government (
Uganda was to host
the forum), since the invitation of traditional rulers to
discussion of political affairs contravened Uganda's current
constitution, and according to Ugandan foreign ministry
spokesperson
James Mugume, would have
led to instability.
The title
of "King of Kings" was reiterated by Gaddafi at the 2009 Arab
League Summit, at which he claimed to be the King of Kings, "leader
of the Arab leaders" and "imam of the Muslims" in his criticism of
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia prior to storming out of the summit.
Notwithstanding his claims of concern for his African roots,
Gaddafi has often expressed an overt contempt for some African
dwellers of Libya, the
Berbers, and for
their language, maintaining that
the very existence of Berbers in North Africa is a myth created by
colonialists. He adopted several measures forbidding the use of
Berber, and often attacks this language in official speeches, with
statements like: "If your mother transmits you this language, she
nourishes you with the milk of the colonialist, she feeds you their
poison" (1985).
'NATO of the South'
In
September 2009, at a South
America-Africa summit on Isla
Margarita
in Venezuela
, Colonel Gaddafi joined the host, Hugo Chávez, in calling for an
"anti-imperialist" front across Africa and Latin America. Gaddafi proposed the
establishment of a South Atlantic Treaty Organization to rival
NATO
, saying: "The world’s powers want to continue to
hold on to their power. Now we have to fight to build our
own power."
UN General Assembly speech
On 23
September 2009, Colonel Gaddafi addressed the 64th session of the
United Nations General
Assembly in New
York
, his first visit to the United States, in part because a Libyan diplomat, Ali Treki, has just become president of the
General Assembly for 2009-10. Gaddafi spoke for one hour and
36 minutes.
A translation of the speech courtesy of
Jamahiriya News Agency (JANA) the
official Libyan news agency, is available here.
Gaddafi spoke in favor of the preamble to the
United Nations Charter, but rejected
several provisions of the rest of the Charter; and criticized the
United Nations for failing to prevent 65 wars, and invited the
General Assembly to investigate the wars that the Security Council
had not authorized, and for those responsible to be brought before
the
International Criminal
Court.
Following Colonel Gaddafi's speech, in which he criticized the
UN Security Council (UNSC)
calling it the "Terror Council", Gaddafi failed to attend a special
Security Council heads-of-state meeting on 24 September 2009, when
a resolution calling for a reduction in the number of
nuclear weapons was passed
unanimously.
Disappearance Of Imam Musa al-Sadr
In August
1978, the Lebanese
Shia leader Musa al-Sadr and two companions departed for
Libya to meet with government officials. They were never
heard of again. At the time, Musa al-Sadr founded
Amal Movement, a liberal-Shia Lebanese
resistance movement (which later went on to oppose the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon). However Amal Movement became powerful much to
the annoyance of the
PLO which was based
primarily in south Lebanon.
Libya has consistently denied
responsibility, claiming that al-Ṣadr and his companions left Libya
for Italy. Some
others have reported that he remains secretly in jail in Libya.
Al-Ṣadr's
disappearance continues to be a major dispute between Lebanon and Libya. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih
Berri claimed that the Libyan regime, and particularly the Libyan
leader, were responsible for the disappearance of Imam Musa Sadr,
London-based
Asharq Al-Awsat, a
Saudi-run pan-Arab daily reported on 27 August 2006.
According to Iranian General Mansour Qadar, the then head of Syrian
security,
Rifaat al-Assad, told the
Iranian ambassador to Syria that Gaddafi was planning to kill
al-Ṣadr. On 27 August 2008, Gaddafi was indicted by the government
of Lebanon for al-Sadr's disappearance.
Internal dissent
In October 1993, there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on
Gaddafi by elements of the Libyan army. On 14 July 1996, bloody
riots followed a football match in Tripoli organised by Gaddafi's
son, as a protest against Gaddafi.
There are a number of political groups opposed to Gaddafi:
A website, actively seeking his overthrow, was set up in 2006 and
lists 343 victims ofmurder and political assassination.
The Libyan League for
Human Rights (LLHR) – based in Geneva
–
petitioned Gaddafi to set up an independent inquiry into the
February 2006 unrest in Benghazi in which some 30 Libyans and
foreigners were killed.
Fathi Eljahmi was a prominent
dissident who has been imprisoned since 2002 for
calling for increased
democratization in Libya.
Public works projects
Great Manmade River
It is the largest
underground network of
pipes and
viaducts in
the world.
It consists of more than 1300 wells, most
more than 500 m deep, and supplies
6,500,000 m³ of fresh water per day from beneath the Sahara Desert to the cities in the north, the
Benghazi region on the Mediterranean coast, Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirt
and
elsewhere. These
aquifers consist of
vast quantities of fresh water trapped in the underlying strata
between 38,000 and 14,000 years ago, though some pockets are only
7,000 years old.
Construction on the first phase started in 1984, and cost about $5
billion. The completed project may total $25 billion.
Muammar al-Gaddafi has described it as the "
Eighth Wonder of the
World" and presented the project as a gift to the
Third World.
Astronomical observatory
Libya,
the native country of Eratosthenes of
Cyrene, born in today's Shahhat
, ancient astronomer and
chief librarian of the Great
Library of Alexandria
, will be the seat of North
Africa's largest astronomical observatory.
The Libyan National Telescope Project costing nearly 10 million
euros, was ordered by Muammar al-Gaddafi, who
has a passionate interest in
astronomy.
Built by
France's REOSC,
the optical department of the SAGEM Group
, the robotic telescope will be two metres in
diameter and remote-controlled. A possible desert
site at 2200 meters above sea level near Kufra
could be
chosen.
It will be housed in an air-conditioned building, with a network of
four weather stations deployed at a distance of 10 kilometers
around it to warn of impending
sandstorms
that could damage its fragile
optics.
Personal life and family
Gaddafi has eight children, seven of them sons. His eldest son,
Muhammad al-Gaddafi, was born to
a wife now in disfavour, but runs the Libyan Olympic Committee. The
next eldest son by his second wife is
Saif al-Islam Muammar
Al-Gaddafi, who was born in 1972 and is an architect.
He runs a
charity (GIFCA) which has been involved in
negotiating freedom for hostages taken by Islamic militants, especially in the Philippines
. In 2006, after sharply criticizing his
father's regime, Saif Al Islam briefly left Libya, reportedly to
take on a position in banking outside of the country. He returned
to Libya soon after, launching an environment-friendly initiative
to teach children how they can help clean up parts of Libya.
He is
involved in compensation negotiations with Italy and the
United
States. The third eldest,
Saadi Gaddafi, is married to the
daughter of a military commander. Saadi runs the Libyan Football
Federation and signed for various professional teams including
Italian
Serie A team
U.C. Sampdoria,
although without appearing in first team games. Gaddafi's fourth
son,
Moatessem-Billah
Gaddafi, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Libyan
army.
He
fled to Egypt after
allegedly masterminding an Egyptian backed coup attempt against his
father. Gaddafi forgave Moatessem and he returned to Libya
where he now holds the post of national security adviser and heads
his own unit within the army. Saif Al Islam and Moatessem-Billah
are both seen as possible successors to their father.
The fifth eldest, Motassim Bilal (Hannibal) Gaddafi, once worked
for General National Maritime Transport Company, a company that
specializes in Libyan oil exports. He is most notable for being
involved in a series of violent incidents throughout Europe.
In 2001,
Hannibal attacked three Italian policemen with a fire extinguisher;
in September 2004, he was briefly detained after driving a Porsche
at 90 mph in the wrong direction and through red lights down
the Champs-Élysées
while intoxicated; and in 2005, Hannibal
allegedly beat model and then girlfriend Alin Skaf, who later filed
an assault suit against him.
On 15
July 2008, Hannibal and his wife were held for two days and charged
with assaulting two of their staff in Geneva, Switzerland
and then released on bail on 17 July.
The
government of Libya subsequently put a boycott on Swiss imports,
reduced flights between Libya and Switzerland, stopped issuing
visas to Swiss citizens, recalled diplomats from Bern
, and
forced all Swiss companies such as ABB and Nestlé to close offices. General National
Maritime Transport Company, which owns a large refinery in
Switzerland, also halted oil shipments to Switzerland. Two Swiss
businessmen who were in Libya at the time have, ever since, been
denied permission to leave the country. At the
35th G8 summit in July 2009, Gaddafi called
Switzerland a "world mafia" and called for the country to be split
between France, Germany and Italy.
Gaddafi's two youngest sons are Saif Al Arab and Khamis, who is a
police officer in Libya.
Gaddafi's only daughter is
Ayesha
al-Gaddafi, a lawyer who had joined the defense team of
executed former Iraqi leader
Saddam
Hussein. She married a cousin of her father in 2006.
His adopted daughter, Hanna, was killed in the April 1986
United States bombing of
Libya. At a "concert for peace", held on 15 April 2006 in
Tripoli to mark the 20th anniversary of the bombing raid, U.S.
singer
Lionel Richie told the
audience:
- "Hanna will be honoured tonight because of the fact that you've
attached peace to her name."
In January 2002, Gaddafi purchased a 7.5% share of Italian football
club
Juventus for
USD 21
million, through
Lafico ("
Libyan Arab Foreign Investment
Company").
This followed a long-standing association
with the Italian industrialist Gianni
Agnelli and car manufacturer Fiat
.
Gaddafi
holds an honorary degree from
Megatrend University in
Belgrade
conferred on him by former Yugoslav President
Zoran Lilić.
Quotes
- "God damn America" – Time magazine, April 2, 1973
- "Israel is a colonialist-imperialist phenomenon. There is no
such thing as an Israeli people. Before 1948, world geography knew
of no state such as Israel. Israel is the result of an invasion, of
aggression."
- "The statements of our Kenyan brother of American nationality,
Obama, on Jerusalem ... show that he either ignores international
politics and did not study the Middle East conflict or that it
[Barack Obama's expression of solidarity with Israel] is a campaign
lie. We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an
inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the
whites. This will be a tragedy. We tell him to be proud of himself
as a black and feel that all Africa is behind him."
- "The black people’s struggle has vanquished racism. It was God
who created colour. Today Obama, a son of Kenya, a son of Africa,
has made it in the United States of America."
- "It is a response to greedy Western nations, who invade and
exploit Somalia’s water resources illegally. It is not a piracy, it is self defence. It is
defending the Somalia children’s food. If they (Western nations) do
not want to live with us fairly, it is our planet and they can go
to other planet."
- "I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the
king of kings of Africa and the imam (leader) of Muslims, and my
international status does not allow me to descend to a lower
level."
- "There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe
- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million
Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few
decades."
Name
Because of the lack of standardization of
transliterating written and regionally
pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been
transliterated in many different ways into
English and other
Latin alphabet
languages.
An article published in the London Evening Standard in 2004
lists a total of 37 spellings of his name, while a 1986 column by
The Straight Dope quotes
a list of 32 spellings known at the Library of Congress
. This extensive confusion of naming was used
as the subject for a segment of
Saturday Night Live's
Weekend Update in the early 1980s.
In 1986,
Gaddafi reportedly responded to a Minnesota
school's letter in English using the spelling
"Moammar El-Gadhafi". The title of the homepage of
algathafi.org reads "Welcome to the official site of Muammar Al
Gathafi".
"Muammar Gaddafi" is the spelling used by
Time magazine,
BBC
News, the majority of the British press and by the English
service of
Al-Jazeera. The
Associated Press,
CNN,
and
Fox News use "Moammar Gadhafi".
The
Edinburgh Middle East
Report uses "Mu'ammar Qaddafi" and the U.S. Department of State uses "Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi". The Xinhua News
Agency
uses "Muammar Khaddafi" in its English
reports.
Even though the Arabic spelling of a word does not change, the
pronunciation may vary in different
varieties of Arabic, which may cause a
different
romanization. In
standard Arabic the name
معمر
القذافي (
مُـعَـمَّـرُ الـقَـذافـي with all
vowels and elongation) is pronounced in
IPA: /mu'ʕam:aru lqa'ða:fi/. /ʕ/ represents
a pharyngeal sound (ع), not
present in English. The second /m/ is
geminated (doubled). In spoken
Libyan Arabic voiceless uvular plosive /q/ (ق)
may be replaced with /g/ or /k/; and /ð/ (ذ) (same as
English "th" in "this") may be
replaced with simple /d/. Vowel /u/ may alternate with /o/ in
spoken Arabic.
Case endings are
dropped (/mu'ʕam:aru/ -> /mu'ʕam:ar/). Thus, /mu'ʕam:aru
lqa'ða:fi/ may be pronounced as /mo'ʕam:ar alga'da:fi/
colloquially. The definite article al- (ال) is often omitted. Here,
the initial /a/ is silent because of the preceding /u/.
The show
In
September 2006, at the ENO in
London, the
UK
-based electronic band Asian Dub Foundation created and did
six performances of a show commissioned by Channel 4 and based on Gaddafi's story, called
"Gaddafi: A Living Myth". The title role was played by
Ramon Tikaram. The book was by
Shan Khan and the direction by
David Freeman. Although critics were generally
unflattering in the English-speaking press, coverage in Muslim
countries was more positive.
Postage stamps
The
Libyan Posts (
GPTC General
Posts and Telecommunications Company) released many postage
issues (stamps,
souvenir sheets,
postal stationery, booklets, etc.)
including the subject of Muammar al-Gaddafi. The first issue was a
souvenir sheet celebrating the
6th Anniversary of the September Revolution in 1975 (ref.
Scott catalogue n.583 –
Michel catalogue block 18).
See also
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