Today is the fiftieth anniversary of one of the crucial events in post-war world geopolitics, especially in Europe and Italy: Mu'ammar Gaddafi's seizure of power in Libya. An event now surpassed by history, given that the colonel was deposed and killed following the civil war that broke out already 8 years ago, in the winter of 2011, and culminated precisely with the killing of the dictator, which took place in his hometown, Sirte, October 20th.
It was instead on 1 September 1969 when King Idris, the Libyan ruler at the time, was deposed by a group of Nasserian officers, or rather loyalists of that Gamal Abd el-Nasser who led a first republican coup d'état in 1952 and was president right up to the events of 1969. After the coup exactly half a century ago, the North African country was renamed Arab Republic of Libya and Gaddafi ran the provisional government, which lasted for decades and came to build a relatively peaceful link with Italy, through a program of nationalization of large companies, especially energy, and collaboration with the country that had been colonizer. Gaddafi, on the other hand, initially closed the US and British military bases: his management was euphemistically controversial, but epochal.
Full political sovereignty therefore allowed the Gaddafi regime to use the revenues of the large oil companies in the development of infrastructure in the country. The territorial development policy made it possible to create, in addition to improvements, in every field, infrastructures, including the "Large artificial river“, an impressive hydraulic work that through the exploitation of fossil water, contained in underground lakes, it supplied drinking water to an ever-growing population. The first phase of this work was completed in 1991 with the stretch that reaches Benghazi, the second in 1996 with the stretch that reached Tripoli, the third in 2000, allowing to reach the hinterland.
But it is above all in foreign policy that the era of Gaddafi has had more implications. In fact, revolutionary Libya supports national liberation movements, first of all Yasser Arafat's PLO in its fight against Israel. Desiring to be Nasser's heir, between 1971 and 1977 Gaddafi participated in the attempt to found a Federation of Arab Republics with Egypt and Syria. Later he tried unsuccessfully to create federations with Tunisia (1974), Chad (1981) and Morocco (1984). Gaddafi will explain his political philosophy in the Green Book (1976).
On March 2, 1977, the Jamahiriya (literally "republic of the masses"). In the same year, thanks to the increased revenues deriving from oil, Gaddafi was able to equip his state with new roads, hospitals, aqueducts and industries. On the wave of popularity, in 1979 he renounced all official political office, while remaining the only leader of the country with the title of “leader of the revolution“. The weak Libyan organizations of the labor movement, trade unions and politics, after having suffered repression by the monarchy of King Idris I al-Sanusi, were definitively eliminated through assassinations and imprisonments ordered by the nationalist dictatorship. Marxist-oriented intellectuals suffered in April 1973 and December 1978 the fierce repression of the Gaddafi regime.
In the same period, Libya was involved in a border conflict against Chad over the possession of the Aozou strip, a territory rich in mineral resources, a dispute which was only peacefully resolved in 1994. Also during this period, and for many years, Gaddafi he was one of the few international leaders who continued to support the dictators Idi Amin Dada and Bokassa.
In the XNUMXs, Gaddafi's Libya configured itself as a "rogue state", a supporter of terrorist groups such as the Irish IRA and the Palestinian Black September. Gaddafi was progressively marginalized by NATO, and, in reaction to the Berlin nightclub bombing of 1986, on April 15 of the same year, Tripoli was bombed by American fighters, via Operation El Dorado Canyon. As a reaction, Libya responded with a sterile missile attack against Lampedusa.
In 1988, Gaddafi's Libya was accused of organizing the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people. With resolution 748/92, the UN imposed an embargo on Libya, which lasted until the delivery of the defendants, which took place on April 5, 1999, and in 2003 the acceptance of civil liability towards the victims.
Jamahiriya reconnected with the international community starting from the nineties: in 1990 with the condemnation of Iraq in the Gulf War, through the mediation between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and in 1999 with the opposition to al-Qa'ida. On May 15, 2006, the United States re-established diplomatic relations interrupted 25 years earlier, removing Libya from the list of "rogue states". New tensions have arisen since 2008 between Libya and Switzerland following the arrest in Geneva of Gaddafi's son, Hannibal, while in 2008 diplomatic relations with Italy stabilized, thanks to the Treaty of Benghazi. From February 2009 to January 2010, Gaddafi was the rotating President of the African Union. Then the fall of the regime and the death of the dictator.
