Muammar al-Qaddafi (also transliterated Gaddafi, Qadhafi, or Kadafi) led Libya from a bloodless military coup against King Idris on 1 September 1969 until his death on 20 October 2011 during the Libyan civil war. Though he held no formal head-of-state title after 1979, styling himself "Brother Leader" and "Guide of the Revolution," he exercised paramount authority over Libya's political, military, and economic life for 42 years.
Qaddafi articulated his governing ideology in The Green Book (published in three parts, 1975–1979), which rejected both capitalism and Marxism in favor of a "Third International Theory" built on direct popular rule through people's committees — a system he called the Jamahiriya ("state of the masses"), formally proclaimed in 1977.
His foreign policy was confrontational and shifting. He nationalized foreign oil interests, bankrolled armed movements from the IRA to sub-Saharan insurgencies, and championed pan-Arabism before pivoting to pan-Africanism and helping launch the African Union in 2002. Libya was implicated in the 1986 Berlin discothèque bombing, prompting U.S. airstrikes on Tripoli and Benghazi, and in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which led to UN Security Council sanctions under Resolutions 748 (1992) and 883 (1993). Sanctions were suspended after Libya surrendered two suspects in 1999 and lifted in 2003 when Qaddafi renounced weapons of mass destruction programs, triggering a brief Western rapprochement.
The Arab Spring reached Libya in February 2011. After security forces fired on protesters in Benghazi, an armed uprising spread rapidly. UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (17 March 2011) authorized a no-fly zone and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians, leading to a NATO-led intervention. Qaddafi was captured and killed by rebel fighters near Sirte. The International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant against him on 27 June 2011 for crimes against humanity. His ouster left Libya fragmented among rival governments and militias.
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In March 2011, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 authorizing military action against Qaddafi's forces to protect civilians in Benghazi.