Saudi Gazette THERE is evidence that Muammar Gaddafi and his family amassed a fortune estimated at $300 billion. Gaddafi and his associates enjoyed great wealth while the majority of the Libyan people lived in abject poverty, in a country said to be the fifth largest oil producer and exporter in the world. Libya earned billions of dollars annually from oil exports. Most of this money went to Gaddafi and his family and friends. Gaddafi spent part of this money for bizarre purposes and for suppressing his own people. Some reports say that as of February 2011, about 1.5 million of the six million Libyans were jobless and 30 percent lived below the poverty line. Around 30 percent of Libyans are illiterate and the majority have no access to basic healthcare services. Gaddafi, with this huge fortune, kept spinning the myth that he was just a “revolutionary leader” and held no position in the government. This, of course, contradicted his claim in one of his speeches that he was the “king of African kings”. Gaddafi had proven himself to be a lunatic “revolutionary”, mad for money and power. He did not use the money for the welfare of his people, but utilized it instead to suppress them. It is difficult to determine how much money he stole from the Libyan government coffers but estimates put the fortune of his family at more than $300 billion. According to Wikileaks, Gaddafi and his family had enormous investments in several Western countries. At the height of the revolution, Britain, the United States and Austria announced that they had frozen about $41 billion of Gaddafi assets. John Kerry, chairman of the US Senate foreign relations committee, said the US government froze more than $31 billion while European countries announced that they had frozen Gaddafi investments worth more than $13 billion. Ruling with an iron fist, Gaddafi used weapons bought with public funds to suppress the will of his own people, killing many of them, when they protested against his rule. He refused to step down, claiming that, being a revolutionary leader, he had no official position to relinquish. Gaddafi's regime ended with the help of Western countries (however suspicious their intervention may have been), but there are other tyrants who head dictatorial regimes thinly veiled as republics. Some of these dictatorial regimes have fallen and the only question is who will be next. It is also unclear what will happen to countries where tyrants have been toppled from power. New rulers who take over the position of fallen tyrants often repeat the same mistakes as their predecessors. As it is said, history often repeats itself. This could continue the cycle of violence , particularly if ousted leaders or their associates have the money to be able to destabilize the new regime. (Dr. Sadaka Y. Fadhel is a Member of the Shoura Council and Professor of Political Science) __
