Gadhafi might be going down

 

“Flamboyant Gadhafi feels wind of change

Protests seek to oust 'Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution'

LONDON — With his penchant for Bedouin tents, heavily armed female bodyguards and Ukrainian nurses, Moammar Gadhafi has cut a showman like figure as Libya's leader for more than 40 years.

For most that time he also held a prominent position in the West's international rogues' gallery.

He has maintained tight control by clamping down on dissidents but his oil-producing nation is now beginning to feel the wind of change that is blowing across the Arab world.

Anti-Gadhafi protesters clashed with police and government supporters in the eastern city of Benghazi, and Human Rights Watch reported that at least 84 people had died in three days of unrest this week.

The Arab world's longest serving leader, he has no official government function and is known as the "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution."

Visionary or dictator, Gadhafi's quirky style is unique.

His love of grand gestures is most on display on foreign visits when he sleeps in a Bedouin tent guarded by dozens of female bodyguards.

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During a visit to Italy in August last year, Gadhafi's invitation to hundreds of young women to convert to Islam overshadowed the two-day trip, which was intended to cement the growing ties between Tripoli and Rome.

'Voluptuous blonde' nurse 
U.S. diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website have shed further light on the Libyan leader's tastes.

One cable posted by The New York Times describes Gadhafi's insistence on staying on the first floor when he visited New York for a 2009 meeting at the United Nations and his reported refusal or inability to climb more than 35 steps.

Gadhafi is also said to rely heavily on his staff of four Ukrainian nurses, including one woman described as a "voluptuous blonde." The cable speculated about a romantic relationship.

Gadhafi was born in 1942, the son of a Bedouin herdsman, in a tent near Sirte on the Mediterranean coast. He abandoned a geography course at university for a military career that included a short spell at a British army signals school.

Gadhafi took power in a bloodless military coup in 1969 when he toppled King Idriss, and in the 1970s he formulated his "Third Universal Theory," a middle road between communism and capitalism.

Gadhafi oversaw the rapid development of his poverty-stricken country, previously known for little more than oil wells and deserts where huge tank battles took place in World War Two.

One of his first tasks was to build up the armed forces, but he also spent billions of dollars of oil income on improving living standards, making him popular with the low-paid.

Gadhafi has poured money into giant projects such as a steel plant in the town of Misrata and the Great Man-Made River, a scheme to pipe water from desert wells to coastal communities.

He has used tough tactics against dissidents, who include Islamists, and has used "purification committees" of army and police officers, joined by loyal students, to keep control.

But he is also respected by many Libyans. He is a figure of real charisma with a popular touch and has exploited the medium television unlike other Arab leaders.

Gadhafi embraced the pan-Arabism of the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and tried without success to merge Libya, Egypt and Syria into a federation. A similar attempt to join Libya and Tunisia ended in acrimony.

In 1977 he changed the country's name to the Great Socialist Popular Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah (State of the Masses) and allowed people to air their views at people's congresses.”