The Rise and Fall of Muammar Qadhafi
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Transcript of The Rise and Fall of Muammar Qadhafi
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The Rise and Fall of Muammar Qadhafi By: Joanne Robery
How the process of colonialism and decolonization has played a major role in the rise and fall of Libya's MU'ammar Qadhafi.
Introduction
Discussion
Conclusion
Illustrations Appendix
Resources Used
Table of Contents
2
2-11
11
12
13-14
1
Introduction
The process of colonialism/decolonization has played a major role in the rise and fall of
Libya's Muammar Qadhafi. Qadhafi rose to power on September 15\ 1969 when he and his
regime decided to take action and overthrow the government in a military coup to take control.
Qadhafi made the country a "pro-Arabic, anti-western, Islamic republic with socialist
leanings"("SomaliPress.com" August 4, 2008). He ruled Libya for forty two years up until the
defeat of his forces at the hands of the rebels in a civil war this year (2011). It is hard to
distinguish at what point during this war that he lost control of his country.
Discussion
2
Libya was first colonized by Italy in 1911, and Italian jurisdiction was later recognized in
1912. There were two Italian colonies put in place, called Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (Harmon
2004). You can see how Libya was broken up into these colonized areas on map I in the
illustrations annex. "Thousands of Italians moved to Libya, and the Italian military made
ferocious attempts to wipe out the Arabs" (Willis 2009). The Libyan people fought the Italians
off the best that they could, but Italy succeeded in gaining control over most of the country in
1914. Most of the native peoples were killed off or banished during this time.
In the l 920's and 30's, the Italian government spent large sums of money on building
roads, developing towns and schools, and on agriculture ("SomaliPress.com" August 4, 2008).
"The few positive changes under Italian rule were mostly intended to help the Italian settlers"
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(Willis 2009). In October of 1922, Benito "Mussolini and the Fascists seized control of the
Italian government" ("Libyan History: Italian Colonization (1911-42)" June 22, 2009). Under
Mussolini's leadership, a "program of Italian immigration called 'demographic colonization"'
("SomaliPress.com" August 4, 2008) was launched in 1935. Under this plan, "he [Mussolini]
shipped many thousands of Italians- including criminals and very poor people to Tripolitania and
Cyrenaica" (Sanders 2001) and "by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, some 150,000 Italians
had settled in Libya. They made up 18 percent of the country's total population"(Sanders 2001 ).
During this time, many resistance groups arose to try to overthrow the Italians. One such
group was called the Sunasi fighters. The leader of this group was Oman al-Makhtar, who lead
teams in raids on Italian outposts using guerilla war tactics. "After 20 years, the Italians finally
hunted down, captured, and executed the freedom fighter in 1931, when he was a very old man"
(Sanders 2001 ). The people of Libya now consider Oman al-Makhtar a hero.
Giuseppe Volpe was sent to Libya in 1922 by the fascist government in Italy to put a stop
to the resistance to the Italian governance of Libya. The Libyans demanded independence with a
Muslim leader and threatened military action if this demand was not met. Volpe thought the
only solution to this, while maintaining the Italian colony, was to implement a direct rule. He
had approximately 15,000 troops under his command which he used to launch a campaign to
regain control of Libya (Simmons 1996). Libya was soon brought under control, although it took
some years to accomplish this.
A man named Muhammad Idris, as shown in figure 2 of the illustrations annex, was a
prominent figure in Libya during this time. He had a large amount of power due to his position
as chief of the Sanusi Muslim Sufi Order. He was the "leader of the Libyan resistance
movement against Italy" (Willis 2009). In 1922, he was exiled from Libya and worked out of
4
Egypt as his base, and it was there that "he formed a Libyan army in Cairo and joined with the
remaining Sanusi forces in Cyrenaica to support the British against the Germans and Italians,
who were using Libya as a base during their attempt to gain control of Egypt. Much fierce
fighting occurred in the hostile desert around the border between Egypt and Libya" (Sanders
2001).
Once the Axis powers were defeated and driven out by the Allies in February of 1943,
Libya came under control of the United Nations. The UN debated over the next four years as to
what should happen with the country, and won November 21, 1949, the UN General Assembly J
passed a resolution stating that Libya should become independent before January 1, 1952"
("Background Note: Libya" July 7, 2011). "With the help of the United Nations and British and
French advisors, Libya drew up a constitution. In 1950, a national assembly of the Libyan
people overwhelmingly chose Idris .... to rule the new nation" (Sanders 2001) and on December
24, 1951, King Muhammad Idris I declared Libya as an independent country, where the tribal
areas ofTripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan were all united as one.
Under King Idris I's rule, the government that formed was a monarchy. He was tolerant
of the western countries, and "welcomed British and American military bases into Libya"
(Malcolm 1996). "This not only brought in 'rent' revenue but also provided the fledgling nation
with a degree of international security .... nevertheless, many inside his own country considered
King Idris to be too pro-Western" (Harmon 2004).
During King Idris' rule "in 1959, the U.S oil company Esso (which later became
ExxonMobil) discovered large petroleum deposits in the Cyrenaica region of Libya" (Sullivan
2009). After this find, the income from the sale of the oil allowed Libya, which was one of the
poorest countries in the world, to become one of the wealthiest. 11 Although oil drastically
5
improved Libya's finances, popular'tesentment grew as wealth was increasingly concentrated in
the hands of the elite" ("Background Note: Libya" July 7, 2011). Thus, as the leaders and upper
class became richer, the poor remained poor, and "this discontent continued to mount with the
rise throughout the Arab world ofNasserism and the idea of Arab unity" ("Background Note:
Libya" July 7, 2011).
While the oil was being extracted, most of the profit went to the companies from the U.S
and Great Britain because they were the ones who owned the oil wells in Libya. Because of this,
the Libyan people felt that they were not receiving their fair share of the money, and were
discontent, and many "placed blame for the nation's economic problems on King lrdis' corrupt,
bureaucratic government" (Sullivan 2009). "By the late 1960's the country was ripe for a radical
change in leadership. A number of factions within the Libyan military, the business community,
and even the royal establishment were poised for an opportunity to seize power" (Harmon 2004).
This race for control over the government of Libya is where Maummar Qadhafi took the
opportunity to gain control.
Maummar Qadhafi was born into a family of poor nomads in the desert, where they
raised and herded goats and camels. While he was young, many of his family members fought
against the Italians and died, thus making him grow opposed to the Western countries and their
customs. "While attending high school in Sabha, Qaddafi began to recruit secret 'cells' of
students with the plan to overthrow the Libyan monarchy. The plan leaked and Qaddafi was
expelled for 'treasonable behavior'.,'. .. he attended another school, graduated with honors, and
entered the University of Libya. There, he continued to conjure up plans to overthrow the king"
(Malcolm 1996). He graduated with a degree in law, and from there he joined the army. He
recruited more followers to his cause, and "with most of Libya's 7,000 strong army already
sympathetic to the revolutionary cause" (Malcolm 1996).
6
At first, Qadhafi made sure that he and his men took control over the oil wells because he
knew that the revenue from them brought in a considerable amount of money, and his second
mission was to get the word of the revolution he was leading out to the people. At 6 A.M on
September 151, 1969, four hours before Qadhafi would launch his coup, he "sent out a radio
message to the Libyan people. He said 'In response to your own will, fulfilling you most
heartfelt wishes, answering your incessant demands for change and regeneration and your
longing to strive towards these ends, listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces
have undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which has
sickened and horrified us all "'(Sullivan 2009). Qadhafi was only 27 years old when he lead his
supporters and overthrew the Libyan government. "He had three unshakeable obsessions:
revolution, Islam, and Arab unity" (Malcolm, 1996), and another main goal of his was to
redistribute the wealth among the people.
"Once Qaddafi took power, changes happened quickly. He renamed the country the
Libyan Arab Republic and shut down all the agencies of the old government" (Willis 2009). He
also "espoused his own political system - a combination of socialism and Islam - which he called
the Third International Theory" ("Libya" 2011 ). When he took control of the oil companies, he
demanded that they give Libya 51 % of the profits, and also had ties cut with the U.S and Britain.
He "instituted new laws designed to enforce strict Muslim and Arab customs. He gave orders to
arrest women who wore pants or short skirts and men with long hair" (Sanders 2001 ). Qadhafi
exiled all those who posed as a threat, and implemented the death sentence for punishment upon
anyone who went against him politically, and forbade strikes. Under his government, he put in
place the law of Islam, known as Shari' ah law.
7
During his rule, Qadhafi violated many of his people's human rights and supported
terrorist liberation movements with money and troops. The liberation movements he supported
included the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the ET A in Spain, the Irish Republican Army
in Northern Ireland, and "Japanese and Philippine revolutionaries" (Hannon 2004) just to name a
few. "In March 1986 he ordered Libyan air missiles to strike American warships for crossing the
"Line of Death", a boundary line he drew in international waters in the Gulf of Sidra" (Sanders
2001). A month later, American fighter planes bombed "mili tary targets in Tripoli after
receiving evidence of responsibi lity for bombing several European airports at a West Berlin
disco" (Sanders 200 1). His fa ilure to conquer the Americans cost him much of his eminence
among his own people, "some of whom had already lost fa ith in his regime" (Sanders 2001 ). His
losses were both personal and political. Many Western countries took action against Libya. The
US banned all oil imports from them, and the U.S. State Department canceled out US passports
for travel to Libya. Australia also cut off all tics with Libya due to all the uprising and trouble
they were causing.
On December 21, 1988, another terrorist attack caused by Libya occurred to Pan Am Flight 103
that was "heading from London's Heathrow International Airport to New York Kennedy
International Airport" (Zalman 2011). The plane exploded "en route over Lockerbie Scotland"
(Zalman 2011) and the explosion killed all passengers and crew on board (259 total, 189 of those
were American citizens). "Investigations determined that Semtex, a plastic explosive, was the
cause of the aircraft's shattering. The explosives were wired to a device that measured barometric
pressure connected to a timer. These were placed inside a portable radio/cassette player, and
8
packed in a regular suitcase" (Zalman 2011) that was then brought aboard the plane. Two men
were responsible for this bombing belonged to the Abu Nidal Terrorist organization. Only after
years of the U .S battling with Libya to give up the two criminals, they did and on May 3, 2000,
the two suspects were brought to the Netherlands to be tried and convicted. In addition, "Libya
accepted responsibility for the attacks and agreed to pay victims' families compensation"
(Zalman 2011) in 2003. Qadhafi's funding made terrorist attacks like this possible, thus
indirectly killing thousands of people over his forty-two year reign of Libya.
Qadhafi ruled his country very strictly according to the Islamic Shari 'ah law, and in his
ruling, violated the human rights of his people. Such violations included exiling all Jews from
Libya, making theft punishable by amputation of hands and adultery by lashes, and torturing his
prisoners. He also executed public dissidents, and then rebroadcasted the executions onto
Libyan state television channels. He banned all opposition to his rule (such as criminalizing the
formation of political parties), and forbade the Berber people from giving their children Berber
I.•,, ••
names and banned the use of the Berber language. On top of this, he also sent out assassins to
kill Libyans who had fled to live in other countries for freedom. One example of how serious
Qadhafi was with protecting his government and reputation was when "several prominent
Libyans living in Europe who had criticized the revolutionary leader and his policies were
assassinated ... by Libyan 'Death Squads ... (Sanders 2001). The people were very upset with
Qadhafi as they felt that he was taking their inalienable rights away from them.
Rebellion groups started to rise up against Qadhafi as early as the 1980's. "The most
famous was the May 1984 Bab Al-Aziziya Barracks coup when the National Front for the
Salvation of Libya, made up of military and civilian dissidents, played a leading role" (Sadiki
February 21, 2011). Another attempt to get rid of him was an assassination attempt in 1993.
"The most serious challenge against Gaddafi's authority came from the most populous and
powerful Libyan tribe, the Warfallah, in October 1993. The rebellion led to kangaroo trials in
1995 and many tribesmen were executed in 1997" (Sadiki February 21, 2011). Many people
continued to protest against Qadhafi since then.
9
The largest protest against Maummar Qadhafi that would eventually lead to his downfall
started in February 2011. "Inspired by revolts in other Arab countries, including neighboring
Tunisia and Egypt, a rebellion breaks out" ("Key Events in the Libya Conflict" August 22, 2011)
in Tripoli and other major cities such as Benghazi and Misrata on February 15, 2011. "On Feb.
25, 2011, security forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi used gunfire to try to disperse thousands of
protesters who streamed out of mosques after prayers to mount their first major challenge to the
government's crackdown in Tripoli" ("Libya- Revolution and Aftermath (2011) " October 28,
2011 ). Thus, as the government turned to violence as a way to deal with the rebelling people,
the protestors started to move to violence themselves and form rebel groups to conduct attacks
against the government forces. The protests soon escalated into a wide spread rebellion across
the country.
In an interview conducted with Qadhafi on February 28, 2011 it states that he "said the
people who have taken over Benghazi in eastern Libya are terrorists and al Qaeda operatives. He
doesn't believe people are demonstrating against him anywhere in Libya, and repeated the
charge that those who are have been given hallucinogenic drugs- a claim he first made in his
televised speech broadcast [on February 27, 201 lr' (Amanpour February 28, 2011).
According to Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, she stated that
"when he [Muammar Qadhafi] can laugh in talking to American and international journalists
while he is slaughtering his own people, it only underscores how unfit he is to lead and how
disconnected he is from reality" (Amanpour February 28, 2011).
On March 31 si, 2011, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NA TO) "takes over
formal command of the military operation" ("Key Events in the Libya Conflict" August 22,
2011) and on May 151, 2011 they launch an air strike that Qadhafi escapes. The air strike kills
one of his sons, and three of his grandchildren.
On August 21 5\ 2011, the rebels entered Tripoli and were greeted by cheering crowds.
10
They surrounded Qadhafi's Bab al-Azizia military compound and raided it through the north
gates. Despite previous reports suggesting that Qadhafi might be inside, no one was found in
there. The rebels claimed victory that day with the overthrow ofMaummar Qadhafi. The
following day, "US President Barack Obama said the Libyan 'tyrant' must leave now to avoid
further bloodshed while calling on the rebels to respect human rights, show leadership, preserve
the institutions of the state and move towards democracy" " ("Key Events in the Libya Conflict"
August 22, 2011).
On October 201h, 2011, Qadhafi 's "convoy was hit by NATO airstrikes but not destroyed
and he later was captured alive in his hometown of Sirte ... by revolutionary fighters" ("Video
Surfaces of Muammar Qaddafi's Final Moments With Revolutionaries Before Death" October
20, 2011). They shoved Qadhafi along with them, and he tried to resist the freedom fighters.
They soon shot him in the head, and he died. "After his death, Qaddafi's body was paraded
through the streets ofMisrata on top of a vehicle surrounded by a large crowd chanting, "The
blood of the martyrs will not go in vain," according to footage aired on Al-Arabi ya television.
The fighters who killed Qaddafi are believed to have come from Misrata, a city that suffered a
11
brutal weeks-long siege by Qaddafi's forces during the eight-month civil war" (Video Surfaces of l, .• ••
Muammar Qaddafi's Final Moments With Revolutionaries Before Death" October 20, 2011).
"Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a doctor who accompanied the body in the ambulance and
examined it, said Qaddafi died from two bullet wounds -- to the head and chest" ("Video
Surfaces of Muammar Qaddafi's Final Moments With Revolutionaries Before Death" October
20, 2011 ). They wanted Qadhafi alive for trail, but the people are happy and think it is better off
that he is now dead.
"Celebratory gunfire and cries of 'God is great' rang out across Tripoli. Motorists honked
and people hugged each other. In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city's fall after
weeks of fighting by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a
meat cleaver in the air and singing tl;ie, national anthem" ("Video Surfaces of Muammar
Qaddafi's Final Moments With Revolutionaries Before Death" October 20, 2011).
Conclusions
When the Italians first colonized Libya, they imposed their will on the people, and made
them abide by their laws. Then King Idris was chosen by the Italians to take over, and was a
proxy of the Italian government. He was seen as representing Italy. Then when Qadhafi took
over, he looked better than King Idris at first and seemed like a better leader, but then Qadhafi
started implementing his own rule on the people, similar to the Italians implementing their own
rule. Qadhafi's death was the last step in the decolonization of Libya because the people are now
in the process of creating a democratic state that represents the people's will.
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''Video Surfaces of Muammar Qaddafi's Final Moments With Revolutionaries Before Death" October 20, 20 I I).
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Photo 2 Muhammed February 22, 2011) This Photo shows Muhammad lrdis sitting in a chair for his picture to be taken.
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