Qaddafi, Muammar al-

(b. 1942) Libyan; President 1977 – Qadhafi was born to a family of desert nomads and expelled from secondary school for pro-Nasserite political agitation. In 1963, he joined Benghazi Military Academy and launched the Nasserite Free Officers movement to infiltrate the army in 1964. As a junior officer, he led the movement in a bloodless coup which overthrew King Idris in 1969 and headed the ruling Revolutionary Command Council.

In line with the "third universal theory" of his Green Book, Qadhafi reconstructed Libyan political, economic, and military systems, ostensibly on direct democracy principles and Koranic tenets, to produce the Libyan People's Jamahiriya. From 1975, political power was wielded by People's Congresses and People's Committees at all levels of Libyan society and institutions like the Cabinet and RCC were abolished. In 1979, embassies and diplomats were eliminated and replaced by "people's bureaux". The armed and police forces were abolished in 1988 in favour of popular organs and remaining state institutions, including the security apparatus, were similarly abolished and replaced later.

Qadhafi's foreign policy is subversive and pan-Arab. It includes: attempted unions and mergers with Arab states, of which one, the 1989 Arab Maghreb (economic) Union, succeeded; subversive intervention in Egypt, Sudan, and Chad; sponsorship of international terrorism by supplying arms, training, money, and sanctuary to insurgents and liquidation of political opponents in Europe. Since 1992, Libya has been subject to UN economic sanctions over the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie. A mounting Islamist challenge to Qadhafi's nationalist regime began in 1989.

Gaddafi, Muammar (1942-) Arab nationalist leader of Libya (1970?-) who removed U.S. and British military bases from the country shortly after leading a coup that overthrew the monarchy of King Idris I (1969). In 1973 he nationalized all foreign-owned petroleum assets in the country. His government's financing of revolutionary and terrorist groups worldwide brought him into conflict with the United States, and in 1986 U.S. warplanes bombed several sites in Libya.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Muammar Al-Gaddafi (born 1942) was head of the revolution that set up the Libyan Republic in 1969. In the Libyan "Jamahiriyya", of which he was always the leader, Al-Gaddafi wanted to realize fully his concept of government by the masses.

Muammar Al-Gaddafi (also transcribed into other Western languages as Qaddafi, Gheddafi, and Khadafi, among others) was born in 1942, either in spring or in September. His birthplace was near Surt in the desert region of Libya bordering the Mediterranean along the Gulf of Sirte. He was the last child and only son in his family, people of modest means who belonged to the Bedouin tribe of the Qadhdhafa which was engaged in animal herding. The cultural traditions of the desert certainly influenced Gaddafi's and his sociopolitical ideas.

Involved In Student Movements

After receiving instruction in the teachings of the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, he attended the elementary school at Surt from 1953 to 1955. When his family moved to Fezzan, the region south of Tripolitania, he continued his education at Sebha from 1956 to 1961. Inspired by the ideas and political actions of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, he organized student demonstrations which led to his expulsion from the city. He then moved to the large coastal city of Misurata, to the east of Tripoli, where he completed his high school education between 1961 and 1963. At the same time he continued to organize a secret revolutionary movement.

In order to enable himself to fulfill his political plans, he entered the Military Academy of Bengasi in October 1963 and persuaded other members of the movement to join him there. Together with these men and other converted members of the military he set up the central committee of the Free Unionist Officers in 1964, which was organized along strictly collegial lines. In the same period Gaddafi was enrolled in the University of Bengasi for three years, attending courses for a degree in history. In 1966 he took part in a training course at the Beaconsfield Military Academy in Great Britain. Having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant and assigned to the army's Signal Corps based at Gariunis on the outskirts of Bengasi, Gaddafi broadened the base of the movement - the ramifications of which only he was fully aware - and acquired at the same time an ever-growing personal prestige.

Kingdom to Republic

During the night of September 1, 1969, at a time when King Idris had already been abroad for several months for health reasons, Gaddafi gave the order - which had been deferred several times - for putting his long prepared plan into effect. The young officers easily seized power and proclaimed the Libyan Arab Republic. It was only on September 10 that it was noted that Gaddafi, now a colonel, was the president of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the chief organ of the new regime.

The revolutionary will of the new leader soon expressed itself in a series of laws designed, among other things, to do away with the illegal benefits enjoyed by the representatives of the former regime and to overcome the traditional tribal differences. Following the example of Nasser, who had inspired his political development, Gaddafi called for the removal of the American (Wheelus Field) and British military bases; this was completed in June 1970. A series of measures affected the Italians still present in Libya in large numbers, ending in their mass expulsion in October 1970. At the same time extensive nationalization of the financial, industrial, and commercial sectors took place (in particular in the oil industry) and other significant reforms were commenced.

Among the modifications carried out within the institutions and political organization of Libya after the revolution one could detect Gaddafi's determination, desperately tenacious in the face of difficulties, to involve the people as far as possible in the direct exercising of political power. In February 1971 he announced the creation of the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), which bore the same name as the sole Egyptian political party. The ASU, formally set up on June 11, 1971, held its first congress in April 1972. Rejecting all expressions of regional and class interests, the ASU intended to provide a large popular base for the revolution. In July 1972 Gaddafi vacated the office of president of the Council of Ministers, which he had occupied since January 1970, and dedicated himself from that time on to the theorization of the principles of the revolution which were later laid down in the "Green Book." In April 1974 Gaddafi also gave up all protocol and administrative duties associated with the head of state.

The People's Revolution

At a time when new legislation was being introduced in the labor and fiscal sectors with the aim of creating true "socialism," Gaddafi announced the "People's Revolution" in a speech at Zuara on April 15, 1973. By means of "elected people's committees" operating in various sectors it was intended that the principles of the revolution and of Islam should be increasingly put into practice. At the second general People's Congress in November 1976 Gaddafi proposed the creation of a direct democracy and the removal of the CCR; however, the delegates to the congress called for an adjournment, and during a special session of the congress on March 2, 1977, the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya (a term which can be translated as "government by the masses") was proclaimed. With the intention of mobilizing the people, Gaddafi began in 1978 to encourage the creation of "revolutionary committees" which did not have clearly defined powers and which were called upon to "defend the Revolution." Starting in 1981 he began to impose a military character upon the organization of schools and universities.

Gaddafi's revolutionary policies affected many people both within Libya and elsewhere. Consequently, opposition emerged of varying types and intensities. A number of attempted plots organized against him in the early 1980s, probably with foreign involvement, failed and were quickly repressed by the regime. Other plots reported by foreign sources were perhaps only aimed at serving propaganda purposes. Gaddafi denied the legitimacy of all opposition and, in particular, issued warnings to Libyans resident abroad that opposed the revolutionary regime.

Gaddafi's idealistic aspirations guided Libya's foreign policy, which after the revolution was characterized by an unprecedented degree of activity. Gaddafi himself paid numerous visits to foreign countries, to virtually all Arab lands, and to many Communist states. Because of the many and various initiatives launched by Gaddafi in differing directions, his foreign policy was judged by some to be erratic. Indeed, it achieved only limited results and led to a great deal of mistrust. However, for Gaddafi it was important to affirm with insistence and vigor a number of essential policy points, such as his intransigent opposition to Israel and his quest for Arab unity. This quest involved successive attempts at forming political unions with Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria, all of which ended, sometimes rapidly, in disastrous failures. A union with Morocco was announced in 1984.

In Chad, Libyan intervention beginning in 1980 led to Goukouni Oueddei being confirmed in power. But the search for political agreements and influence in other African countries had no success, and Gaddafi failed to convene the Organization of African Unity in Tripoli in 1982. The struggle against imperialism preached by Gaddafi along with the need for non-alignment led to Libya being diametrically opposed to the United States. Moreover, the United States accused Libya of supporting armed opposition and terrorist movements in other countries. Libya's relations with Western Europe improved, despite momentary crises.

Theory of Government

Gaddafi's claimed that his political concept, the Third Universal Theory, was derived from the principles of the Koran and hence in harmony with Islam. It was laid down with the purpose of providing an easily understood and complete approach in the "Green Book." The first part (published in 1976) concerned the political aspects of the organization of society. The second part (1977) concerned economic aspects and the third (1979) focused on social aspects. The first part denounced the representative democracies as hoaxes and claimed instead that only the direct participation of the masses in government, as laid down in the Jamahiriyya, offered a valid solution to political problems. In the economic sphere, Gaddafi intended to create a true socialist economy, completely opposed both to Western capitalism and to the Marxist-Communist concept; it was intended that workers become "partners, not employees," and there was opposition to all forms of exploitation (many tertiary services are considered exploitative, in particular in the commercial field). The social concept of the "Green Book" placed great emphasis on the role of the family, and women, equals to men in terms of dignity and rights, were seen in the first place as mothers.

The manner in which the "Green Book" was formulated, deliberately populist in approach and not strictly systematic, obviously presented difficulties of interpretation and application with respect to various concrete problems. The book was frequently discussed by the people and at congresses organized both in Libya and abroad by Libyan institutions. The "Green Book" was praised by some, often in a completely a critical manner, while others have subjected it to minute criticism. However, it would seem most valid to consider it as a manifesto for the revolution which Gaddafi was endeavoring to bring about in the Libyan Jamahiriyya, rather than as a treatise on political philosophy and economics.

Married and the father of three children, Gaddafi lived modestly, rejecting all luxuries and vices. Some considered him a messianic preacher who was intransigent and intolerant on the one hand, but sincere and even candid on the other. Others considered him an able politician who, though inclined to verbal excesses, was basically a clever man. In 1986 he made known to the press that he preferred the Western press to transcribe his name as Moammar Gadhafi.

As acts of international terrorism became more frequent in 1986, Gaddafi drew much attention as the source of training and financing such activities. On December 27, 1985, Palestinian terrorists attacked airports in Rome and Vienna. United States president Ronald Reagan accused Libya, but Gaddafi denied any involvement. On January 1, 1986, President Reagan ordered all U.S. citizens to leave Libya. Finally on April 14 the United States carried out a retaliatory bombing raid against several Libyan installations. Nearly 100 people were killed in the attack. Gaddafi claimed that he was innocent and that the raid was itself an act of terrorism. He cited as evidence that one of his children was killed during this raid.

Further Reading

For information on Gaddafi's personality (he was interviewed at length by the author) and for information concerning his activities during the first year of the revolution, see M. Bianco, Kadhafi, mesager du désert (1974). A journalistic, and well informed, source is J. K. Cooley, Libyan Sandstorm (1982). Detailed information is included in H. Bleuchot, Chroniques et documents libyens, 1969-1980 (1983). For information on relations with the U.S.A., see P. E. Haley, Qaddafi and the United States since 1969 (1984). A biography is George Tremlett, Gadaffi: The Desert Mystic (Carroll & Graff Publishers, Inc., 1993). The story of the raid is told by pilot Col. Robert E. Venkius, Raid on Qaddafi (St. Martin's Press, 1992).

For more information on Muammar al- Qaddafi, visit Britannica.com.

Qaddafi, Muammar al- (mūäm-mär' äl-käd-dä'fē) , 1942–, Libyan political leader. He graduated from the Univ. of Libya in 1963 and became an army officer in 1965. In 1969 he formed, along with a group of fellow officers, a secret revolutionary committee and led (1969) a successful coup against the monarchy of Idris I. Qaddafi established himself as Libya's commander in chief and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Blending Arab nationalism, revolutionary socialism, and Islamic orthodoxy, Qaddafi proceeded to run Libya's government as a stridently anti-Western dictatorship. British and American military bases were closed in 1970; in the same year the property of Libya's Italian and Jewish communities was confiscated. The ancient Qur'anic law of cutting off the hands of thieves was reinstituted, gambling and alcoholic beverages were outlawed, and all foreign petroleum assets were nationalized (1973). A fervent Arab nationalist, he sought to unify Libya with other Arab countries, including Egypt and Tunisia, while bitterly opposing Israel. Since Qaddafi took power the Libyan government has been known for its support of many international terrorist and guerrilla organizations, including the Irish Republican Army, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other extremist Arab and Islamic groups. In 1986 the United States sought to quell Libya's alleged terrorist activities by bombing several sites in Libya. Qaddafi survived, but several of his children were hurt or killed. In 1999, following the turning over of the suspects in the Lockerbie bombing, Qaddafi sought improved relations with Western European nations and issued a denunciation of terrorism. He also was a strong force behind the Organization of African Unity's decision to transform itself into the African Union. His Green Book (2 vol., 1976–80) is a treatise on Islamic socialism. His name is also spelled Moammar El-Gadhafi.

c. 1942 -

Ruler of Libya since 1969.

Muammar al-Qaddafi (also spelled Muʿammar alQadhdhafi) was born during World War II, probably in the spring of 1942, to a Bedouin family near Sirte in northern Libya. The only surviving son of a poor family, he did not attend school until he was nearly ten, when he was sent to a local mosque school. He was evidently very intelligent, for he went on to secondary school in Sabha (or Sebha), in the southern province of Fezzan, between 1956 and 1961. Like many young people in the Arab world at the time, he was an admirer of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the ruler of Egypt, whose anti-imperialist and Arab nationalist foreign policies and egalitarian domestic reforms were then widely popular.

By 1961, when he was expelled from school in Sabha, Qaddafi's political inclinations were well known. His dismissal is variously attributed to an altercation with the son of the powerful governor of the Fezzan and to demonstrations he organized against the breakup of the union of Syria and Egypt (the United Arab Republic) that year. Qaddafi finished secondary school in coastal Misurata, where he renewed contact with some of his childhood friends, several of whom joined him in entering the Libyan Military Academy. These friends subsequently became members of the group that plotted the successful overthrow of the pro-Western Libyan monarchy in 1969. This lends credence to Qaddafi's claim that he determined very early on that only through a military coup could someone with his humble family background and ambitious political goals exercise power in Libya.

A six-month signals course in Britain followed graduation from the military academy in 1965, and Qaddafi was then posted near Benghazi. From there, he readied his secret network of conspirators for 1 September 1969, when they took advantage of a vacation trip by aging King Muhammad Idris alMahdi al-Sanusi to Turkey to topple the monarchy in a bloodless coup. The Free Unionist Officers, as they called themselves, initially constituted themselves as a collective Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and appointed a number of more senior military and civilian figures to government positions. By December, however, when a countercoup was said to have been foiled, the RCC was given full authority and Qaddafi was revealed as the regime's leading figure. Although he serves as head of state, to this day Qaddafi holds no formal position of authority.

The 1970s

The new regime's initial posture reflected Qaddafi's admiration of Nasser's Arab nationalism as well as his own admiration of Islam. (Indeed, although Qaddafi's politics were often controversial, his reputation for personal integrity has remained virtually untarnished through his tenure in office.) Soon alcohol was outlawed, churches and night clubs closed, the British and American military bases evacuated, foreign-owned banks seized, the remaining Italian residents expelled (Libya had been an Italian colony before World War II), and only the Arabic language permitted in all official and public communications.

By the mid-1970s, Qaddafi was not only disen-chanted with Nasser's successor in Egypt, Anwar alSadat, but had come into his own as a political visionary. Between 1976 and 1979, he published the three slim volumes of the Green Book, in which he expounded his third international theory (also known as third universal theory), an attempt to develop an alternative to capitalism and communism, both of which Qaddafi found unsuitable to the Libyan environment. Disenchanted with both competitive and single-party politics, Qaddafi instituted instead a system of popular congresses and committees - composed of elected members - to run the country on all levels, including local administration, state-owned enterprises, universities, and national policy review and implementation.

Contributing to the upheaval precipitated by these political innovations were Qaddafi's parallel economic reforms, which were based on his radically egalitarian precapitalist vision of economic relations. In his view, the exploitation entailed in wage labor, rent, and commerce must be replaced by equal partnerships and by nonprofit state-run distribution of goods and services. Workers were encouraged to take over the enterprises in which they were employed, landlords lost their property to their tenants, and retail trade disappeared. This immediately produced shortages and hoarding of basic commodities, halted housing construction, and increased already widespread economic inefficiency. That the country survived these disruptions was a function of its very large petroleum revenues during the 1970s and the substantial expatriate work-force they subsidized.

By the late 1970s, Qaddafi had grown dissatisfied with the performance of the committees and congresses; their lackluster record resulted partly from inexperience, partly from bad faith, and partly from unrealistic expectations on the part of their founder. To rectify the problems, he introduced watchdog "revolutionary committees." Domestically, these oversight groups did little more than further obscure the lines of authority, but they earned considerable notoriety abroad. Because Qaddafi attributed the failures of his revolution to foreign and domestic subversion, he assigned the revolutionary committees responsibility for "liquidating the enemies of the revolution" - that is, assassinating government opponents at home and abroad.

From the 1980s On

Qaddafi was soon branded one of the world's principal sponsors of terrorism by many Western nations, notably the United States, which initially viewed his coup with tolerance. By the late 1970s, his vitriolic condemnation of the Camp David Accords capped a decade of increasingly hostile relations with the West. Qaddafi's large arms purchases,
his support of national liberation movements - from various Palestinian factions to the Irish Republican Army - and his campaign to assassinate Libyan opponents of the regime outside the country provided justification for the U.S. campaign that culminated in the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986. Qaddafi appeared to have been targeted personally - several of his family were wounded and an adopted daughter was killed in the raid - and his high-profile involvement diminished for some time thereafter.

Severe economic problems in the second half of the 1980s and the implosion of the Soviet Union at the end of the decade also contributed to Qaddafi's quieter demeanor. In response to a fall in oil prices and the imposition of economic sanctions by the United States, Qaddafi reversed some of his domestic reforms. Small-scale retail trade was allowed to resume, and some political prisoners were released. Time and experience thus tempered Qaddafi's methods; however, there was no indication his commitment to a vision of unity, justice, and freedom for the Libyan people and their Arab compatriots had diminished.

As the twentieth century closed, Qaddafi initiated significant changes in the tone, content, and direction of Libyan foreign policy, and he accelerated this process in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Following the suspension of U.N. sanctions in 1998, he championed a number of new initiatives in Africa, signaling a major shift in emphasis from the Arab world to the African continent. For example, Libya took the lead in establishing the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (COMESSA) in 1998, called for the creation of a United States of Africa in 1999, and became the African candidate for chairman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2002. In tandem with these initiatives, the Qaddafi regime strengthened long-standing commercial and diplomatic ties with key European states, including Britain, Italy, and Russia. Eager to reestablish diplomatic relations with the United States, Qaddafi was an enthusiastic, early supporter of the war on terrorism.

Internally, the Qaddafi regime, by the end of the 1990s, had successfully corralled domestic opposition on a number of fronts, including the army, tribal groups, and militant Islamists. A shopworn economy, adversely affected by low oil prices in the 1990s, was posed in the early twenty-first century to benefit from foreign investment and private enterprise. Finally, even as Libya sought political reform, including the promotion of democracy and human rights, Qaddafi's quixotic personality masked a relatively stable political system in which external policies were often linked to issues of domestic legitimacy.

Qaddafi later took several significant steps on the road to international reintegration. Libyan officials in September 2003 agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. In December 2003, Libya renounced its unconventional weapons programs, agreeing to international inspections to verify compliance. And in January 2004, Libya cleared one of the last hurdles in its campaign to rejoin the international community, reaching a settlement in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Africa.

Bibliography

Bianco, Mirella. Gadafi: Voice from the Desert. London: Longman Group, 1975.

El-Kikhia, Mansour O. Libya's Qaddafi: The Politics of Contradiction. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997.

Qaddafi, Muammar. Escape to Hell and Other Stories. New York: Stanké, 1998.

St John, Ronald Bruce. Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Tremlett, George. Gadaffi: The Desert Mystic. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993.

— LISA ANDERSON
UPDATED BY RONALD BRUCE ST JOHN

(mooh-uh-mahr, mooh-ah-mahr kuh-dah-fee)

A Libyan military officer and political leader of the twentieth century. The ruler of Libya and a militant Arab (see Arab-Israeli conflict), Qaddafi is fervently opposed to the influence of the United States in the Mediterranean Sea region, especially its influence on behalf of Israel. The United States has accused Qaddafi of planning terrorism, which he now claims to renounce.