Moammar Gadhafi Ruled Libya With An Iron Fist
Moammar Gadhafi ruled Libya with an iron fist for more than four decades. He was an unpredictable, often brutal leader with a grand vision of himself. In the end, he squandered his country’s wealth and lost the support of his people.
During his 42 years of rule, Gadhafi reinvented his image many times — from revolutionary to Arab nationalist, freedom fighter and self-styled leader of Africa.
Gadhafi seized power in September 1969 after a nearly bloodless coup overthrowing then-King Idris. Dirk Vandewalle, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth and author of A History of Modern Libya,says that back then Gadhafi was a slim, handsome and austere young military officer who already had an outsized sense of himself.
“Very clearly from the very beginning … there was a sense that he really would be a young kind of Arab nationalist who would renew the sense of grandeur that the Arabs had had in the past,” he says.
—From Jackie Northam’s look back on the life of Moammar Gadhafi
