Page 16 - ARUBA TODAY

A16 LOCAL
Tuesday 5 sepTember 2017
September 1 – Another Day of Infamy

that I was not permitted. It was suf- tries” during the cold war. Gaddafi
ficient for me to turn around and earned to also become a player on
head back home. the international level. He began
Gaddafi probably revolted against to finance the Sinn Fein terrorists
Rey Idris because the. King had and permitted them to build train-
remained neutral during the “Six ing camps in Libya’s deserts. I per-
Days War” of Israel with its Arab sonally saw many of the Irishmen in
neighbors in June 1967. Also, al- a hotel in Tripoli before they took
though Libya had been collecting off for their training camp. He later
enormous petro dollars for more became an fervent admirer of the
than ten years, it was still a back- great populist of South America,
ward country. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
Gaddafi’s soldiers celebrate Gaddafi’s victorious revolution. Many streets in Tripoli and Benghazi Gaddafi governed Libya like a
were in very poor condition. Gar- dictator and with the riches that
This week the world remembers den. Some of them had not yet bage was still being picked up by Libya’s petroleum generated, he
that Germany invaded Poland on awakened. All were shocked. King mule drawn carts. Meanwhile, King bought arms for revolutionaries
September 1, 1939 and started Idris was receiving medical treat- Idris’s family lived an ostentatious wherever and whenever that was
World War II. I was just an eight ment in Greece and there was not life, especially his son known as the necessary, and eventually even
year old child and I don’t remem- even a rumor of a pending coupe. Black Prince who had his own wa- participated in terrorism, like the
ber anything that might have Instead of returning home, I did terfront palace. downing of the plane over Locker-
happened on that date, but I do
remember very clearly what hap-
pened exactly 30 years later. On
September 1, 1969 a young coro-
nel of the Libyan Army, Moamar
Gaddafi led a successful coupe
d’état that toppled King Idris and
converted the Libyan Kingdom into
a socialist Islamic state. And I was
in Tripoli to experience some of the
events that day and almost 4 more
years.

Fairly early in the morning, while
my three children were getting
ready to go to their classes at the
Oil Companies School, there was Bad roads and inhuman living conditions of millions of Libyans made it easy for Gaddafi to topple King Idris.
a frantic knock on our front door.
My neighbor, the President of Phil-
ips Oil Co. and a senior member something dangerously foolish that Gaddafi promised to bring bet-
of the warden system among the could easily have cost me my life. ter living conditions for all Libyans.
oil companies in Tripoli, came to Yielding to my intense curiosity, I In the beginning Gaddafi and his
share the news with me. I was war- headed to my office in town where people indeed showed much ide-
den for the Accounting Depart- I was sure to find something going alism with plans to take Libya into
ment employees in Giorgimpopoli, on as it was only two blocks from the 20th century in a democracy
the Tripoli suburb where we lived. It King Idris’s Palace and separated under the Islamic laws. The new
was now my turn to advise my peo- from the United States Embassy by government constructed public

Hugo Chavez and Gaddafi became
close friends.

bie. And after a while it became
known worldwide that the socialist
Gaddafi lived the life of a socialite.
He and his family wasted fortunes
on luxuries and he even had a ha-
rem of sex slaves.
These photos show how backwards some things still were in Libya when Gaddafi toppled King Idris. This was 10 years after Gaddafi’s revolution became a
Libya had generated zillions of petrodollars. disaster for Libya and for Gaddafi
personally.
Instead of making Libya a model
ple and warn them not to go into a narrow alley. houses and built new roads within country as he had promised, he
town. There were very few people Hundreds of Gaddafi’s soldiers the city and highways to connect left the country and its people in
with telephones at home in 1969. were celebrating in front of our of- the cities. But Gaddafi had an chaos. Instead of dying a hero to
I warned my family not to leave fice building, shooting into the air agenda that was intended to put his country, Gaddafi died a cow-
the house till I came back from my with their automatic rifles and even him in the world’s radar. ard; murdered and abused like an
rounds and hopefully have more machine guns. When I made an Gaddafi was an ardent admirer of animal after he was found in a filthy
information. I climbed into my 1966 attempt to enter our office, one of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Josip “Tito” pipe where he had hidden from a
MGB with the top down and visited the soldiers approached me and Broz and Fidel Castro, leaders of vindictive crowd.
every one of my charges as war- let me know in a very firm manner the so-called “unaligned coun- clydeharms@yahoo.com q