Real Dictators - Colonel Gaddafi Part 2: Gaddafi in London

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

In the 1960s, Libya gets rich on oil. But, with the wealth squandered, many question the King’s authority. Among them is young Muammar Gaddafi. Sent to England as a military cadet, Gaddafi roams the streets of Swinging London in flowing Bedouin robes. With his training complete, he readies himself for an audacious seizure of power. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's the late 1950s. Muammar Gaddafi, the man who will become Libya's decades-long dictator, is a teenager in a fledgling country. For centuries, Libya has been under the yoke of a succession of colonial overlords. Now, finally, the nation has independence.

But for Libyan citizens on the street, there's still one major problem. The new king, Idris I, is a stooge of the West. He's been imposed upon the people, not put into power by them. On top of that, Idris and his Western backers control the new game-changing resource that has just been discovered under the Libyan earth. Oil. In the years to come, the tussle over this precious commodity will become part of a much broader struggle to rid Libya of all foreign interference. It's a struggle that will soon be led by one man.

This is part two of the Muammar Gaddafi story. And this is Real Dictators. This is part two of the Muammar Gaddafi story. And this is Real Dictators. The population of Libya had suffered severely under the Italian colonial rule. Most of the people, 80 percent, were engaged in farming. Most of that subsistence farming. Most of the people had 80% were engaged in farming. Most of that subsistence farming. Most of the people had no education and so forth. So it was a very poor country.

The monarchy came in. It was created by the Western powers in the United Nations. The monarchy came in and the two major income sources for the monarchy were a British and an American military base in Libya. were a British and an American military base in Libya. In 1957, Western explorers found producible sources of oil. And in 1959, Libya began producing oil for the first time. Well, this changed everything. So there was a lot more money flowing through the system. Even as a teenager, Muammar Gaddafi is among the many Libyans who notice one crucial fact.

If new oil wealth is flowing, it's definitely not gushing in the direction of ordinary Libyans. Dr. Ronald Bruce St. John. Unfortunately, it was largely siphoned off by a few powerful people. The system that the monarchy ran was one of total corruption, a system in which the king never got involved in decisions unless he absolutely had to. He was more interested in religious affairs, a system in which getting ahead was not a product of your education or your skill. It was a product of who you knew. Inspired by his high school studies and spurred on by the Arab radio broadcasts he so eagerly consumes, Gaddafi begins to take part in student politics. The king's popularity starts to slide.

Young Muammar joins demonstrations against the monarch. Around the globe, in the 1950s and 60s, independence movements are reclaiming nations from once mighty European empires. But as yet, there's little sign of this happening in Libya. This frustrates Gaddafi and other young students. And there are plenty of other things happening in the Middle East that are making him angry. As the true horrors of the Holocaust begin to unfold, it resulted in the long-promised establishment of a Jewish homeland.

It resulted in the long-promised establishment of a Jewish homeland. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 has thrown a metaphoric hand grenade into the Arab world. A series of regional wars has swiftly followed Israel's emergence on the world stage. This bundle of grievances against Israel, the West and tyrannical leadership at home, is finding expression in a new movement called Arab nationalism. It's already happening in Iraq and is reaching its flowering right next door in Egypt. In 1952, King Farouk of Egypt is overthrown. He is a monarch widely held to be in the pocket of the British.

But nonetheless, Farouk is deposed. Not only that, the revolution that topples him is a popular revolution. A revolution by the people, for the people. This uprising is led by the new poster boy of the Arab world. A man who is Yung Gaddafi's hero, a charismatic army officer called Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sworn in as the new Egyptian leader, Nasser presents himself to the world as a modernizer. He has a vision to unify the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East into one

vast united Arab republic. This theory is a radical extension of Arab nationalism. Nasser calls it pan-Arabism. He puts pen to paper, outlining his ideals in a book called The Philosophy of the Revolution. Professor Youssef Sawani The influence of the pan-Arabist movement that was centered in Egypt and led by Nasser Professor Youssef Sawani. of the Ben Arabist revolutionary kind of rhetoric and aspirations that echoed Arab politics at the time. It was a time of enormous turmoil in the Arab world, in Syria, in Egypt, and elsewhere. And Nasser in particular was very good at pointing fingers at the monarchy in Libya as the exact kind of government

nobody should have. You know, and pointing fingers at the U.S. and British air bases as colonialism, imperialism, and so forth. The bases became a real political issue in and outside of Libya. And all of that led to this general feeling that something had to be done. that led to this general feeling that something had to be done. Analyst and author, Alison Pargetta. Gaddafi was a young man at the time when Arab nationalism was sweeping the Arab world.

In fact, Libya was a bit behind. You'd had nationalist revolutions in Egypt, in Syria, in Sudan, and Libya was actually quite late to arrive with that. But he was full of Arab nationalist fervor that had an anti-imperialist tinge. And the way he saw it, Libya was ruled by a corrupt pro-Western king that had sold out to the West. Money wasn't trickling down to ordinary Libyans. The country was extremely poor, and he thought it was time to try to bring about change. extremely poor, and he thought it was time to try to bring about change. So he was immersed in the Egyptian revolution and began early on at that point in thinking in terms of how I can make the same kind of revolution happen in Libya.

This is a high school student. And he became so enamored with that thought that he began to organize demonstrations, meetings, pass out pamphlets and so forth, criticizing the monarchy. Soon General Nasser lays down a marker on the global stage. In one hugely significant and provocative gesture, he seizes, nationalizes the Suez Canal. This canal, British and French owned, is not just one of the world's most crucial waterways, it's also a vital oil route. And NASA doesn't stop there. In the autumn of 1956, an Anglo-French-Israeli military mission is mounted to reclaim the canal. But the Egyptians hold them off.

In military terms, the combined Anglo-French-Israeli forces do achieve certain key objectives. But ultimately, they will be viewed as the losers. Their invasion provokes a diplomatic standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets threaten retaliatory military action. Under pressure from the US, the invasion forces retreat, tails between their legs. In the new Cold War era, there will be only two superpowers. The Suez Crisis is a humiliation for the old colonial masters, and a watershed moment in post-war politics. British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns.

In France, the Fourth Republic soon collapses. General Nasser is on a roll. To the impressionable young Gaddafi, here is his first pop star. Gaddafi idolises Nasser, reveres Nasser's book, and can recite whole speeches from memory. At school, his friends carry a stool around with them so that Gaddafi can hop onto it and proselytize at will. Radical pan-Arabic ideas are beginning to take hold. Initially, it is anti-colonial movement. It was also a movement of restoring Arab glories. through a movement of restoring Arab glories. It is a kind of aspiration to realize Arab unity

from the Gulf to the Atlantic. It is a movement of a kind of an attempt to realize the renaissance of the Arabs. In this context, Gaddafi continues to agitate against authority. He continues to protest against the kleptocracy of his own ruler, King Idris. At one point he takes part in a demonstration at which 20 students are arrested. There has been a great deal of mythologizing of Gaddafi's early life, not least by Gaddafi himself. The precise facts are murky, but we do know that in another incident,

he is involved in breaking the windows of a hotel known locally for selling alcohol, contrary to Islamic law. By means of punishment for this vandalism, Muammar is expelled from high school, while the Gaddafi family find themselves kicked out of the city of Sabah. The family may have come a long way from their Bedouin roots, but they are still nomads of a sort. During his early years, he was a pretty Puritan character. He had a Puritan outlook on life. He liked to maintain that link with his Bedouin past. He used Bedouin symbolism quite a lot throughout his rule.

So he idealized a romantic picture of what Bedouin life was like. After his infractions, Muammar Gaddafi's precious education hangs by a thread. He can afford no more slip-ups. He must keep his head down and finish his schooling. Not only himself, but his family was expelled from the city, which was a pretty remarkable turn of events in those days. So they moved then to Misurata, and because of Gaddafi's revolutionary background, he actually had a very difficult time getting into a high school in Misurata to finish his high school education education because everyone knew that he was a bit

of a rabble rouser. Well you saw then an interesting change of events in terms of Gaddafi performance. In Miserata he became the model student. From the director of The Greatest Showman comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone. So, the story starts.

Better Man, now playing in select theatres. By 1961, Gaddafi has bounced back and is a student reading history at the University of Libya in Benghazi. Conscious of his police record, he largely keeps his politics to himself, immersing himself in books rather than protests. He reads about the French Revolution. He devours biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Sun Yat-sen, Kemal Ataturk, and the Arab political

theorist Michel Aflak. Yat-Zen, Kemal Ataturk, and the Arab political theorist Michel Aflak. He refuses to join any of the traditional political groupings, like the Ba'ath Party or the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming that parties are divisive. But in another mysterious development, perhaps after another hot-headed outburst, by 1963 Gaddafi has dropped out of university altogether. It's possible he is expelled. He wanted everybody to work together for an Arab revolution, but more importantly, because he had realized that if he was going to be successful in launching a Libyan revolution similar to what Nasser had created with the Egyptian revolution,

he would have to do it with violence. Non-violent activity wasn't going to be enough to overthrow the monarchy that was running Libya at the time. Gaddafi's options are limited. He decides to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Nasser. He decides to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Nasser. He has a police record, but so what? These are things that can be fudged. He is an illiterate Bedouin, after all. That card will always come in useful.

And so Muammar Gaddafi joins the army. And in order to get in there, he had to have a pretty clean background. So he was very careful that he got away from any kind of political activity that might jeopardize getting into the military academy. Gaddafi enlists in the Royal Military Academy in Benghazi. Libya may be an independent nation on paper, but in reality, it's still struggling to throw off the shackles of empire. Under King Idris and his friendship treaties, But in reality it's still struggling to throw off the shackles of empire. Under King Idris and his friendship treaties, the Libyan army has been placed in the hands

of British officers. There they are again, at every turn, those colonial oppressors. Those who encounter Gaddafi at this time will later claim he is surly towards his instructors. Understandably so. He speaks English only on the sufferance, something he will continue into later life, despite becoming fluent in the language. One of the things that is interesting from this period is that later after he came to power, one of the things that the U.S. diplomats based in Tripoli recognized and commented on was how well he spoke Arabic. As one of them said, he spoke Arabic like a commentator on the voice of the Arabs. And that reflects, I think, his intensity of

following the Egyptian revolution and listening to the voice of the Arabs and mimicking what was being said and done there as he looked forward to what he wanted to do in Libya. During his time at the academy, Gaddafi's tendency to challenge authority continually resurfaces. He's reported for insubordination. There's even dark talk that he's involved in the killing of a homosexual cadet as part of a hazing ritual What is known is that alongside a cadre of like-minded young officers Gaddafi forms a secret Free Officers Movement named directly after the unit that Nasser had created in Egypt Operating a clandestine cell system these men channel their money and resources

centrally. They start plotting, ready to act. Against what? That, they know. But how and when? That is something still to be determined. Foreign reporter and blogger, Derek Henry Flood. Foreign reporter and blogger, Derek Henry Flood Most of what's known about Qaddafi is when he was an army captain and he was fomenting the free officers movement. Qaddafi rose up through the military as a young man. I think he was highly intelligent. He was rather dashing physically. And I think Qaddafi was extremely charismatic.

I mean, the fact that he was able to rally other army officers in the royal era Libya means that he had a certain kind of charm. He came from very humble beginnings. But I think he was someone that was very clever. He was able to move through the royal period in Libya with a lot of deft. Being enrolled in the Royal Military Academy was a huge achievement for any Libyan, particularly a Libyan from a minor tribe born in the desert with limited education and even less limited contacts with important people.

It was a place that was very, very attractive to down-and-out people, people from the lower segments of society, because the military was probably the only, or certainly one of the only, places in society where you could move up. Graduated from the Royal Military Academy, became an officer. There are all kinds of socioeconomic and political became an officer. There are all kinds of socioeconomic and political opportunities available to you that would not have been available to a citizen of the same age and background. So it was quite a coup to get in there. And one of the things Gaddafi did when he was at high school, still in Misurata, was to recruit like-minded people with similar backgrounds to join him at the Royal Military Academy, so that when he got to the Academy,

he was well on the way to creating the Free Unionist Officers Movement, which enabled him to eventually overthrow the monarchy. In 1965, Gaddafi becomes a communications officer in the Signal Corps. It's a smart move if you fancy yourself as a revolutionary, controlling the flow of information. After graduating from the academy, Gaddafi is posted to England. He arrives in April 1966. He's sent first to an English language course in Beaconsfield, in the luscious green countryside surrounding London.

It's a far cry from the Sahara Desert. Then it's on to signals training at Bovingdon Camp, Dorset, then Hythe, on the English Channel coast of Kent. Britain is undergoing a revolution of its own, but of a very different kind. It's the height of swinging London, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Britain is the centre of the pop culture universe. That July, in 1966, England win the World Cup. But apart from the football, which he loves, Gaddafi is having none of it. He despises Britain.

The food, the weather, the drink, the drugs. He alleges racism directed at himself and other Libyan officers. He takes to walking around London's West End in flowing Bedouin robes. If you can't quite picture it, you can search online for the image yourself. he takes to walking around London's West End in flowing Bedouin robes. If you can't quite picture it, you can search online for the image yourself. He was sent over to England to do some signals training at Ecclesfield. I think that hardened his view against the West and hardened all his anti-imperialist stance, and he didn't think much to England.

And there's a lovely photograph of him dressed up in his white robes walking around Piccadilly Circus with this disdainful expression on his face, rejecting the values of the West. So he was a bit of a rebel. In his time in the UK, it's interesting, it's possible to look up his performance evaluations

and many of the people that he worked for in the British Army considered him a very good student, a very enthusiastic student, a very friendly student. evaluations, and many of the people that he worked for in the British Army considered him a very good student, a very enthusiastic student, a very friendly student. So mostly, it seems he made a good impression on the people he worked with in the UK. Gaddafi tells a slightly different story. He felt he was basically a fish out of water in the UK. Couldn't identify with the customs, the norms, the people. Thankfully for Gaddafi, his tenure in England doesn't last long.

Soon, he's home again. Gaddafi has only been away from Libya for nine months. But his return gives him a fresh perspective. Things have never been clearer to him. He sees a land perpetually under the heel of others. A land with a reclusive, foreign-imposed king, siphoning off Libya's wealth. It's time to act. He wanted to eject American and British forces out of Libya. He wanted the French out of Libya. He wanted the legacy Italian colonists most of all out of Libya.

Eventually, he wanted the Jews out of Libya. The Libyan people soon demonstrate how easy it is to paralyze the country. In 1967, when Israel gives the Arab nations a swift beating in the Six-Day War, riots break out that shut down Libya's oil terminals. There are mass demonstrations in the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. King Idris' stock continues to fall ever further. Because he is in the pocket of the West, he is now perceived as pro-Israeli, the ultimate taboo. Muammar Gaddafi, Captain Muammar Gaddafi, knows he must seize the moment.

There's not too much information in that year and a half, two years before the coup. But one thing that's not often mentioned or reported is that he rose very quickly, or relatively quickly, to the rank of captain, which is not an insignificant rank in anybody's army. Right before the coup, somehow got crossways with the military leadership, and that's what's unclear. But he was demoted from captain to lieutenant.

And I have always suspected that one of the reasons they pulled the trigger on the coup on 1 September 1969 was that he and other officers were under suspicion of not being loyal to the monarchy and were afraid they were going to be dispersed to new assignments around the country where they couldn't coordinate a coup. Gaddafi is only a junior officer, even more so after his recent demotion. But he and his co-conspirators are well drilled. Plus, Libya is only small. Its population is around 2 million people at this time, with only half of that number living in urban centres. Gaddafi figures that if he can seize just a handful of key command centres, the prize could be his. He stands but a few steps from power.

It's summer 1969. King Idris is away, as he often is, on one of his sojourns. He's enjoying an extended break in Greece and Turkey with his wife, officially for health reasons. Idris has pretty much given up on the idea of leading the country. It turns out concentrating power in the hands of one man is a flawed policy, especially when that man is never around, certainly when he no longer cares. With the king away, no one has been left in charge. No one is minding the shop. It certainly wasn't a mass or a popular uprising or anything like this. This was a classic military coup done by Gaddafi and his sort of close group of military officers

who in fact some of them stayed with him right until the very end, until 2011. On September the 1st, 1969, just before morning prayers, Muammar Gaddafi and his three officers, approximately 70 of them, ride their jeeps into the city of Benghazi. Gaddafi is sure in the knowledge that 400 miles to the west in Tripoli, his brother in arms, Omar Maheshi, is doing exactly the same.

They've spent the last few weeks plotting every detail, passing sealed secret orders to cohorts around the country, all poised to act at zero hour, 2.30am. In the last few moments before boarding his jeep, Gaddafi had lain on his bed, listening to the voice of the Arabs' radio station. It had broadcast a Quranic verse, Allah will not deny the faithful their reward. Gaddafi has taken this as a sign. In Benghazi the roads are quiet.

The air is still and cool. Libya is only just coming to. The jeeps divide up. Gaddafi's officers head to pre-arranged places of occupation Airfields, police depots, government offices Gaddafi himself heads to the Berka barracks A place he knows well While Maheshi in Tripoli arrives at the military quarters there

The ensuing coup is textbook Straight out of the NASA playbook. Operation Jerusalem, as it is codenamed, meets virtually no resistance. Not a shot is fired. It's utterly bloodless. A white revolution, as it will be dubbed. Some will call it the Al-Fatih revolution. Some will call it the Al-Fatih Revolution. Gaddafi himself will prefer the more earnest, socialistic title, One September Revolution.

Not even in Gaddafi's wild embassies and the U.S. embassy, Great Britain's embassy and so forth, they all expected a coup. But what they expected was a coup led by a senior Libyan officer or several Libyan officers. What they didn't expect was a coup led by a bunch of lieutenants and captains. And so that caught everybody by surprise, because most of the 60, 70 people making up the Free Unionist Officers Movement, which led the coup, most of those people came from poor families, minor tribes. While they had attended the Royal Military Academy, it was in search of a better life, you know, and more opportunity. So they were outsiders. One of the interesting things about the coup was that Gaddafi realized that from the beginning.

And so when I asked, well, it was the right person for the right time, he didn't think he was, Well, it was the right person for the right time. He didn't think he was, and he was probably right. At the same time, Gaddafi spread a rumor that there was a senior colonel in the army that actually was running things, and he was just doing his bidding. Again, this was all subterfuge to try to confuse people as to the fact that these very junior officers were running things. Gaddafi was the alpha male running the revolution. But no one in the embassy or in Washington, D.C. really accepted that for months. Gaddafi is running the zoo, so to speak.

The King regime was so unpopular, it failed to deliver on any democratic promises. There were injustices, economic and social. The system, the whole system was corrupt. And the relationships that the monarchy established with the great powers, i.e. the United States and Great Britain, by which they secure military bases and economic interests, were actually considered to be against the nationalist aspirations of the people. The monarchy was unpopular, despite some of the good achievements it made on the front

of national development. So in that kind of situation, Gaddafi's movement was warmly, I would say enthusiastically received by the populists. The head of the army, Colonel al-Shehli, escapes capture by diving into his swimming pool in his pyjamas. The rebels will find him the next day and treat him decently enough. Crown Prince Sanusi, King Idris's son meanwhile, turns out the lights in his house and hides. When he's eventually arrested, there's no apparent violence towards him or his supporters.

He is simply asked to renounce his claim to the throne. He promptly does so. At 6.30am, as Benghazi comes to life, Gaddafi puts his signals training to good use. He takes to public radio to inform the waking citizens of Libya that his Free Officers Central Committee will now form a Revolutionary Command Council. As the engineer switches off the microphone, Gaddafi is emboldened enough to award himself a promotion. He makes himself a colonel. Bold enough to award himself a promotion.

He makes himself a colonel. Gaddafi was immediately promoted to colonel. He was promoted to colonel because Nasser was a colonel when he launched the revolution in Egypt. So Gaddafi didn't feel he could be a general or anything more than a colonel. This colonel, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, is now the head of the Libyan Armed Forces. He doesn't say it, but it's self-evident. At just 27 years old, clean-cut and good-looking in his army fatigues, he is also the new head of state. of state. In the next episode of Real Dictators

Gaddafi ejects Libya's colonial overlords and seizes the country's oil fields. This makes him wildly popular and his citizens wealthy. But soon his leadership will be tempered by rampant egotism and an insatiable power loss. Increasingly isolated in the Arab world, Gaddafi finds expression in a new form of warfare, terrorism. Before too long, this will bring him into conflict with the world's greatest military power, the United States. That's next time on Real Dictators.

I'm sorry. Joel Doudal. Editing and music by Oliver Baines, with strings recorded by Dory McCauley. Sound design and mix by Tom Pink, with edit assembly by George Tapp. Follow Noiser Podcasts on Twitter for news about upcoming series. If you haven't already, follow us wherever you listen to your favorite shows or check us out at realdictators.com. Tune in on Wednesdays for new episodes.