According to official figures, Muammar bin Mohammed Abu Menyar Abdel Salam bin Hamid al-Gaddafi was born on September 13, 1942. However, the exact date is not known for certain, and many researchers tend to believe that he was born in 1940. Gaddafi himself loved to tell that he was born in a Bedouin tent 30 kilometers from the city of Sirte. His father, a native of the al-Gaddafa tribe, being a shepherd, wandered from place to place. Mother with three older daughters ran the household. However, there was also a version that Muammar was a descendant of the ancient Bedouin tribes that came from Iraq.

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There is also a more exotic version, according to which Gaddafi was a Jew. Rumor has it that the former leader of the Jamahiriya was the son of pilot Albert Preziosi from the French Normandie-Niemen air regiment. It is known that in 1941 the pilot spent some time in the Libyan desert, where his plane crashed. There, according to legend, he met with one Palestinian Jew, a nurse who gave birth to his son Muammar.Albert Preziosi died in 1943. It is worth noting that no documentary evidence of this version of Gaddafi's birth has yet been found.

After graduating from school, Gaddafi entered the Libyan University in Benghazi in 1959. After graduating as a lawyer, the future colonel entered the Military Academy. In 1965 he was sent to the active army. Then Gaddafi was sent to study in the UK, where he studied armored business. By the way, information about the education of Gaddafi is very contradictory. So, they say that he allegedly graduated from the Libyan military school before studying in Britain. There are still versions that he studied history at the Libyan University or listened to just an evening course of lectures there.

Even in his student years, Gaddafi created a secret organization "Free Unionist-Socialist Officers", which aimed to seize power.

In 1969, Gaddafi was appointed adjutant of the Signal Corps and led one of the conspiracies. On September 1, a group of rebels under the command of Captain Gaddafi seized a number of objects in Tripoli, including a radio station, through which he announced the overthrow of King Idris I, declaring Libya a republic. From that moment on, Gaddafi actually rules the country. After the revolution, Gaddafi was given the rank of colonel, which he retained even after he was promoted to general.

The new order in Libya Gaddafi began to direct with an iron fist. He established a regime based on people's committees and assemblies, and later proclaimed a people's republic in which he banned all political organizations except his own. Having arranged the system of governing the country, in 1979, Gaddafi resigned from the presidency, declaring his intention to work on the "continuation of the revolution." And by the end of the 1980s, he completely abandoned all official posts and began to be called a revolutionary leader, however, all control of the country remained in his hands.

Gaddafi was a believing Muslim. After coming to power, he carried out a reform of the calendar, starting the reckoning from the year of the death of the Prophet Muhammad. In addition, dry law was introduced in Libya, gambling was banned, theaters were closed, Western music was banned, and Sharia law is in force. In everyday life, Gaddafi was outwardly unpretentious, and indicatively led an ascetic lifestyle. A faithful companion of his trips to other countries was the Bedouin tent, which he pitched in the center of world capitals. The colonel was married twice. He left his first wife after the coup, leaving himself a son. The second wife was a nurse from a military hospital. Gaddafi had seven children from this marriage.

It is known that Muammar Gaddafi survived a series of assassination attempts. So, in 1975, during a military parade, an attempt was made to fire at the podium, which was the Libyan leader. In the same year, the military unsuccessfully tried to carry out a coup, and in 1996 they tried to blow up his car. But the perpetrators mixed up the vehicles, and as a result, several people from Gaddafi's guards were killed, who himself was not injured. It is curious that when he first came to power, he drove without security guards in a modest Volkswagen, and went shopping in a regular store. But several assassination attempts forced him to drastically change his lifestyle and reduce direct contact with the people to a minimum.

Gaddafi was known as a great female lovers. When he gave interviews, he preferred to talk to female journalists. He repeatedly stated that "a man should be content with only one wife," although Islam allows you to have up to four. Of the other hobbies of the former leader of the Jamahiriya, a passion for horses, hunting, and weapons is known. Gaddafi liked to dress beautifully, often changing outfits (most of them were national clothes and military uniforms). It is noteworthy that the military uniforms of the colonel were always different: he put on both a naval uniform, and an air force officer, and land uniforms. An indispensable attribute were dark glasses that hide his eyes.

The former leader of Libya has been repeatedly accused of terrorist activities. He, in particular, is credited with four assassination attempts on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and an attempt to sink a British transport ship with several hundred Jews. In 1981, the United States accused Libya, led by Gadaffi, of preparing an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. He was also suspected of involvement in several terrorist attacks: two explosions in London, mining in the Red Sea, organizing shelling of people at the Libyan embassy in the British capital. In addition, the Libyans were suspected of involvement in the hijacking of the passenger ship Achille Lauro, an explosion at a discotheque in West Berlin.

All this led to the fact that American aircraft attacked targets in Libya that could be used to train terrorists. As a result of the raids, 101 Libyans were killed, including Gaddafi's adopted daughter, while his wife and two sons were injured. The response to this action was the explosion of a passenger Boeing 747 flying from London to New York, over the Scottish city of Lockerbie. This happened on December 21, 1988. The attack killed 270 people. After a three-year investigation, two main suspects were identified - they turned out to be members of the Libyan special services. Only in 2002 did Gaddafi admit his country's guilt for the attack on Lockerbie and promised compensation to the relatives of the victims.

At the same time, many Libyans remember the period of Gaddafi's rule with warmth. It is known that he spent most of the petrodollars on the needs of the people. For example, there was practically no unemployment in the country, most citizens had their own separate housing, universities functioned, hospitals met international standards. The proceeds from the sale of oil (about 10 billion dollars a year) were distributed to the needs of the state and among the citizens of the country (each of the 600 thousand families received 7-10 thousand dollars a year). True, the families that received the money could not dispose of them at their discretion, but had the right to buy only the most necessary goods.

Interesting fact: Libya ranked first among the Arab countries in terms of the number of satellite dishes per capita.

Muammar Gaddafi often surprised everyone with his extravagant antics. He loved to travel in style. On his travels, he was always accompanied by a detachment of armed female bodyguards, in which, as they say, only virgins were taken. On some tours, the Libyan leader took camels with him, whose milk he liked to drink even while visiting other countries. In the mid-2000s, he proclaimed Libya the birthplace of Coca-Cola and demanded royalties for the use of the brand, claiming that initially all the components of the drink were supplied from Africa. In addition, the colonel stated that William Shakespeare was an Arab immigrant whose real name was Sheikh Zubair.

Despite the odiousness, many world leaders communicated and met with the Libyan leader. However, everything changed dramatically when the Arab Spring swept through the Middle East. In the wake of political protests in a number of countries, Western troops decided to support the opposition in Libya as well. As a result, Gaddafi's regime fell and he himself was killed. And at first he was subjected to severe abuse. The entire world has seen footage showing the bleeding Libyan leader being led through the crowd. At this moment, he is poked with everything that was in the hands of the people around him - sticks, knives, weapons. They say that they not only beat him, but even poured sand and other monstrous things into his wounds. The torture continued for about three hours until the colonel died.

And even after that, they did not stop mocking Gaddafi: his corpse was dragged by the legs through the streets of Sirte, the colonel's native city, in which he fought to the last. The details of the massacre of Gaddafi disgusted even those Libyans who welcomed his capture and death. Before burial, the body of Gaddafi was in the refrigerator for several days, so that everyone could stare at it. Only when the corpse began to decompose was it interred in a secret place.

Democracy does not exist for the rich or for the strongest or for those
who engage in terrorist activities.
All countries in the world should be equal
Muammar Gaddafi

After Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by rebellion and foreign intervention in Libya, there was an immediate debate about how inevitable the internal storm that, with foreign support, crushed the colonel's regime, was.

From a Western point of view, built on the antagonism of freedom and "non-freedom", Gaddafi's autocratic rule was bound to end in revolution sooner or later, and the "Arab Spring" only confirmed these expectations. But is it really so?

Looking at the autocrats of the Middle East and North Africa, we can easily see that during the "Arab spring" the overthrow of the "rotten regimes" was too selective. The objective dissatisfaction of the citizens of the region was based on the socio-economic prerequisites caused by the growing crisis phenomena of the global financial and economic system. Unrest, riots and rebellions have risen not only where Gaddafi, Mubarak, Ben Ali were overthrown, and not only where they are now stubbornly trying to overthrow Assad.

Unrest also swept the countries of the Persian Gulf, which supported in every possible way, including by armed means, "revolutions" in the countries of their colleagues in "non-democratic" rule. This already clearly shows that the very dissatisfaction of citizens with their governments is of a systemic supranational nature.

But as the events of 2011-2012 showed, the West was extremely selective in how the processes of expressing this discontent developed. In some cases, he indirectly or directly contributed to the overthrow of former regimes, and in others he turned a blind eye to the brutal suppression of disaffected in the Persian Gulf countries. Libya in this regard is a clear example of such double standards.

Muammar Gaddafi was a very peculiar revolutionary. Having seized power, as befits a person with real ideals, Gaddafi tried to implement cardinal socio-economic and political reforms in his country. The result was the creation of the Jamahiriya, the principles of which were set out in Gaddafi's main theoretical work, the Green Book.

It should be understood that Gaddafi made his revolution during the years of the Cold War, when the geopolitical background was determined by the rivalry between the USA and the USSR, which broadcast their ideologies to the world. Libya was among the group of countries that tried to maintain some isolation from this conflict, which at that time was expressed in the activities of the Non-Aligned Movement. With all the sympathy for the Soviet Union, which was perceived as a friendly force, Libya remained a country "on its mind", acting in the spirit of Yugoslavia under Tito.

Non-Aligned Movement.

Gaddafi, by virtue of the size of his personality, could not and did not want to be a puppet of Washington or the Kremlin, and in every possible way demonstrated his independence. This independence was not based in a vacuum. Raising the standard of living of ordinary Libyans, getting rid of the remnants of colonial domination and the influence of Western monopolies, the growth of Libya's international prestige, all this increased Gaddafi's foreign policy capital.

The most significant social benefits presented to the citizens of Libya.

On this basis, he was seriously engaged in an integration project based on African countries, designed to take Africa out of the role of an eternal supplier of resources for rich countries, and make Libya itself a regional leader and the main moral and political authority for North Africa.

In Libya itself, a peculiar version of socialism was formed, multiplied by national characteristics associated with the preservation of an abundant layer of tribal relations. The project of “guaranteed natural resource rent” was actually implemented in the country, when the citizens of the country actually began to receive a kind of margin from Libya’s foreign trade operations related to energy resources. Cheap gasoline, affordable education and medicine, government assistance to families with many children, and many other social benefits - all this was formed due to the accumulation in the hands of the state of oil revenues, which in other countries, as a rule, fall into the hands of the owners of oil companies and processing infrastructure.

The Libyan Jamahiriya built by Gaddafi outlived the Soviet Union by 20 years.

At the same time, it cannot be said that socialism triumphed in Libya, not at all - capitalist relations quite peacefully coexisted with socialist institutions. We can see this symbiosis in a more vivid form today in the example of China.

In this regard, Libya was a paradoxical country - the Libyans lived better than most of their neighbors, they were not directly included in any of the Cold War blocs, they did not make an unambiguous choice between antagonistic ideologies. In fact, it was one of the variants of the notorious “Third Way”, which small countries tried to look for in the grip of the cyclopean confrontation between the USSR and the USA. And the fact that Gaddafi's project survived this confrontation clearly shows that the Jamahiriya was more than viable.

After the fall of the USSR and the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Gaddafi continued to bend his line, where independence was side by side with a multi-vector approach. He rather quickly improved his relations with the West, even agreeing to admit the rather dubious results of the investigation into the Lockerbie plane explosion and to pay compensation to the victims of the terrorist attack. Libya has fitted quite well into the new global world order as one of the major suppliers of energy resources, having taken its place in the global system of division of labor. At the same time, Gaddafi continued to antagonize the West about the future of Africa and even tried to influence French policy in the region by financing Sarkozy during the elections.

This bizarre mixture of economic complaisance and political opposition was complemented by cooperation with Russia and China, which were allowed to build infrastructure facilities and increase their presence in the Libyan economy, which was strengthened by colossal projects like the Great Man-Made River, designed to solve the country's water supply problems.

But in this cunning and long-term strategy, where Libya, due to a solid state system and large oil reserves, tried to maneuver between large countries and blocs, there was one serious flaw.

During the Cold War, countries like Libya occupied a kind of buffer niche between antagonistic blocs. After the end of the Cold War, the Yalta-Potsdam system of the world order collapsed and gradually it was replaced by a modern geopolitical jungle ruled by naked force. The first bell sounded in 1999, when the aggression against Yugoslavia took place. Then there were Afghanistan and Iraq. The old mechanisms for deterring aggression have disappeared, and new ones have not appeared, as a result of which only the presence of nuclear weapons can really protect the country from unprovoked aggression. Libya did not have nuclear weapons, because during the period of normalization of relations with the West, Gaddafi first stopped the program to create nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and then liquidated its results with the help of international mediators. This was a fatal mistake by Gaddafi, who believed that his new relationship with the West would guarantee foreign policy stability around the system he had created.

In 2007, the plans of the American establishment to restructure North Africa and the Middle East, where Libya was among the other countries subject to restructuring, were leaked to the open press.

The fate of North Africa depends on the successful destruction of the states of Libya, Algeria and Morocco. Instead, a Berber state will be created, along with a mini-state of Nubia, carved out of Egypt, and a mini-state of the Polisario. The territories of modern Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Algeria will shrink dramatically.

Gaddafi, apparently, underestimated this danger, since in matters of arming his army he showed a certain negligence, not purchasing the necessary weapons from Russia, when she could sell them to him. It is difficult to say what caused this carelessness - the age of the colonel or the underestimation of the intentions of the Americans. Perhaps, faith in one's army and one's people was strong, as well as in protection from strong geopolitical players like Russia and China. One way or another, by the beginning of the rebellion, Libya came in an extremely unfavorable geopolitical position. By 2011, Gaddafi had fallen out with most of his fellow autocrats and American satellites in the Persian Gulf. Russia and China were completely unprepared to oppose the US and its satellites in the defense of Libya. We can only state that in the long run, Gaddafi's foreign policy line has failed. In the "brave new world" of the late Washington world order, small countries were left with two choices - either completely bend under the world hegemon, or enter the "axis of evil" and become a "rogue state". Gaddafi to the very end, even during the aggression, tried to maneuver and maintain the real sovereignty of his country, but without external guarantors of this sovereignty, these attempts were doomed to failure in the face of an irresistible military force that was unleashed on Libya.

It must also be said that the domestic policy of Libya for the time being did not harbor threats to the rule of Gaddafi, since rare tribal troubles, speeches by Islamists or demarches of the pro-Western intelligentsia were not of a threatening nature. The majority of Libyans openly supported Gaddafi's rule, which increased their standard of living.

The table clearly shows the stable purchasing power of the Libyan dinar before the 2008 crisis.

But alarming symptoms for Gaddafi began to accumulate already in the late 90s, when the entrenched middle class in large cities like Misurata and Benghazi began to interpret the social benefits provided by Gaddafi as insufficient, and the lack of a number of rights and freedoms began to be used for accusations of direct dictatorship. During the period of economic growth and high oil prices, it was not dangerous, but the financial crash of 2008 shook world markets and the external environment began to pile up on the structural problems of the Libyan economy, causing increased tension in society.

A few years before the start of the rebellion and aggression, a delegation from the DPRK visited Libya, one of whose members later shared his observations on the internal situation. North Koreans noted both a high standard of living and the loss of a revolutionary spirit and the erosion of the socialist foundation of the Gaddafi regime under the influence of quite trivial bourgeois values, such as a craving for increasing consumption, when the ideological foundations of the state begin to be perceived as an obstacle, and the level of benefits provided, which in fact was a conquest Libyan revolution, erroneously begins to appear natural and independent of the ruling regime. The problem with the Libyan rebellion is not that the Libyans lived poorly. They lived better than most of their neighbors. The problem is that a sufficiently high level of social benefits and guarantees began to be perceived as insufficient. There was a dangerous idea that "Gaddafi does not finish." It cannot be said that the Gaddafi family did not enjoy the fruits of long-term power - they lived quite luxuriously, but at the same time, it should be noted that they did a lot both for the development of the state and for the growth of the welfare of citizens.

Democracy in Libyan.

At the same time, it cannot be said that there was a direct dictatorship, a kind of system of "people's councils", that was quite efficient and provided access for ordinary citizens with different levels of government.

Gaddafi sincerely believed in what he wrote about in the Green Book and tried to build his ideal society, believing that by giving citizens more than in most other countries of the region, he would guarantee himself from an internal rebellion, where the actor of action would not be political marginals and ordinary citizens. He did not take into account the global protest trend, which, after the 2008 crisis, shocked the whole world with rallies and protests. He also did not take into account the fact that this discontent, which may not have been dangerous in itself, would be supported by the West and its opponents in the Arab world. As a result, dissatisfaction resulted in a rebellion, which Gaddafi almost managed to suppress. But almost no account is taken of the first bombs of NATO planes, the countdown to the destruction of Libya in the form in which it was built by Gaddafi has begun.

The lesson of the Jamahiriya is that it is quite realistic to build unique projects for the development of one's people and state without obediently following in the wake of the dominant ideologies. But at the same time, one must be able to effectively defend one's vision of the future from "bombing democracy" by armed means. Libya in 2011 did not have such opportunities.

But the death of the Jamahiriya in the fire of aggression was not in vain - the heroic resistance of the Libyan army and the image of the unbroken old colonel, who furiously threatened the irresistible power of the world hegemon, struck the world. By dying, Gaddafi was buying time for other victims of the coming restructuring of the "Greater Middle East" and Assad's current struggle would not have been possible without this last gift that Gaddafi gave to the world. This is also part of his legacy, which will be significant much later, when the bloody chaos of the Libyan war loses its current relevance. The great dream of Gaddafi perished, but he himself entered into historical immortality, both with his rich life and with his heroic death, which reflected the spirit of our time.

Muammar Mohammed Abdel Salam Hamid Abu Menyar al-Gaddafi (arab. معمر القذافي). Born June 7 (June 19), 1940 or September 1942 in Sirte (Misrata, Italian Libya) - died October 20, 2011 in Sirte (Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya). Libyan statesman and military figure, politician and publicist; de facto head of Libya 1969-2011, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (1969-1977), Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Libya (1970-1972), General Secretary of the General People's Congress (1977-1979); Colonel (since 1969), Supreme Commander of the Libyan Armed Forces (1969-2011). After Gaddafi refused all posts, he became known as the Fraternal Leader and Leader of the September 1st Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or Fraternal Leader and Leader of the Revolution.

Having overthrown the monarchy, he later formulated the "Third World Theory", set out in his three-volume work "Green Book", establishing in Libya a new political regime (or, as some authors believe, a form of government) - "Jamahiriya" (arab. جماهيرية‎‎) . The Libyan leadership directed the proceeds from oil production to social needs, which made it possible by the mid-1970s to implement large-scale programs for the construction of public housing, the development of healthcare and education. On the other hand, Libya during the reign of Gaddafi was repeatedly accused of interfering in the affairs of foreign states.

In 1977, there was a border military conflict with Egypt, and in the 1980s, the country was embroiled in a civil war in Chad. Being a supporter of pan-Arabism, Gaddafi made efforts to unite Libya with a number of countries, which ended unsuccessfully. He provided financial and other support to numerous national liberation, revolutionary and terrorist organizations around the world.

High-profile terrorist attacks, in connection with which the Libyan leadership was accused, became the formal basis for the American bombing of the country in 1986 and the imposition of sanctions in the 1990s.

On June 27, 2011, during the Libyan civil war, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Muammar Gaddafi on charges of murder, illegal arrest and detention. During the civil war, the opposition forces, with the military intervention of the NATO bloc, gradually established control over the country. He was killed on October 20, 2011 during the capture of Sirte by the forces of the Transitional National Council.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, which took place under democratic slogans, marked the beginning of a period of instability and an armed struggle for power in Libya, leading to the actual disintegration of the country into a number of independent state entities, the growth of the influence of Islamists and tribalism.

Muammar Gaddafi was born in 1940 or 1942 (June 7 or June 19, or in spring or September) in a tent in Wadi Jaraf south of the city of Sirte to a Bedouin family belonging to the Arabized Berber tribe of al-Gaddafa.

Subsequently, Gaddafi repeatedly emphasized his Bedouin origin: “We, the sons of the desert, placed our tents at a distance of at least twenty kilometers from the coast. In my early childhood, I never saw the sea.”

He was the last child and only son in the family. His grandfather was killed in 1911 by an Italian colonist. Recalling his childhood, Gaddafi said: “We, the Bedouins, enjoyed freedom in the midst of nature, everything was pristine clean ... There were no barriers between us and the sky”.

At the age of 9 he went to elementary school. Following his father, who constantly wandered in search of new, more fertile lands, Muammar changed three schools: in Sirte, Sebha and Misurata. The father later recalled: “I did not have the money to find a corner in Sirte for my son or entrust it to acquaintances. He spent the night in the mosque, came 30 kilometers away on weekends to visit us, spent his holidays in the desert, near the tent..

In his youth, Muammar Gaddafi was a fan of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser; participated in anti-Israel protests during the Suez Crisis in 1956.

In 1959, an underground organization was created in Sebha, one of the activists of which was Gaddafi. On October 5, 1961, the organization held a protest demonstration against Syria's secession from the United Arab Republic, culminating in a speech near the ancient city wall by the main organizer of the event, Muammar Gaddafi. A few days later, he was expelled from Sebha's boarding school. In 1962 he graduated from the Faculty of History of the University of Benghazi.

As a schoolboy, he participated in an underground political organization, held anti-colonial demonstrations against Italy. In 1961, Muammar created an underground organization that aimed to overthrow the monarchy, as in neighboring Egypt. In October of the same year, a youth demonstration began in the city of Sebha in support of the Algerian revolution. It immediately developed into a mass anti-monarchist uprising. The organizer and leader of the demonstration was Gaddafi. For this he was arrested and then expelled from the city. I had to continue my studies in Misurata. There he entered the local lyceum, which he successfully completed in 1963.

In 1965, Muammar Gaddafi, with the rank of lieutenant, graduated from a military college in Benghazi and began serving in the signal troops at the Ghar Younes military camp, then in 1966 he underwent retraining in the UK and at the same time was promoted to captain. During an internship in the UK, lieutenants Gaddafi and Abu Bakr Younis Jaber stood out in a group of Libyan officers for their strict adherence to Islamic customs, refusing alcohol and pleasure trips. Before the overthrow of the monarchy in Libya in the fall of 1969, he served in the engineering troops.

In 1964, under the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi, on the seashore near the village of Tolmeita, the 1st congress of an organization called Free Unionist-Socialist Officers (OSOYUS) took place, which adopted the slogans of the Egyptian revolution of 1952 "Freedom, socialism, unity." In the underground, the OSOYUS began preparations for a coup.

In general terms, the plan for the performance of the officers was already developed in January 1969, but the three times appointed dates for the operation "El-Quds" ("Jerusalem") - March 12 and 24, as well as August 13 - were postponed for various reasons. In the early morning of September 1, detachments of members of the OSOYUS, led by Captain Gaddafi, simultaneously began to speak in Benghazi, Tripoli and other cities of the country. They quickly established control over major government and military installations. All entrances to the American bases were blocked in advance. King Idris I at that time was being treated in Turkey.

At 7:00 a.m., the famous "Communiqué No. 1" was aired, beginning with the words of Gaddafi: "Citizens of Libya! In response to the secret aspirations and dreams that overwhelmed your hearts. In response to your unceasing demands for change and spiritual rebirth, your long struggle in the name of these ideals. Heeding your call for rebellion, your loyal army forces have taken on this task and overthrew a reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which made us sick and shocked us all...".

Captain Gaddafi further said: “All who witnessed the sacred struggle of our hero Omar al-Mukhtar for Libya, Arabism and Islam! All those who fought on the side of Ahmed ash-Sherif in the name of bright ideals ... All the sons of the desert and our ancient cities, our green fields and beautiful villages - go ahead!.

One of the first was the message about the creation of the highest body of state power - the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). The monarchy was overthrown. The country received a new name - the Libyan Arab Republic. On September 8, the IRC decided to award the 27-year-old captain Gaddafi the rank of colonel and appointed him supreme commander of the country's armed forces. He remained in this rank for life (until 1979 he was the only colonel in the country).

Muammar Gaddafi became the chairman of the SRC. The SRK included 11 officers who participated in the coup: Abdel Salam Jelloud, Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, Awwad Hamza, Bashir Havwadi, Omar Moheishi, Mustafa al-Kharrubi, Mohammed Najm, Khuwaildi al-Khmeidi, Abdel Moneim al-Huni, Muhammad Mogaref and Mukhtar Gervi. On October 16, 1969, Gaddafi, speaking at a mass rally, promulgated five principles of his policy: 1) complete evacuation of foreign bases from Libyan territory, 2) positive neutrality, 3) national unity, 4) Arab unity, 5) prohibition of political parties.

January 16, 1970 Muammar Gaddafi became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. One of the first activities led by Gaddafi's new leadership was the evacuation of foreign military bases from Libyan territory. He then said: "Either the foreign bases will disappear from our land, in which case the revolution will continue, or if the bases remain, the revolution will perish."

On March 31, 1970, the withdrawal of troops from the British naval base El Adem in the Tobruk region was completed, on June 11 - from the largest US air force base in the region, Wheelus Field, on the outskirts of Tripoli. The base began to be called Okba Ben Nafia after the Arab commander of the 7th century who conquered Libya. On October 7 of the same year, all 20 thousand Italians were expelled from Libya. This day was declared the "day of vengeance". In addition, as a revenge for the brutal colonial war unleashed by fascist Italy in the 1920s, the graves of Italian soldiers were destroyed.

In October 2004, after a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Gaddafi promised to change the "day of vengeance" into a "day of friendship", but this was not done. In 2009, during his historic visit to Italy, he met with hundreds of exiled Italians. One of the exiles later said about this meeting: “Gaddafi told us that he was forced to expel us in order to save our lives in this way, because the Libyan people wanted to kill us. But to save us, he also confiscated all of our property.”

During the years 1969-1971, foreign banks were nationalized, all land property owned by Italians. The state also nationalized the property of foreign oil companies; the remaining oil companies were nationalized by 51%.

One of Gaddafi's first steps after coming to power was the reform of the calendar: the names of the months of the year were changed in it, and the chronology began to be conducted from the year of the death of the Prophet Muhammad. In November 1971, the Revolutionary Command Council set up a commission to review all of Libya's legislation in accordance with "the basic principles of the Islamic Sharia". Alcoholic drinks and gambling were banned in the country.

April 15, 1973, during his speech in Zuar, Muammar Gaddafi proclaimed a cultural revolution, which included five points:

the annulment of all existing laws passed by the previous monarchical regime and their replacement with laws based on Sharia;
repression against communism and conservatism, purging all political opposition - those who opposed or resisted the revolution, such as communists, atheists, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, defenders of capitalism and agents of Western propaganda;
the distribution of weapons among the people in such a way that public resistance would defend the revolution;
administrative reform to end excessive bureaucratization, overreach and bribery;
encouragement of Islamic thought, rejection of any ideas that do not correspond to it, especially ideas imported from other countries and cultures.

According to Gaddafi, the Libyan Cultural Revolution, unlike the Chinese Cultural Revolution, did not introduce anything new, but rather marked a return to the Arab and Islamic heritage. Sharia laws have been introduced in the country since 1979.

The Gaddafi regime in the 1970s and 1990s had much in common with other similar post-colonial regimes in Africa and the Middle East. Rich in natural resources, but impoverished, backward, tribalist Libya, from which the attributes of Western life were expelled in the early years of Gaddafi's rule, was declared a country of a special development path. The official ideology was a mixture of extreme ethnic nationalism, rent-seeking planned socialism, state Islam and a "leftist" military dictatorship headed by Gaddafi, with a declared collegial government and "people's power".

Despite this, and also the fact that Gaddafi supported various radical political currents at different times, his policy inside the country during these years was relatively moderate. The regime was supported by the army, the state apparatus and the rural population, for whom these institutions were in fact the only mechanism of social mobility.

Having come to power, Gaddafi began to generalize his political and socio-economic views into a concept put forward in opposition to the two main world ideologies - Western and socialist. A peculiar concept of social development, put forward by Gaddafi, is set forth in his main work, the Green Book, in which the ideas of Islam are intertwined with the theoretical positions of the Russian anarchists Kropotkin and Bakunin. Jamahiriya (the official name of the political system of Libya) translated from Arabic means "the power of the masses."

On March 2, 1977, at an extraordinary session of the General People's Congress (GPC) of Libya, held in Sebha, the "Declaration of Sebha" was promulgated, proclaiming the establishment of a new form of government - the Jamahiriya (from Arabic "jamahir" - masses). The Libyan Republic received its new name - the "Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" (SNLAD).

The Revolutionary Command Council and the government were dissolved. Instead, new institutions were created that corresponded to the "Jamahiri" system. The General People's Congress was declared the supreme body of the legislative, and the Supreme People's Committee formed by it instead of the government - the executive. Ministries were replaced by people's secretariats, at the head of which bodies of collective leadership were created - bureaus. Libyan embassies in foreign countries have also been transformed into people's bureaus. The head of state in Libya, in accordance with the principle of democracy, did not exist.

Gaddafi (general secretary) and four of his closest associates, Major Abdel Salam Ahmed Jelloud, as well as generals Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, Mustafa al-Kharrubi and Khuwaildi al-Khmeidi, were elected to the General Secretariat of the GNC. In October 1978, Gaddafi proclaimed "the separation of the revolution from power."

Exactly two years later, the five leaders resigned from government posts, leaving them to professional managers. Since then, Gaddafi has been officially called the Leader of the Libyan Revolution, and all five leaders have been called the Revolutionary Leadership. Revolutionary committees appeared in the political structure of Libya, designed to carry out the political line of the revolutionary leadership through the system of people's congresses. Muammar Gaddafi was officially only the leader of the Libyan revolution, although his real influence on the process of making political, economic and military decisions was actually high.

Muammar Gaddafi advocated a democratic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the creation of a single Arab-Jewish state under the code name "Isratina".

In the mid-1970s, the orientation of Libya's foreign policy towards the USSR was already obvious, while Egypt was increasingly inclined to cooperate with Western countries and entered into a dialogue with Israel. The policy of the Egyptian President Sadat caused a negative reaction from the Arab countries, including Libya.

In the spring of 1976, Egypt, and then Tunisia and Sudan, accused Libya of organizing and financing their internal opposition circles. In July of the same year, Egypt and Sudan made direct accusations against Libya of supporting an unsuccessful coup attempt against Sudanese President Nimeiri, and already in August, the concentration of Egyptian troops on the Libyan border began. Tensions between the two countries escalated in April-May 1977, when demonstrators in both countries seized each other's consulates. In June, Gaddafi ordered 225,000 Egyptians who worked and lived in Libya to leave the country by July 1, otherwise they would be arrested. On July 20 of the same year, Libyan artillery opened fire for the first time on Egyptian border posts in the area of ​​al-Sallum and Halfaya. The next day, Egyptian troops invaded Libyan territory. During the four days of fighting, both sides used tanks and aircraft. As a result of the mediation mission of Algeria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, hostilities ceased by 25 July.

Almost immediately after coming to power, Muammar Gaddafi, driven by the idea of ​​pan-Arabism, headed for the unification of Libya with neighboring Arab countries. On December 27, 1969, a meeting was held between Gaddafi, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Sudanese Prime Minister Jafar Nimeiri, as a result of which the Tripoli Charter was signed, containing the idea of ​​uniting the three states. On November 8, 1970, the "Cairo Declaration" was adopted on the creation of the Federation of Arab Republics (FAR) consisting of Egypt, Libya and Sudan. In the same year, Gaddafi proposed to Tunisia to unite the two countries, but then President Habib Bourguiba rejected the proposal.

June 11, 1972 Gaddafi urged Muslims to fight the US and Britain, and also announced his support for black revolutionaries in the United States, revolutionaries in Ireland and Arabs who want to join the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. On August 2, at a meeting in Benghazi, the Libyan leader and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat agreed on a phased unification of the two countries, which was scheduled for September 1, 1973. More enthusiastic than the Egyptian president, Muammar Gaddafi even organized a 40,000-strong march on Cairo the following July to put pressure on Egypt, but the march was stopped 200 miles from the Egyptian capital.

The union of Libya and Egypt did not work out. Further events only led to a deterioration in Egyptian-Libyan relations and later to an armed conflict. With the mediation of Gaddafi, from November 26 to 28, 1972, a meeting of the presidents of North (YAR) and South Yemen (PDRY) took place in Tripoli, which ended with the signing of the "Full text of the Unity Agreement between the two parts of Yemen." The YAR Advisory Council, at its meeting on December 10, "thanked Gaddafi for the efforts he has made in the implementation of Yemeni unity, which is a step towards full Arab unity." In January 1974, Tunisia and Libya announced the unification and formation of the Arab Islamic Republic, but a referendum on this issue never took place. Being in May-June 1978 on a visit to Algiers, Gaddafi proposed the unification of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia.

In August 1978, at the official invitation of the Libyan leadership, the leader of the Lebanese Shiites and the founder of the Amal movement, Imam Musa al-Sadr, arrived in the country, accompanied by two satellites, after which they mysteriously disappeared. On August 27, 2008, Lebanon accused Gaddafi of plotting to kidnap and illegally imprison the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shiites and demanded the arrest of the Libyan leader. As the investigator noted, by committing this crime, Colonel Gaddafi "contributed to the unleashing of a civil war in Lebanon and an armed conflict between confessions." Libya has always denied allegations of involvement in the disappearance of the three Lebanese and claims that the imam and his companions left Libya in the direction of Italy.

During the Ugandan-Tanzanian war of 1978-1979, Muammar Gaddafi sent 2,500 Libyan troops to help Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. On December 22, 1979, the United States included Libya in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. In the early 1980s, the United States accused the Libyan regime of interfering in the internal affairs of at least 45 countries.

On September 1, 1980, after secret negotiations between representatives of Libya and Syria, Colonel Gaddafi proposed to Damascus to unite so that they could more effectively resist Israel, and on September 10 an agreement was signed to unite Libya and Syria. Libya and Syria were the only Arab countries that supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. This led to the fact that Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations with Libya on October 19 of the same year.

After the suppression of an attempted coup d'état in Sudan in July 1976, Khartoum broke off diplomatic relations with the Libyan Jamahiriya, which the presidents of Sudan and Egypt accused of plotting to overthrow Nimeiri. That same month, a tripartite "holy alliance" of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Sudan against Libya and Ethiopia was concluded at a conference of Islamic states in Jeddah. Feeling threatened by the alliance between Egypt and Sudan, Gaddafi in August 1981 formed a tripartite alliance of Libya with Ethiopia and South Yemen, aimed at countering Western, primarily American, interests in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

In November 1982, Gaddafi made a proposal to create a special inter-African body to resolve controversial political problems peacefully, which would avoid military conflicts on the continent.

On August 13, 1983, during his visit to Morocco, Muammar Gaddafi signed with the Moroccan king Hassan II in the city of Oujda the Arab-African federative treaty, which provides for the creation of a union state of Libya and Morocco as the first step towards the creation of the Great Arab Maghreb. On August 31, a referendum was held in Morocco, as a result of which the treaty was approved by 99.97% of those who voted; The Libyan General People's Congress supported it unanimously. Libya provided support to the Polisario front, leading a guerrilla war against Moroccan troops, and the signing of the treaty marked the end of Libyan assistance. The alliance began to fall apart when Libya signed an alliance with Iran in 1985, and after Gaddafi criticized the Moroccan king for his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, King Hassan II annulled the treaty altogether in August 1986.

The fall of the Nimeiri regime in Sudan at the same time led to an improvement in Sudanese-Libyan relations. Gaddafi stopped supporting the Sudan People's Liberation Army and welcomed the new government of General Abdel Rahman Swar al-Daghab.

In 1985, Gaddafi announced the formation of the "National (Regional) Command of the Arab Revolutionary Forces" with the aim of "carrying out armed coups in the reactionary Arab countries and achieving Arab unity", as well as to "destroy the embassies, institutions and other objects of the United States and Israel in countries pursuing an anti-Libyan policy and supporting the United States.” The following year, during the International People's Congress, held in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi was proclaimed the commander of a single pan-Arab army and the ideological leader of all the liberation movements of the world. Muammar Gaddafi visited the Soviet Union three times - in 1976, 1981 and 1986 and met with Leonid Brezhnev and.

In the 1980s, Gaddafi organized training camps in Libya for rebel groups from all over West Africa, including the Tuareg.

In 1981, Somalia severed diplomatic relations with Libya, accusing the Libyan leader of supporting the Somali Democratic Salvation Front and the Somali National Movement.

On September 1, 1984, Muammar Gaddafi announced that he had sent troops and weapons to Nicaragua to help the Sandinista government fight the United States.

In March 1986, when Gaddafi hosted the Congress of the World Center for the Fight against Imperialism and Zionism, among his guests were representatives of the Irish Republican Army, the Basque separatist group ETA and the leader of the radical American organization "Nation of Islam" African-American Muslim Louis Farrakhan.

In the 1980s, the leader of the Libyan revolution actively supplied weapons to the IRA, considering its activities part of the struggle against "British colonialism."

Libya provided assistance to such national liberation and nationalist movements as the Palestinian organizations of the PLO, Fatah, PFLP and DFLP, the Mali Liberation Front, the United Patriotic Front of Egypt, the Moro National Liberation Front, the Arabistan Liberation Front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Arabia, the African National Congress, the People's Bahrain Liberation Front, SWAPO, FRELIMO, ZAPU-ZANU. Libya was also suspected of supporting the Japanese Red Army.

Gaddafi took a tough stance towards Israel. On March 2, 1970, the Libyan leader appealed to 35 members of the Organization of African Unity to break off relations with Israel. In October 1973, the third Arab-Israeli war broke out. On October 16, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar unilaterally raised the selling price of their oil by 17% to $3.65. Three days later, in protest against Israel's support in the Yom Kippur War, Libya announced an oil embargo in USA. Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries followed suit, launching an oil embargo against countries that provided or helped to support Israel.

Libya was suspected of mining the Red Sea in 1984, which damaged 18 ships. On April 17 of the same year, an incident was widely reported when fire was opened on Libyan demonstrators from the building of the Libyan People's Bureau (embassy) in London, as a result of which British police officer Yvonne Fletcher was killed and 11 more people were injured. After that, on April 22, the UK severed diplomatic relations with Libya. In 2009, Gaddafi told Sky News, “She is not our enemy and we are sorry, all the time, and [express] our sympathy because she was on duty, she was there to protect the Libyan embassy. But there is a problem that needs to be solved - who did it?

Upon coming to power, the revolutionary government not only faced opposition to the new regime, but also internal problems within its ranks. On December 7, 1969, the SRK announced the prevention of a coup attempt by Lieutenant Colonels of Defense Minister Adam Havvaz and Interior Minister Musa Ahmed. A few months later, on July 24, 1970, Gaddafi announced the discovery of an "imperialist reactionary conspiracy" in Fezzan, in which the king's adviser Omar Shelhi, ex-prime ministers Abdel Hamid Bakush and Hussein Mazik were involved, and, as reported, the investigation established "the involvement of an American CIA to deliver weapons for the upcoming coup."

Political parties and opposition groups were banned under Law No. 71 of 1972. The only legal political party in the country in 1971-1977 was the Arab Socialist Union. On May 31, 1972, a law was promulgated banning worker and student strikes and demonstrations and imposing strict controls on the press. In August 1975, after an unsuccessful coup attempt, one of Colonel Gaddafi's closest associates, the Minister of Planning and Scientific Research, Major Omar Moheishi, fled to Tunisia and then moved to Egypt.

In November 1985, Morocco extradited Omar Moheishi to the Libyan authorities and escorted him to Tripoli, where, according to American journalists, citing the CIA, he was killed "at the plane's ramp on the runway." As A. Z. Egorin notes in his work “The Libyan Revolution”, Huni, Havvadi, Gervi, Najm and Hamza left the political arena after Moheishi. Of the 12 members of the SRK, Jelloud, Jaber, Harroubi and Khmeidi remained with Gaddafi.

Since 1980, more than 15 anti-Gaddafi Libyan exiles have been killed in Italy, England, West Germany, Greece and the US. In October 1981, the Libyan National Salvation Front (FNSL) was formed, led by the former Libyan ambassador to India, Muhammad Yusuf al-Magariaf, who was based in Sudan until the fall of the regime of President Nimeiri in 1985. On May 17, 1984, Gaddafi's residence, Bab al-Aziziya, was fired at with rockets, and 15 of the 20 attackers were killed in the ensuing firefight. The Libyan National Salvation Front claimed responsibility for the attack on the residence of the Libyan leader. According to the National Salvation Front of Libya (FNSL), between 1969 and 1994, 343 Libyans who opposed the Gaddafi regime died, of which 312 people died in Libya (84 people died in prisons, 50 people were publicly shot by the verdict of the revolutionary tribunals , 148 people died in plane crashes, car accidents and poisoning, 20 people died in armed clashes with regime supporters, four were shot dead by security agents and six people died because they were denied emergency medical care).

At times, Muammar Gaddafi showed great leniency towards dissidents. On March 3, 1988, he ordered the release of 400 political prisoners from the Abu Sadim prison. In the presence of a crowd of thousands, Gaddafi, driving a bulldozer, broke the prison door and shouted to the prisoners: “You are free,” after which a crowd of prisoners rushed into the breach, she chanted: “Muammar, who was born in the desert, made the prisons empty!” The Libyan leader proclaimed this day the Day of victory, freedom and the triumph of democracy. A few days later, he tore up the "black lists" of persons suspected of dissident activity.

By the time of the revolution, the strength of the armed forces of Libya consisted of only 8.5 thousand people, but in the first six months of his reign, Muammar Gaddafi, at the expense of conscripts and by reassigning several hundred people from the paramilitary national security forces, doubled the size of the Libyan army, bringing it to an end 1970s to 76 thousand people. In 1971, the Ministry of Defense was liquidated, the functions of which were assigned to the Main Military Command.

During his speech on April 15, 1973 in Zuwar, Gaddafi stated: "At a time when all regimes are usually afraid of their peoples and create an army and police for their protection, in contrast to them, I will arm the Libyan masses who believe in the al-Fatih revolution." Serious difficulties were caused by the program put forward by him back in 1979 to eliminate the traditional army by replacing it with an "armed people" capable, in the opinion of the Libyan leader, of repelling any external aggression. As part of the implementation of this idea, for almost a decade, measures were proclaimed and taken to attract women to military service, militarization of cities and educational institutions, as well as the creation of a kind of militia units.

Revolutionary committees were created in the armed forces, which took control of the activities of officers. On August 31, 1988, Colonel Gaddafi announced the "dissolution of the classical army and traditional police" and the formation of "armed people" formations. Developing his concept of an "armed people", he also announced the dissolution of the security apparatus. By a September decree of 1989, all former military ranks were abolished, and the General Provisional Defense Committee replaced the General Command of the Armed Forces. In June 1990, the voluntary Jamahiriya Guard was formed.

Before the overthrow of the monarchy, in 1968, 73% of the country's population was illiterate. During the first decade of revolutionary changes in Libya, 220 libraries and reading rooms, 25 knowledge dissemination centers, about 20 national cultural centers and 40 sports clubs were opened. By 1977, the literacy rate had risen to a total of 51%. From 1970 to 1980, more than 180 thousand apartments were built in the country, which made it possible to provide modern housing for about 80% of the needy, who had previously lived in basements, huts or tents. Gaddafi played an important role in the implementation of the grandiose project of the Great Man-Made River, calling it the "Eighth Wonder of the World." In August 1984, he laid the foundation stone for the pipe factory in Brega and that was when work began on the project. This huge irrigation system made it possible to supply the desert regions and the coast of the country with water from the Nubian aquifer.

The reduction in the flow of petrodollars due to the fall in oil prices in the early 1980s caused some economic difficulties in Libya. Speaking at a mass rally on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the revolution on September 1, 1988, the Leader of the Revolution announced the widespread denationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises and even the abolition of organizations in charge of importing and exporting consumer goods.

After Muammar Gaddafi came to power, Libya repeatedly declared territorial claims to neighboring Chad on the Aouz strip, substantiating its claims by the fact that this zone is inhabited by a population ethnically close to Libyan Arabs and Berbers. At that time, a civil war was going on in Chad between the central government and the National Liberation Front of Chad (FROLINA), which soon broke up into a number of groups that had the support of the United States, France and Libya. In August 1971, Chadian President Tombalbay announced that he had foiled an attempted coup involving recently liberated Chadians who allegedly received support from Muammar Gaddafi. He severed relations with Libya and invited opponents of Gaddafi to establish bases in Chad, and the Libyan leader in response recognized FROLIN and offered an operational base in Tripoli, increasing the amount of supplies to the Chadian rebels. In 1973, Libyan troops, without encountering resistance, captured a section of the border territory of Chad, and in 1975 Libya occupied and subsequently annexed the Aouzu strip with an area of ​​70 thousand km².

In October 1980, Libyan-minded President Goukouni Oueddei approached Libya for military assistance against the French-backed forces of Hissein Habré, who at the time also enjoyed Libyan support. Since that time, Libya has taken an active part in the armed conflict. In January 1981, Libya and Chad announced their intention to unite. Oueddei and Gaddafi issued a joint communiqué stating that Chad and Libya agreed to "work to realize full unity between the two countries." However, the unification of Libya and Chad did not take place. Thanks to the intervention of the OAU, on November 16 of the same year, Libyan troops left Chad. Upon their return home, Gaddafi announced that his troops had killed over 3,000 "enemies" while losing 300 of their own; by other estimates, Libyan losses were significantly higher.

Without Libyan support, Oueddei's forces were unable to stop the advance of Habré's troops, who occupied N'Djamena in June 1982 and overthrew his government. In the summer of 1983, the Libyan army again intervened in the conflict, but this time Oueddei led an insurgency against the Habré-led central government. The subsequent intervention of the French and Zairian troops actually led to the division of the country, and the entire territory north of the 16th parallel was under the control of the Libyan forces. In accordance with the mutual withdrawal agreement from Chad, France withdrew its troops in November 1984, but Libya did not. In 1987, Chadian troops, with the support of France, inflicted a number of defeats on the Libyan army in northern Chad, including in the Aouzu strip area, and also invaded Libyan territory, defeating the Maaten-es-Sarra airbase. After a while, the parties signed an armistice agreement.

The question of the territorial belonging of the Aouzu strip was discussed at a meeting of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which ruled in favor of Chad in 1994, after which Libya withdrew its troops.

On April 5, 1986, a bomb exploded at the La Belle disco in West Berlin, popular with the US military, killing 3 people, including a Turkish girl, and injuring 200 others. The Libyan trace was seen in the organization of the terrorist attack. The reason for this was the intercepted messages of Gaddafi, in which the Libyan leader urged his supporters against the Americans to inflict maximum damage, regardless of which target is being attacked - civilian or military, and in one intercepted message, Libyan intelligence informed about the details of the explosion in West German disco. US President calls Gaddafi 'the mad dog of the Middle East' accusing him of aiding international terrorism. The US President ordered the bombing of the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. Five targets were planned for the strike by American aircraft, of which three were in the Tripoli area (Bab al-Azizia barracks, the Sidi Bilala training base for combat swimmers and the military sector of the Tripoli airport) and 2 in the Benghazi area (Al-Jamahariya-Barras barracks and the airfield "Benin"). On the night of April 15, US aircraft attacked the intended targets. During the bombing, several dozen people were killed, including Gaddafi's adopted daughter.

After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the archives of the state security service of the GDR - the Stasi, were in the hands of Western intelligence services, in which a transcript of the radio interception of negotiations between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in the GDR was found, during which an order was given to carry out an action "with as many victims as possible" .

When President Ronald Reagan died on June 6, 2004, Muammar Gaddafi said: "I deeply regret that Reagan died without ever being brought to justice for his horrific crime he committed in 1986 against Libyan children."

In 2001, a German court ruled that the responsibility for the Berlin bombing lay with the Libyan intelligence services. After the capture of Tripoli by rebel detachments in 2011, information appeared that documents and personal photographs were found in the captured residence of Bab al-Azizia, according to which Hanna Gaddafi did not die at all during the American bombing, but remained alive and even graduated from English language courses during British Council office in Tripoli.

On December 21, 1988, a passenger Boeing 747 was blown up in the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. American airline Pan Am, operating flight No. 103 from London to New York, as a result of which 270 people were killed (all passengers of the aircraft and crew members, as well as people who were in the disaster area). At first, the terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as well as the Iranian authorities, were suspected of organizing the attack, but soon the Attorney General of Scotland, Lord Fraser, formally charged two members of the Libyan state intelligence services, Abdelbaset al-Mohammed al-Megrahi and al-Amin, with organizing the explosion. Khalifa Fhimahu.

On September 19, 1989, a DC-10 flying UTA-772 from Brazzaville to Paris was blown up in Niger airspace, killing 170 people. The investigation revealed the involvement of Libyan intelligence officers in this crime.

In 1992, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Libya. On December 1, 1993, additional UN sanctions were imposed prohibiting the sale of many types of equipment for transporting and refining oil, and Libyan holdings abroad were also frozen.

In March 1999, a French court sentenced six Libyans in absentia, including Gaddafi's wife's sister's husband, deputy head of the secret service, Abdallah Senussi, to life imprisonment for a terrorist attack in Niger airspace, and in August, the French prosecutor recommended not to accuse Muammar Gaddafi of involvement in the explosion of the French aircraft. Libya paid 200 million francs ($31 million) to the relatives of the victims, but Gaddafi said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro that this does not mean that his country was involved in the explosion. In April of the same year, Libya extradited two Libyan intelligence officers suspected of committing a terrorist attack on Lockerbie. On May 7, 2002, the US administration included Libya in the "axis of evil".

On August 13, 2003, Libya admitted that its officials were responsible for the bombing of a plane in the skies over Lockerbie. Immediately after that, the question arose of lifting all sanctions from Libya and excluding it from the black list of "states sponsoring international terrorism." However, France threatened to use its veto power in the UN Security Council on a resolution to lift sanctions if Libya does not increase the amount of compensation to the relatives of the terrorist attack on Niger. On September 1, Colonel Gaddafi announced his decision to pay the victims of the tragedy, emphasizing that he does not consider his country responsible for the attack: “Our dignity is important to us. We don't care about money. The Lockerbie case is already over, and the UTA case is now closed. We are opening a new page in our relations with the West.”

On February 23, 2011, the former Secretary of the Main People's Committee (Minister) of Justice of Libya, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, in an interview with the Swedish tabloid Expressen, stated that he "I have evidence that Gadhafi personally ordered Lockerbie" ("I have proof that Gadhafi gave the order about Lockerbie").

As a protest against the Oslo agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, on September 1, 1995, Gaddafi announced the expulsion of 30,000 Palestinians working in his country. He also called on Arab governments to expel the Palestinians and send them back to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as punishment for the Israeli and Palestinian leaders for reaching an agreement. However, already at the beginning of the 21st century, Gaddafi began to come up with the idea of ​​creating a single state on the territory of Palestine as a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In August 2003, he published a "White Book", in which he outlined his ideas for resolving the conflict, in particular, the creation of a united Arab-Jewish state "Izratina". He saw the return of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes during the First Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949 as a key prerequisite for peace.

In 1997, Gaddafi published the book Long Live the State of the Oppressed! In 1998, on his initiative, a Community of Coastal and Saharan States (CENSAD) with the aim of strengthening peace, security and stability, as well as achieving global economic and social development in the region. On March 2, 2001, also on his initiative, the African Union was proclaimed, uniting 54 African states. In addition, Gaddafi began to take the initiative to create the United States of Africa. This wording was first mentioned in 1924 in the poem “Hail, United States of Africa” by African-American rights activist Marcus Garvey, later this idea was followed by the President of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah. According to Gaddafi: “It is in the interests of Europe, America, China and Japan that there be such an entity as the United States of Africa. I once fought for national liberation with Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Algeria, Palestine. Now we can put down the gun and work for peace and progress. This is my role."

During the years of rule, many assassination attempts were made on Muammar Gaddafi. The most famous assassination attempts and plots against Colonel Gaddafi include:

In June 1975, during a military parade, an unsuccessful attempt was made to fire at the podium, which was Muammar Gaddafi.
In 1981, conspirators from the Libyan Air Force made an unsuccessful attempt to shoot down a plane on which Gaddafi was returning to Tripoli from the USSR.
In December 1981, Colonel Khalifa Kadir fired at Muammar Gaddafi, slightly wounding him in the shoulder.
In November 1985, a relative of Gaddafi, Colonel Hassan Ishkal, who intended to kill the Libyan leader in Sirte, was executed.
In 1989, during a visit by Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to Libya, Gaddafi was attacked by a fanatic armed with a sword. The attacker was shot dead by the guards.
In 1996, during the passage of Gaddafi's motorcade along the street of the city of Sirte, a car was blown up. The Libyan leader was not injured, but six people were killed in the assassination attempt. British MI5 agent David Shayler would later say that the British secret service MI6 was behind the assassination attempt.
In 1998, near the Libyan-Egyptian border, unknown people fired on the Libyan leader, but Aisha's main bodyguard covered Muammar Gaddafi with herself and died; seven more guards were injured. Gaddafi himself was slightly wounded in the elbow.

In the 2000s, unrest among the formed Libyan elite, the loss of all allies and Gaddafi's unwillingness to go into open confrontation with the Western world led to some liberalization of the country's economic and then political life. Foreign companies were allowed into Libya, contracts were signed on the construction of a gas pipeline to Italy (relations between the former colony and the mother country had previously been extremely strained). In general, Libya, albeit with a long delay, followed the path of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. Changes in the economic and political course, accompanied by competent propaganda, allowed Gaddafi to stay in power and avoid the fate of Anwar Sadat or Saddam Hussein.

In June 2003, at a nationwide congress, Muammar Gaddafi announced the country's new course towards "people's capitalism"; at the same time, the privatization of the oil and related industries was announced. On December 19, Libya announced the renunciation of all types of weapons of mass destruction.

On April 23, 2004, the United States announced a partial lifting of anti-Libyan economic sanctions. On July 14 of the same year, in Tripoli, Muammar Gaddafi received the title of chess grandmaster for his help in organizing the 17th World Chess Championship, which was held in Africa for the first time in FIDE history.

Libya entered the Guinness Book of Records as the country with the lowest annual inflation rate(in 2001-2005 - 3.1%).

According to INAPRO data for 2008, in terms of the share of GDP (88.86 billion dollars) per capita, Libya ranks first among the five Arab countries of North Africa - 14.4 thousand dollars.

In August 2008, at a meeting of more than 200 African kings, sultans, emirs, sheikhs and tribal leaders, Muammar Gaddafi was declared the "king of kings of Africa." February 2 next year, Muammar Gaddafi was elected chairman of the African Union. As of 2009, the level of education of the population was 86.8% (before the overthrow of the monarchy, in 1968, 73% of the population was illiterate). In his foreign policy, the Libyan leader continued to be an adherent of pan-Arabism.

In September 2009, Muammar Gaddafi arrived in the United States for the 64th session of the UN General Assembly. Instead of the prescribed 15 minutes, Gaddafi's speech on the podium of the General Assembly lasted an hour and a half. The interpreter, doing his job for 75 minutes, at one moment could not stand it and shouted into the microphone in Arabic: “I can’t take it anymore”, after which he was replaced by the head of the UN Arab representation. Taking to the podium, Gaddafi said: "Even my son Obama said it was a historic meeting". In his speech The Libyan leader has sharply criticized the UN Security Council, calling it "a council on terrorism". Holding the UN charter in his hands, Gaddafi said that, according to this document, military force is used only by decision of the UN with the consent of all member countries of the organization, specifying that during the existence of the UN "large countries have waged 64 wars against small ones" and "the UN has nothing did nothing to prevent these wars." He proposed moving the UN headquarters from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern - "for example, to Libya."

Muammar Gaddafi defended the right of the Taliban to create an Islamic emirate and even touched on the Somali pirates: "Somali pirates are not pirates. India, Japan, Australia, you are pirates. You fish in the territorial waters of Somalia. And Somalia protects its supplies, food for its children ... I saw these pirates, I talked to them".

The leader of the Libyan revolution announced that US President and British Prime Minister Tony Blair personally participated in the execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, demanded an investigation into the assassination of John F. proposed to be made president for life. At the end of his speech, Gaddafi said: “You are already tired. You are all asleep” and left the podium with the words “You gave birth to Hitler, not us. You persecuted the Jews. And you staged a holocaust!

In the winter of 2010-2011, a wave of demonstrations and protests began in the Arab world, caused by various reasons, but directed mainly against the ruling authorities. On the evening of February 15, relatives of prisoners killed under unclear circumstances in the Abu Slim prison in Tripoli in 1996 gathered in Benghazi and demanded the release of lawyer and human rights activist Fethi Tarbel. Despite the release of Tarbel, the demonstrators clashed with the security forces.

In the following days, anti-government protests were actively suppressed by forces loyal to the Libyan leader, with the support of foreign mercenaries. On February 18, the demonstrators took full control of the city of Al Bayda, with the local police defecting to the side of the protesters. By February 20, Benghazi passed under the control of opponents of the Libyan leadership, after which the unrest spread to the capital. For several days of unrest, the eastern part of the country was under the control of the protesters, while in the western part Gaddafi retained power. The main demand of the opposition was the resignation of Colonel Gaddafi.

On February 26, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions prohibiting the supply of weapons and any military materials to Libya, as well as a ban on Gaddafi's international travel and freezing of his overseas assets. The next day in Benghazi, at a joint emergency meeting of members of local people's councils, the rebels formed the Transitional National Council as the authority of the revolution, which was headed by the country's former justice minister, Mustafa Muhammad Abd al-Jalil. On the same day, in the west of Libya, the city of Az-Zawiya, an important center of the oil refining industry, passed under the control of opponents of Gaddafi. Meanwhile, in eastern Libya, armed rebel groups launched an offensive against Tripoli, capturing Libyan cities along the way. On March 2, one of the centers of the oil industry in the country of Marsa Brega came under their control, and two days later the port of Ras Lanuf. On March 5, the rebels entered Bin Javad, the last city on the way to Sirte, but the very next day they were forced to retreat from the city. By mid-March, government troops launched an offensive against the positions of the rebels and within a few days returned the cities of Ras Lanuf and Marsa el-Breg to their control. On March 10, in the west of Libya, Ez-Zawiya was recaptured by government forces.

On the night of March 17-18, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, which provides for a ban on flights by Libyan aviation, as well as the adoption of any measures to protect the Libyan population, with the exception of a ground operation. On the evening of March 19, the armed forces of France and the United States launched Operation Dawn of the Odyssey to hit military targets in Libya on the basis of a UN Security Council resolution "in order to protect civilians." A number of European and Arab countries joined the operation.

In his speech to the Libyan people, Gaddafi said to the countries of the international coalition: “You are not ready for war, but we are. We are happy that this moment has come" and that "You are the aggressors, you are animals. All tyrants will sooner or later fall under the pressure of the people. In his speech, he also announced that the fate of Hitler and Mussolini awaits them. As a result of coalition air raids and rocket and bomb attacks on the positions of government troops, Gaddafi's supporters had to retreat from their positions. With the support of the aviation of the countries of the international coalition, the rebels managed to regain control over Ajdabiya, Marsa el Brega and Ras Lanuf within a few days, advancing towards Sirte. However, government troops not only stopped the advance of the rebels near Sirte, but also launched a massive offensive, pushing the rebels 160 kilometers to the east of the country by March 30.

On June 24, Amnesty International conducted a series of investigations into the activities of supporters of Muammar Gadaffi. According to them, they found evidence that the rebels falsified many data on the crimes of forces loyal to Gaddafi. However, on June 27, the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi for organizing the killings, detentions and imprisonments committed in the first 12 days of the Libyan uprising.

After the fall of Tripoli, only the cities of Bani Walid and Sirte remained under the control of Gaddafi, around which fierce battles unfolded. Repeated attempts by NPS detachments to capture Sirte ended in failure. As the head of the internal security service, General Mansour Dao, later said, Muammar Gaddafi left the capital and moved to Sirte about 12 days before the capture of Tripoli: “He was upset, he was angry, sometimes it seemed to us that he was going crazy. Most of the time he was just sad and angry. He was convinced that the Libyan people still loved him, even after we told him that the capital had fallen."

According to Dao, “Gaddafi was nervous. He could not call anywhere or otherwise communicate with the outside world. We had very little water and food. Medications were also difficult." However, at times, Gaddafi made audio messages through the al-Urabiya channel, calling on the people to resist. Speaking about the life of a colonel in the besieged Sirte, the former head of the internal security service noted that “Gaddafi spent time reading, taking notes or making tea for himself. He did not lead the resistance, his sons did it. Gaddafi himself did not plan anything. And he didn't have any plans. According to him, the Libyan leader “walked up and down the small room, making notes in a notebook. We knew this was the end. Gaddafi said: "I am wanted by the International Criminal Court. No country will accept me. I prefer to die at the hands of the Libyans"».

On the morning of October 20, 2011, the National Transitional Council detachments launched another assault on Sirte, as a result of which they managed to take the city. When trying to escape from the besieged city, Muammar Gaddafi was captured by the rebels. NATO released a communiqué with a report that at about 08:30 (0630 GMT), its aircraft attacked eleven military vehicles of Gaddafi's army, which formed part of a large convoy of about 75 vehicles, which was moving rapidly along the road in the suburbs of Sirte. After an air strike knocked out one of them, “a group of two dozen Gaddafi regime vehicles headed south at high speed, still posing a serious danger. NATO aircraft destroyed or damaged about a dozen of them.”

The rebels managed to capture the wounded Gaddafi, after which he was immediately surrounded by a crowd that began to mock him. People shouting "Allah Akbar!" They began firing into the air and pointing at the Colonel with machine guns. Gaddafi, his face covered in blood, was taken to the car, where he was put on the hood. Later video recordings of the last minutes of Gaddafi's life refuted the original official version of the National Transitional Council of Libya. It became clear that he was killed as a result of lynching by the rebels who captured him. In the last moments of his life, Muammar Gaddafi called on the rebels to change their minds: “Haram alaikum… Haram alaikum… Shame on you! Do you know no sin?!".

In addition to Gaddafi, his son Mutazzim was also captured, but then, under unclear circumstances, he was killed. One of the participants in the 1969 coup and members of the SRK, the Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Brigadier General Abu Bakr Younis Jaber, was also killed.

The bodies of Muammar Gaddafi, his son and Abu Bakr Younis Jaber were put on public display in an industrial vegetable refrigerator in a shopping mall in Misurata. At dawn on October 25, all three were secretly buried in the Libyan desert. This ended the 42-year rule of Colonel Gaddafi and the revolution that he proclaimed after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1969.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry demanded a thorough investigation into the circumstances of Gaddafi's death.

On January 16, 1970, Muammar Gaddafi became Prime Minister of Libya. How ordinary Libyans lived during the reign of Colonel Gaddafi, and who was behind his overthrow - in our material

Muammar Al Gaddafi called himself "the Bedouin of the Libyan desert" for a reason, he was born in a Bedouin tent near the city of Sirte, which is 30 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. It happened in the spring of 1942, but the exact date of his birth is unknown. By this time, the Gaddafi family already had three daughters; when, finally, a son was born, his father named him Muammar, which means "living long." But the name did not become prophetic for the future leader of Libya. 69 years after the events described, Muammar Gaddafi was killed by the rebels.

Muammar Gaddafi - Bedouin in the Libyan desert

Gaddafi's childhood passed in real poverty, as soon as the boy was ten years old, he was sent to a Muslim educational institution - a madrasah, which was located in the nearby city of Sirte. Later, Muammar entered a secondary school in the city of Sebha, where he was captured by revolutionary ideas, and the Egyptian revolutionary Gamal Abdel Nasser became Gaddafi's inspiration. However, for such views, the future Libyan leader was expelled from school, but he was still able to continue his education in the city of Misurat. At this time, Muammar decides to become a professional military man in order to gain strength and overthrow the government of King Idris.

True to his ideas, Gaddafi entered the military college in Benghazi in 1963, where he studied during the day, and in the evenings attended history courses at the university. In 1965, after receiving the rank of lieutenant, Muammar left for the UK, where he took courses for signal officers for six months. Returning home, he created his first underground organization, which was called the Free Union Officers. Gaddafi traveled around Libya making contacts with officers who could help him carry out the coup. And four years later, on September 1, 1969, Radio Benghazi, in the voice of Muammar Gaddafi, informed the Arab world that King Idris had been deposed.

"Citizens of Libya! In response to the secret aspirations and dreams that overwhelmed your hearts, in response to your unceasing demands for change and spiritual rebirth, your long struggle in the name of these ideals, heeding your call for rebellion, the army forces devoted to you have taken on this task and overthrew the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which caused nausea and shocked us all," the 27-year-old captain Gaddafi addressed the Libyan people, announcing the overthrow of the monarchy and the proclamation of the Libyan Arab Republic.

At the same time, the highest body of state power, the Revolutionary Command Council, was created, and a few days later Muammar received the rank of colonel and was appointed supreme commander of the armed forces of Libya. Having become the head of the country, Gaddafi was engaged in the implementation of a long-standing idea - the complete unity of the Arabs. By December, he had created the Tripoli Charter, which declared the union of Egypt, Libya and Syria. However, the real unification of the countries was never completed. On January 16, 1970, Colonel Gaddafi became Prime Minister of Libya. One of his first activities in his new position was the evacuation of foreign military bases from Libyan territory.

In 1975, a part of his book was published, which was called the Quran of the 20th century. In the preface to his "Green Book" Gaddafi wrote: "I, a simple Bedouin who rode a donkey and herded goats barefoot, lived his life among the same simple people, I hand you my small, three-part "Green Book", similar to the banner of Jesus, the tablets of Moses, and a short sermon by one who rode a camel, the one that I wrote while sitting in a tent that became known to the world after it was attacked by 170 aircraft bombing it to burn the handwritten draft of my "Green Book" ". I lived for years in the desert among its deserted and boundless expanses under the open sky, on earth covered with a heavenly shadow."

In his work, the Libyan leader described the problems of the state structure of society. According to him, in the new society, labor for money (wages) should be eliminated, and the means of production, after the introduction of a system of self-government, should be transferred directly into the hands of workers, who become "partners in production." "The goal of the new socialist system is to create a happy society, happy by virtue of its freedom, which is feasible only if the material and spiritual needs of a person are met, provided that no one interferes with the satisfaction of these needs and controls them," Gaddafi wrote.

The colonel backed up his words with deeds. Within three years, foreign banks and oil companies were nationalized in Libya. On April 15, 1973, Gaddafi proclaimed the Cultural Revolution. He called on the people to take power into their own hands, repealed all existing laws. The country introduced a system of legislation based on the principles of Sharia. In order to avoid tribal conflicts, Muammar granted access to the power system to people from the elite of all influential Libyan tribes, including Cyrenaica, to which King Idris belonged. Colonel Gaddafi managed to create a very successful political power structure. It consisted in a system of directly elected people's congresses and people's committees. The Libyan leader secured a proportional distribution of income from the nationalized oil industry; created large foreign investment funds that profited from oil windfalls through investments in several dozen developed and developing countries of the world.

As a result, Libya has become the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa: free healthcare and education, rising life expectancy, financial assistance programs for housing. In addition to all this, Gaddafi managed to solve one of the most important problems in the region - providing the main settlements of the country with fresh water. Over 25 billion dollars of public funds were spent on the system of extracting water from a giant underground freshwater lens under the Sahara and transporting it to consumption areas through underground pipelines with a total length of about four thousand kilometers. The average salary in Libya in 2010 was about $1,050, and more than half of the oil revenues went to social needs.

However, an extremely negative moment in the life of the Libyans was the low level of freedom - strict censorship. Schools were forbidden to study English and French. Citizens were not allowed to have any conversations with foreigners on political topics - for violation of this rule, they were threatened with three years in prison. Under the ban were any dissident movements and the creation of political parties.

Arab elite vs. Gaddafi

Having made the so-called "socialist revolution of the Jamahiriya", Muammar Gaddafi set against himself the majority of the monarchies of the Persian Gulf. They believed that the Libyan undermined their authority, showing an example of government for other countries. In Libya itself, too, not everyone liked the colonel's reforms. Opposition moods began to grow in the country. At the same time, the main reason for the civil war in Libya is considered to be the conflict between the tribes of Tripolitania, from which Muammar Gaddafi was a native, and the oil-rich Cyrenaica, from which the deposed King Idris I came from. The intra-Libyan opposition was financed from abroad, primarily from Saudi Arabia.

Almost from the very moment he came to power in 1969, the colonel dreamed of uniting the divided Arab states into a single formidable "anti-imperialist" international. The leader of Libya believed that the main obstacle to the unification of the Arabs is the "anti-people" policy of monarchist Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain. At first, Gaddafi's ideas were met with restraint, and then openly hostile. Sheikhs, emirs, kings and sultans were horrified by the socialist ideas of the Libyan leader.

Gaddafi tried in every possible way to offend the Arab elite with his behavior. For example, in 1988, at the summit of Arab states in Algiers, he appeared, showing everyone his white gloves. The Libyan leader accompanied the demonstration with a story that he put on gloves in order not to get dirty with blood, while greeting his colleagues - servants of imperialism, who have dirty hands. At the Damascus summit 20 years later, he acted less elegantly and simply yelled at the assembled rulers that it was their turn to follow Saddam Hussein. In 2007, at the next summit, the Libyan leader no longer generalized, but addressed each participant personally. In particular, he called the king of Saudi Arabia a deceitful old man who has one foot in the grave.

By the beginning of 2011, Gaddafi was hated by the heads of all Arab countries, starting with Sudanese al-Bashir, who did not shake hands in the West, and ending with the Qatari emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. It is Qatar that is the first Middle Eastern country that openly opposed Muammar Gaddafi on the side of the West. The Qatari authorities have declared their readiness to become an operator for the sale of Libyan oil, allegedly in order to help the rebels receive humanitarian aid.

From January to August 2011, foreign military experts managed to form relatively combat-ready units from militarily insolvent Libyan rebels that resisted the regular army. In addition, the Libyan leader had enemies overseas.

USA vs. Gaddafi

In 1973, Libya decided to suspend the export of oil and all types of petroleum products to the United States in protest against support for aggression against neighboring Arab countries. With this, Gaddafi forced the White House to launch a whole anti-Libyan campaign. The US demanded military intervention in order to subdue the government, which "threatens the world economy."

By 1980, the US government was already accusing Libya of supporting global terrorism. The situation worsened after the US authorities came to the conclusion that the leadership of the republic was not only politically and economically, but also ideologically moving closer to the USSR and Eastern Europe. Sanctions against Libya are urgently imposed, military aircraft repeatedly violate the airspace of the republic, and the fleet conducts exercises near its borders. In six years, Washington has initiated 18 military maneuvers off the Libyan coast.

In 1986, the head of Libya was already personally attacked, which was carried out on the orders of the administration of US President Ronald Reagan. A dedicated 15 F-111 bombers bombed his residence. The purpose of the highly classified operation was the elimination of Gaddafi, but he was not injured, several members of his family were injured. After that, the United States once again accused the Libyan leader of supporting "international terrorism" and subversive "pro-Sovietism." However, neither the CIA nor the State Department were able to prove their accusations against Gaddafi.

Two years later, America is making a new attempt to get rid of Colonel Muammar, this time Libya is accused of the possible production of chemical weapons, which Gaddafi was going to use for terrorism. In response, the Libyan leader offered the US President a dialogue on all contentious issues. The American authorities rejected this proposal. Later, the US shot down two Libyan aircraft that were on a patrol flight. The UN Security Council, urgently convened by Libya, after several days of the meeting, could not adopt a resolution condemning the terrorist actions of the White House. This decision was vetoed by three countries - the United States, England and France.

"In 1992, the White House began to develop a plan to overthrow the Gaddafi regime," orientalist Anatoly Yegorin wrote in his book "Unknown Gaddafi: Brotherly Leader". In his opinion, the United States wanted to stir up the Libyan opposition and carry out a coup in the country. Apparently, it was possible to implement it in early 2011, when mass protests began in a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In Libya, they led to a civil war.

Over the 42 years that Muammar Gaddafi was at the head of Libya, more than ten assassination attempts were made on him - they shot at him, at his car, plane, guards, relatives, he was attacked with a sword and explosives, but the colonel managed to remain unharmed for a long time.

Did Gaddafi have a chance to survive?

We asked this question to the president of the Middle East Institute Evgeny Satanovsky. "There was no chance to survive," he said categorically. one of the leading Russian experts in the field of Middle East politics. - But the US has nothing to do with it. In this case, the elimination of Gaddafi is primarily his relationship with the Arab leaders - the Qatari emir and the Saudi king. The United States did not suit him with Lynch, he was lynched by militants who were paid for by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. American ships and French aircraft in Libya played the role of "Landsknecht" in the wings of the Arabs. The independent policy of the US and the EU towards the Arab world has been largely replaced today by actions that are paid for, organized and lobbied from the Arab capitals. The main customers and payers are Doha and Riyadh. And the entire "Arab spring", including Obama's support for it, the games around Gaddafi in Libya, the Syrian civil war, is from there. It's just that for quite a long time we have been paying attention to countries that we consider equal to ourselves - America, France, England, Germany, and everything has changed there long ago. Therefore, Gaddafi, who was unanimously hated by the entire Arab elite, who insulted her in person, considered himself protected by contracts with the Europeans, and by the fact that he agreed with President Bush on all conflict issues. He made peace with the West. Gaddafi did not take into account the fact that the Westerners would act against him simply by order of the Arabs, who hated the Libyan leader fiercely."

Terrifying footage of the torn body of Colonel Gaddafi circled the planet, and all the media in the world reported on the torture and atrocities against the living and even dead Libyan leader. A few hours before, at about nine in the morning on October 20, 2011, the Libyan leader and his supporters attempted to break out of the besieged Sirte. However, NATO aircraft attacked Gaddafi's army vehicles. According to the alliance, there were weapons in the cars, they posed a threat to the civilian population of the country. The NATO military allegedly did not know that there was a colonel in one of the cars. Meanwhile, according to the former head of the internal security service, General Mansour Dao, Gaddafi wanted to break into the neighboring area, but his car was destroyed, the colonel and his entourage left the car and decided to continue on foot, but were once again fired from the air. The Libyan leader's personal driver later stated that the colonel was wounded in both legs, but he was not frightened.

Muammar Gaddafi was killed on October 20, 2011 after the rebels took the city of Sirte, not far from which in 1942, in a tent in the desert, a long-awaited son was born in a Bedouin family, who was called "living long".

He announced the triumph of democracy and justice. He was not particularly shy about explaining to the world why Gaddafi was killed. His one statement about the resumption of American leadership in the world says enough to cool off other "hot heads". So, in order.

"Democratic" stance

For their voters, NATO and the United States drew a picture that is quite acceptable for the start of the bombing. In their very one-sided opinion, democratic changes are ripe in Libya. The people want a new political system in the country, and the dictator Gaddafi, of course, slows down these processes. His regime went with weapons against the defenseless people. Only killing Gaddafi can change the situation. Everything seems to be clear. Only the result turned out to be completely different, not fitting into the drawn television “truth”. The death of Muammar Gaddafi is a long-standing fact. Has it become easier for the people of Libya? Definitely not. Thousands of victims, destroyed cities, grief - this is the result of Obama's "peacekeeping". In what was said to the voters, only hatred for Gaddafi was true: fierce, huge ... Why?

For what sins Gaddafi was killed

In his dying message, the leader of Libya spoke about how he cared about his people, what are the goals of the reforms proposed (but not implemented) by him. Against the backdrop of bombings and casualties, and even the cries of the "democratic" media, this message was not given any importance. They began to understand later. As it turned out, the assassination of Gaddafi was predetermined by his too independent ideas. His sins against America consisted only in the fact that he wanted a decent life for his people. It was completely clear to the wise leader that his country was simply being robbed, shamelessly and unprincipled. He planned to change the situation in favor of the people of Libya. The forces playing the role of puppeteers did not endure the protest. The assassination of Gaddafi was predetermined. It is necessary to tell more about his “sins”. Gaddafi's death is not just an indicator of a very strange interpretation by America. Rather, it is the moment when the masks in world politics were lifted. Each player demonstrated to the public undisguised cynicism, the true reasons for his "game".

The first sin is economic

Arguing why Gaddafi was killed, it is impossible to bypass his ideas for the development of his own country. Libya is mostly desert but rich in oil. So the money is there. Hence, it is an excellent market for corporate goods. What the latter used, earning considerable profits. Gaddafi tried to change the situation by creating water from a huge natural water was to plant greenery in the desert, to become a source of developed agriculture. He did not involve foreigners in the project. They immediately calculated the losses from the decrease in their sales. Conclusion: is it any wonder why Gaddafi was killed? Nothing personal, as they say, just business. Corporations don't want losses. They are not going to share the market with anyone. For the same reason, they do not need developed economies in other (backward) countries.

The second sin is raw

Libya is an obscenely rich country. This, according to the West, should be tightly controlled. Money cannot belong to anyone, except for well-defined individuals who decide destinies, so to speak. The leader of the country turned out to be too intractable at a certain moment. He decided that only a third of the income from oil production should remain for the country! Not completely, as it would be logical to assume, but only a part! But this was already enough for "resistance" to arise in the country, seeking to overthrow the "bloody regime"! Is it clear why Gaddafi was killed? He encroached on the holy of holies - the income of corporations. On the other hand, it was not necessary to unleash a war. It was possible to simply “squeeze out” the deposits. It is unlikely that his army would have had enough strength to fight the NATO units. And a wise leader would not resist, plunging the country into chaos. Why was it necessary to arrange this massacre that destroyed the state? So, we come to the most interesting.

The third sin is the most unforgivable

The dollar rules the world! This is a truth known to all. If you want - an axiom. Only the mechanisms of his "leadership" are not too willing to disclose. And the meaning is simple: the dollar rules as long as it is the world currency. Moreover, since the seventies of the last century, it has been tied to oil in a certain way. One has only to sell at least a couple of barrels for other signs, as the dollar will begin to lose its "crown". His dominance is in jeopardy. Muammar Gaddafi understood this very well. Why the too independent leader was killed becomes clear, one has only to recall his idea of ​​​​creating a pan-African currency, in contrast to the dollar, backed by gold. The idea, very promising in itself, jeopardized the well-being of those who live off "loan interest." Now the answer to the question "why was Gaddafi killed" becomes clear and simple. He dared to encroach on the Western system of the world, on the distribution of cash flows. The emergence of a new currency knocked the ground out from under the unsecured dollar. How long would it last if another stable money supply tied to gold began to circulate around the world? Of course not. It was for these sins that Gaddafi was killed.

The monstrosity of "democracy"

It is clear that Gaddafi turned into a "bloody dictator" because he endangered the income of Western corporations. Why didn't they just clean it up? Why was it necessary to arrange a real massacre, to kill thousands of innocent people? A normal person cannot understand the logic of "animals" fighting for their income. How could a normal country be practically wiped off the face of the earth?! Plunge her into the horrors of civil war. It's no secret that Libya has not calmed down even after the death of its leader. His sons and devoted supporters do not stop the fight against the "democratic forces". The country is destroyed. Cities have turned into ruins, children and women are being killed, the population is suffering and starving. The economy has ceased to exist. Oil is produced by corporations, and Libya is left with nothing of the income. It only enters the country for which it is also supposed to pay. Is the impoverishment of the people the goal of "democratic change"?

What Obama did not hide

The main "watcher" of democracy in the world quite unambiguously deciphered why Gaddafi was killed. So that others would be discouraged from swaying at the dollar! The world cannot change. The elite won't allow it. The order is determined for the ages. All roles are assigned. Loan interest, according to their concepts, should guide humanity until the end of its existence. Anyone who is against turns into a mortal enemy of the “democrats” from the USA. Lesson taught. Leaders of other countries are invited to think: is it worth becoming patriots, or is it better to continue to "sell" their countries? Obama was very clear: The US has proven to be the world's premier country. They will not tolerate resistance. Revenge will be cruel. Nobody can just die. For dissent, countries will be wiped off the face of the Earth, peoples will be destroyed. The Western version of the structure of the political and economic system does not recognize pity and compassion. The world must remain unipolar under any circumstances. Funds and forces, and most importantly - human lives, no one will regret.

Lessons from Libya

The world has heard. The dollar was left alone for a while. No one wants to repeat fate. Although the recent events in Ukraine took place according to the Libyan scenario. Only the bombings have been avoided... so far. The lessons learned from the Libyan events benefited the world community. They learned the manual and learned how to respond correctly. Well, in the end, how much can you "breed" the population according to the same scenario? The world is waiting. Who will be the first to dare to take a step in the direction of the fall of the States? Obama was wrong. The desire to show what will happen to dissidents only showed the renewed planet the weaknesses of the world elites. It's time to use them. Who dares?

The world is becoming multipolar... A dream?

The brave ones have been found! China began to gradually abandon the dollar. So far, settlements in yuan are being made only with Japan, but this is the first step! It will not be possible to quickly create a "stronghold of democracy" in this country with a huge population. There is no suitable ground, the internal political regime is too strong. Beijing does not welcome revolutionaries on its territory. And he does not look ingratiatingly at the West. Once. China works by creating most of the world's product. Other countries began to declare the rejection of the dollar in the calculations. So, Great Britain dared to embody some ideas of Gaddafi. They began to trade with Japan in national currencies. The "watcher" does not have time to put things in order. Too hard to keep in check when your weak point is no longer a mystery.

Russia's response to Gaddafi's assassination

Libya, Syria, Ukraine... The “democratizer” began to act too transparently and openly. He feels that dominance is slipping from his clutches. Already in Syria, it became clear that the world community is no longer willing to tolerate lies and violence. Tales of bloody regimes are no longer taken for granted. Yes, and terrorism, artificially created and supported to intimidate the public, no longer affects the minds. The underlying goals and methods of achieving them became obvious. The effect of the assassination of Gaddafi turned out to be exactly the opposite of what was intended. This was especially evident from the events in Ukraine. “We do not leave our own” - this is Russia's response to the “democratic” coup in a neighboring state. The world will never again be unipolar. The bloody terror must sink into oblivion. It is necessary - a "nuclear shield" will be applied. It's time to stop the "watcher" who drowns countries in blood for the sake of profit. All peoples have the right to their own view of things. We are different. And that's the beauty of the world. The life of Muammar Gaddafi showed that patriotism and love for the Motherland have a right to exist. His death is the path that nations need to follow for harmonious development.