7 Muammar al-Qaddafi 7with other Arab countries. He was adamantly opposed to
negotiations with Israel and became a leader of the so-
called rejectionist front of Arab nations in this regard.
He also earned a reputation for military adventurism.
His government was implicated in several abortive coup
attempts in Egypt and Sudan, and Libyan forces persis-
tently intervened in the long-running civil war in
neighbouring Chad.
From 1974 onward Qaddafi espoused a form of Islamic
socialism as expressed in his collection of political writ-
ings, The Green Book. This combined the nationalization
of many economic sectors with a brand of populist gov-
ernment ostensibly operating through people’s
congresses, labour unions, and other mass organizations.
Meanwhile, Qaddafi was becoming known for his erratic
and unpredictable behaviour on the international scene.
His government financed a broad spectrum of revolu-
tionary or terrorist groups worldwide, including the
Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam in the United States,
and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.
Squads of Libyan agents assassinated émigré opponents
abroad, and his government was allegedly involved in
several bloody terrorist incidents in Europe perpetrated
by Palestinian or other Arab extremists. These activities
brought him into growing conflict with the U.S. govern-
ment, and in April 1986, a force of British-based U.S.
warplanes bombed several sites in Libya, killing or
wounding several of his children and narrowly missing
Qaddafi himself.
Libya’s purported involvement in the destruction
of a civilian airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, led
to UN and U.S. sanctions that further isolated Qaddafi
from the international community. In the late 1990s,
however, Qaddafi turned over the alleged perpetrators of
the bombing to international authorities. UN sanctions