Word: libyans
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...their references to the Libyan leader, U.S. officials seemed to strike a ritualistic note of scorn and horror: Muammar Gaddafi* is not only a menace and a promoter of terrorism but a lunatic as well. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat used to call him "that crazy boy," but the consensus of most Middle East analysts is that Gaddafi is as crazy as a fox. To be sure, he is an erratic and irascible revolutionary, convinced of his own genius and wholly committed to spreading his own political gospel, an eccentric mix of Islam and socialism that is summed...
...understand Gaddafi is to understand his heritage. Son of a nomadic livestock trader, he was born in a tent in the desert near the Libyan town of Sirte in 1942 Libya was then occupied by the forces of Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini, and its people were treated, at best, as fifth-class citizens. That bitter memory, as much as his tribal upbringing and education in Muslim schools, shaped Gaddafi...
Gaddafi came to power in 1969. Then a captain in the Libyan army, he staged a bloodless coup against the country's effete, Westward-leaning monarch, King Idris. Shortly after the coup, Gaddafi proclaimed the principles of his governmental policy, which included the elimination of all foreign bases (including the American-run Wheelus Air Base near Tripoli), neutrality in foreign policy and national unity in a country that until then had been sharply divided along provincial and tribal lines. A year later, Gaddafi announced that not only had these objectives been met but that the minimum wage had been doubled...
...that Gaddafi has not tried. "Show me one country which is stricken by the terror disease, and I will show you the Libyan connection," says Yehudit Ronen, a scholar of Libyan affairs from the Tel Aviv-based Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. "Gaddafi has his arm everywhere." Revolutionary movements backed by Gaddafi have ranged from the Palestine Liberation 0rganization to the Irish Republican Army, from Basque and Corsican separatists to the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines. He runs a dozen or more training camps for guerrilla warfare, with advisers supplied by East Germany and Cuba...
Perhaps Gaddafi's most brazen use of force was his invasion of neighboring Chad in November 1980 in support of President Goukouni Oueddei. Barely a month later, Gaddafi declared a merger of the two countries and kept up to 10,000 Libyan troops in Chad as a virtual occupation force. Then, just as abruptly, Gaddafi removed his troops last November after the Organization of African Unity asked him to do so. But he may not stay out: much of Chad is marked on Gaddafi's own maps as part of a greater Libya that also includes sections of Niger...