A one-room cabin called Dar Muammar where he lived at the time is now enclosed by a green fence in the middle of a small traffic circle. The fort graces the reverse of Libya’s 10-dinar banknote.Īs a child under the monarchy he overthrew in a 1969 coup, Gaddafi was expelled from a school in Sabha. The fort, turned into a key military base by Gaddafi, appeared to remain in the hands of loyalist troops his week. Rising above a sprawling, gritty jumble of squat houses and half-finished construction projects is a fort built by former colonial power Italy that became a monument to Gaddafi’s writ. That’s because Sirte evoked his pretensions to revolutionary world statesmanship and Sabha his maverick “Brother Leader” mode of rule and the huge oil bounty that underpinned it.Īnchoring the Fezzan region in Libya’s vast stony desert, Sabha features faded hoardings of Gaddafi in a tent, charting Libya’s transformation into a Great Socialist Popular Arab Jamihiriyah that he proclaimed from the city in 1977. Still, rebel takeovers of Sirte and Sabha would deal a symbolically resonant coup de grace to the 42-year Gaddafi era. Where tribes either pro-Gaddafi or historically hostile to central government have long held sway. The Arabic script in green reads "God, Muammar Libya." REUTERS/Caren Firouzīristling with Gaddafi props like a huge marble-lined hall where he hosted diplomatic summits and billboards trumpeting his “state of the masses,” Sirte and Sabha loomed as the last pockets of resistance to the Brother Leader’s ouster.Īfter overrunning the capital Tripoli in lightning fashion earlier this week, rebels moved in on Sabha 600 km (400 miles) to the south and Sirte 450 km (280 miles) to the east in a two-pronged pincer attack, triggering heavy fighting on Thursday.Įven if both fall to the insurgents soon, vast expanses of Libya’s interior desert will remain outside rebel control, areas PICTURE TAKEN ON A GUIDED GOVERNMENT TOUR A soldier looks out of a window at a checkpoint on the road to Sirte, 400 km (249 miles) east of Tripoli July 21, 2011.
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