The rise of, the then styled, Colonel Gaddafi(he was only a signals officer, a Captain) in the deposing of King Idris of Libya in 1967 was uniquely swift by the standards of change in the Arab World in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War.  His departure to whatever post life destination he has earned was equally as swift, and surprising.  Few commentators had imagined that he would hide within the tribal heartland of Sirte.  Nobody had envisaged him fighting to almost the last man and the last round in the manner of a true soldier and yet he did.  Was this a last spasm of hubris or a realisation that all he had left was a legacy amongst his own that would best be served with him a martyr?  Whatever the motives of this complex and deranged man, he met his end somewhere outside his home town yesterday morning.  The inquest and speculation as to what exactly are the details of his death will fill the press and conspiracy theorists for many days and weeks.  Already it is mooted that the body was one of his doubles and he is now safe in Niger with a fortune in gold coins – such are the fantasies that become half truths and then accepted wisdom once Hollywood manages to take the story on.  The thing that must not be lost is that Muammar Gaddafi was a taker of lives on an industrial scale.  He exported and financed terrorism across the world for almost 30 years.  As Britain was the last colonial occupier of Libya and a stalwart ally of our cousins across the pond we have borne a major share of the Colonels wrath.

The tracing of his fingers in the pie of death range from the Libyan embassy siege where Yvonne Fletcher was callously murder by a member of the Embassy staff – probably a member of the Military Intelligence Force, the main arm of Libyan Intelligence.  The resulting furore allowed Gadaffi to enhance his credentials with many terrorist organisations around the world and with the Soviet Bloc.  Supply of Semtex from Sovbloc countries to organisations like ETA and PIRA further enhanced his reputation as a supplier of the gears of war to “freedom fighters”   Gaddafi,  however,  strayed across the thin line in 86 when he was implicated in the death of American servicemen in Germany.  The American response was swift and did massive damage to Gaddafi personally,  his family and Tripoli but also to his reputation as an untouchable in the Middle East.  His response to this was to strike at the lesser of the two protagonists in that attack – the UK.  We had allowed our bases in UK to launch the F111’s; a major part of the strike package.  For the next 3 years, Gaddafi proffered oil money around the Middle East in search of a means to strike at UK and US.  His first attempt was in 1986 on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon in the British base of Akrotiri in Cyprus.

Immediately after the Gulf of Sirte incident and the subsequent American attack, Gaddafi offered £5 million to any group that could strike at Anglo US assets in the region.  The deadly linkage between Libya and Syria now started to pan out as he was aided significantly in planning of his attack on Akrotiri by them.  I was  made aware of this as I sat in the command post of 48 Sqn RAF Regiment early one morning having tea and a bacon buttie after an all night patrol.  The electric bullet men, tracked an inbound Syrian Airforce MIG 25 Foxbat recce overflight of the base. I listened as two Rapier Missile launchers locked on visually and with radar and asked over the direct line to CabinetOfficeBRA in London, if they were clear to fire, as their Rules of Engagement were fulfilled. I heard for the third morning running, the voice on the other en, a very senior politician, telling them to hold fire in  calm tones, very much at adds with the single Anglo Saxon epithet  spat by the detachment commander.  This set the seeds of a partnership which, it has always been acknowledged, reached its fruition in the skies above Lockerbie three years later.  Suffice to say in August of that year a cobbled together group of supposed Palestinian Fedayeen attacked Akrotiri using RPG’s mortars, grenades and small arms against families enjoying a warm Sunday by the sea.  Three people were wounded and the terrorists returned to Damascus.   A lot of friends and  families were under those mortars as they landed.  One of them, a gangling laddie of 14 was hosed by a “hero” with an AK47 from a range of less than 15 M.   Almost 50 rounds were fired at him and luckily not a scratch but such was Gaddafi’s legacy.  The Lockerbie atrocity came three years later and then, almost like a little child who knows when they have gone too far, the chameleon like face of Gaddafi turned again to embrace the West and civilisation – or so it would seem.  Little is talked about his involvement in the Chad wars where he did his best to stop peace coming.

So there is a personal element to the sense of payback for me today.  But of all the crimes he was responsible for we must not forget two things, his greatest crime was against the people of Libya of whom he butchered and tortured in their thousands for having the audacity to dream.  That his end came violently, perhaps from close range through the forehead, is of no surprise or sorrow.  The other major point never to forget is that we , in the west, allowed him to prosper, not just by doing nothing but by pursuing policies that impose our will on sovereign nations.  Much of the chaos in the middle east over the last 30 years would never have occurred if the foreign policy of the US had recognised that leadership is not being the worlds policeman and imposing American solutions on nations that were the cradles of civilisation centuries before the first Spaniards set foot in the Americas. We must learn to collaborate and not dictate if we are to solve some of the most intractable security problems of the next decade plus.