22. The Batty Bedouin
Born into a poor Bedouin family, Muammar Gaddafi (1942 – 2011) rose to colonel in the Libyan army, before staging a coup and seizing power in 1969. He then made himself dictator, styling himself “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamihirya”. Gaddafi headed a blood-thirsty and insanely erratic regime that terrorized, cowed, and bewildered his countrymen for 42 years, until they finally had enough, and overthrew and killed him in 2011.
Called the “the mad dog of the Middle East” by Ronald Reagan, just before sending jets to bomb him, Gaddafi’s reign was marked by dramatic twists and turns. He morphed from socialism to Islamic fundamentalism; from sponsorship of terrorism to avid cooperation in the Global War on Terror; and from an Arab nationalist to deriding Arabs and turning to African nationalism instead.