Libya’s Qaddafi: The Politics of Contradiction

Mansour O. El-Kikhia, a native of Libya, offers this comprehensive overview of this revolutionary homeland and its controversial leader. He presents a brief history of Libya through the periods of colonization, independence, Arab socialism, and economic growth and then explains the impact of Qaddafi’s personality and policies in this context. It shows how his rule made everything worse than it had been under the monarchy - from the availability of water to industrial output, from personal freedoms to foreign policy.