Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi

For the 42 years before the revolutionary Arab spring, Muammar Qaddafi “was Libya.” Now, less than a year after his death, Pargeter (The New Frontiers of Jihad) traces Qaddafi’s rise from Bedouin goat herder’s son to self-styled Brother Leader of the Libyan people, and his subsequent slip into international pariah status. In this timely reflection on one of recent history’s most outlandish demagogues, Pargeter follows Qaddafi as he seized power through a 1969 military coup, rebelling against the Western-backed king and his paternalistic system. She then shows how Qaddafi grew increasingly out of touch with the people as the incoherent, quasi-socialist ideology he imposed plunged them into poverty and isolated them from the rest of the world. Dissent was silenced by paramilitary “revolutionary committees,” and prisons and graves quickly began to fill with accused enemies of the regime. As she traces Qaddafi’s failures in the Arab world and the sanctions and reprobation he faced after the Lockerbie plane bombing in 1988, Pargeter sets the scene for the U.N. no-fly zone and NATO intervention that supported the rebels who toppled the regime in 2011. Her informed analysis contextualizes the long-fermenting stew of oppression and anger that was to finally erupt in civil war, and addresses the challenges the National Transitional Council faces as it struggles to rebuild a nation. (July)