AVENGED

http://blog.chron.com/newswatch/2011/10/libyas-gadhafi-said-to-be-captured/?tsp=1#1467-1

By RICHARD BOUDREAUX

Associated Press

Col. Moammar Gadhafi in 1987

He was a bizarre and menacing figurethe "mad dog" sponsor of international terrorism and self-styled revolutionary philosopher in sunglasses and flowing robes, whose brutality at home provoked an armed popular revolt backed by the West.

Col. Moammar Gadhafi's reported capture and death Thursday in Sirte, Libya, his hometown and final stronghold, ended the mercurial career of an iconic dictator who led a country for nearly 42 years, longer than any of the world's current chief executives, and spent his final weeks as a fugitive in his own land.

His fall from power in August, when airstrikes of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization drove him from his fortified compound in Tripoli, capped one of the bloodiest of this year's Arab Spring revolts and erased Libya's longtime identity as a pariah state. But his death, reported by NATO-backed rebels who tracked him down, leaves a nation torn by war, devoid of civic institutions and difficult to govern.

The 69-year-old colonel's whereabouts had been unclear since rebel forces seized control of Tripoli, the capital, nearly two months ago. He was variously reported to have vanished into the empty desert spaces in southern Libya or to be hiding out near Sirte, 225 miles east of Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast.

From hiding, he had broadcast short, sporadic audio messages to his armed followers as they retreated to make a last stand in Sirte, vowing to leave the stage as he had entered it, as a self-proclaimed revolutionary defender of Libya.

"The blood of the martyrs of the Libyan people will not go to waste," he said in his last known broadcast, on Oct. 6, urging supporters to fight NATO and Libya's new Transitional National Council. "Be courageous! Rise up! Take to the streets!"

As rebel leaders pledged to hunt him down and put him on trial, few imagined that he would surrender or flee the country.

"I am not going to leave this land. I will die here as a martyr," he had declared in February, when compatriots inspired by the region's antiauthoritarian fervor rose in fury against him.

Among dictators of his time, Col. Gadhafi was an outsized figure, more by force of his eccentric persona than for his country's importance. He ruled over 6.5 million people, in a country rich with oil but poor in nearly every other way. He gained international notoriety mainly because of his policy, abandoned in recent years, of promoting terrorism abroad.

At home, his idiosyncratic cult of personality is certain to be abolished. But he leaves a troubled legacyincluding a dearth of credible governing institutions and a history of fierce regional and tribal divides that threaten to open bloody new rifts and bedevil the rebel movement now embarking on a transition to power.

Born in a Bedouin tent near Sirte, Mr. Gadhafi was a 27-year-old army captain when Gamal Abdul Nasser's Arab nationalist revolt in Egypt inspired him to lead a military coup against King Idris. He installed a dictatorship and gave himself grandiose titlesImam of all Muslims, Dean of Arab Rulers, King of Africa's Kings.

He depicted himself above all as the guardian of a revolution that thrust his nation into prominence as a champion of Arab radicalism and the Palestinian cause against Israel. His primary title was Leader and Guide of the Revolution, or simply Brother Leader.

Col. Gadhafi's open endorsement of terrorist attacks against Western nations, as well as Libya's involvement in the bombing of a Berlin nightclub in 1986 and the downing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, turned the country into an outcast and led President Ronald Reagan to bestow a different nickname on its leader: "the mad dog of the Middle East."

After the Berlin bombing, he survived retaliatory U.S. airstrikes on a residence in his Bab al-Aziziya headquarters compound and then erected a monument to his own defiancea sculpture of a fist crushing an American fighter jet in front of the damaged home, which was never repaired.

The colonel did, eventually, repair his relations with the West. His government became an ally in President George W. Bush's fight against terrorism after surrendering its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003. Diplomatic relations with Washington were restored and United Nations sanctions that had bitten hard into Libya's economy were lifted.

At the same time, Col. Gadhafi turned his back on the Arab world and embraced Libya's identity as an African nation. The realignment was visible in the flamboyant leader's wardrobe: He ditched his military uniforms in favor of flowing African robes or Hawaiian-style shirts adorned with maps of Africa.

The thaw with the West lasted until Libyans rose up in mid-February against the persistence of a corrupt police state at home.

A vast security apparatus had always been at the heart of Col. Gadhafi's Libya, enforcing central rule and moving swiftly to crush any show of dissent.

In the system he created, Libya was portrayed as a jamahariya, or republic of the masses, in which power was held by a hierarchy of elected people's committees that he called direct democracy.

Schoolchildren were taught this mythology from Col. Gadhafi's Green Book, a semicoherent blend of Koranic interpretation, socialism and pan-Arabism published in 1975. Libyans grew up studying it as a great work of social and political theory, and tablet-like statues of its three volumes were erected in nearly every town.

In keeping with its precepts, Col. Gadhafi relinquished any formal role in government and often answered demands that he step down by saying he had already done so. After leading the revolution, he declared, "I went back to my tent."

In fact, power remained firmly in the hands of the colonel and his closest family members and oldest allies. Aided by officers who had helped him topple the monarchy, he held the regime together by adept management of the country's tribal networks, a system that fell apart this year in a rebellion that cut across tribal lines.

Cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli that were published by WikiLeaks described his intimate involvement in even minor details of governance. One cable, signed by Ambassador Gene Cretz, said his "mastery of tactical maneuvering" had kept him atop a system based on an "unholy alliance of corruption and cult-of-personality politics."

His durability, the cable reported, was enhanced by the lack of a potential successor with enough credibility to manage that system. The colonel made sure he was Libya's only public figure; news reports in the state-controlled media avoided mention of other Libyan officials or even sports stars.

Last year, the second of the leader's seven sons, Seif al-Islam, made a short-lived attempt to promote human rights and political reform-ideas popular with a generation of Libyans who had benefited from a Gadhafi-era oil boom and opportunities to study in the West. The initiative was blocked by hardliners in the inner circle.

When the young people of Tunisia and Egypt ousted their rulers in peaceful protests early this year, and Libyans tried to follow suit, the regime had little to offer but its iron grip, only tighter and bloodier.

Witnesses said live ammunition and heavy weapons were aimed directly at unarmed people, killing hundreds. The uprising quickly turned violent, insurgents took control of cities in eastern Libya, and the U.N. Security Council authorized NATO bombing to protect civilians against the regime's bloody counterattacks. Later, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague called for the colonel's arrest on charges of orchestrating attacks against civilians that amount to crimes against humanity.

The leader's response to the uprising was typically erratic.

First he denied anything was amiss; all Libyans loved him, he said.

Then he acknowledged the protesters but branded them "traitors" who had been fed hallucinogenic drugs and manipulated by exiled opposition figures and Libyan members of al Qaeda. It was, in his words, a conspiracy involving Arab countries and the Westespecially the U.S., Britain and Francewhich want to cripple Libya and steal its oil riches.

Later, a more conciliatory line emerged, embodied in a televised speech he delivered in the wee hours of April 30. Libya, he said, was a misunderstood country, betrayed by former friends in the West, but still wanted to resolve its problems through dialogue.

That evening, warplanes struck a Gadhafi family home that NATO said also served as a military command center, killing the sixth of the colonel's sons, Saif al-Arab, and three young grandchildren. After that, the leader was rarely seen in public or on television.

But he taunted his enemies from hiding. In an audio recording two weeks later, a day after NATO had blasted his headquarters with bunker-busting bombs, he said: "I tell the coward crusaders: I live in a place where you can't get me. I live in the hearts of millions."

Uke wrote:

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Bury his dead ass! Soon. He's stinkin' up the joint! It's all over folks, move along... Nothing ta see here. The dead guy is gone. Go home!

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