History of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi in the context of "Libyan Army (1951–2011)"

The Kingdom of Libya (Arabic: المملكة الليبية, romanized: Al-Mamlakah Al-Lībiyya, lit. 'Libyan Kingdom'; Italian: Regno di Libia), known as the United Kingdom of Libya from 1951 to 1963, was a constitutional monarchy in North Africa that came into existence upon independence on 24 December 1951 from the United Kingdom and France and lasted until a bloodless coup d'état on 1 September 1969. The coup, led by Muammar Gaddafi, overthrew King Idris and established the Libyan Arab Republic.
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The Federation of Arab Republics (FAR; Arabic: إتحاد الجمهوريات العربية, romanized: Ittiḥād al-Jumhūrīyāt al-'Arabīyah, lit. 'Union of Arab Republics') was an unsuccessful attempt by Muammar Gaddafi to merge Libya, Egypt and Syria in order to create a unified Arab state. Although approved by a referendum in each country on 1 September 1971, the three countries disagreed on the specific terms of the merger. The federation lasted from 1 January 1972 to 19 November 1977.

Sirte (/ˈsɜːrt/; Arabic: سِرْت, pronunciation), also spelled Sirt, Surt, Sert or Syrte, is a city in Libya. It is located south of the Gulf of Sirte, almost right in the middle between Tripoli and Benghazi. It is famously known for its battles, ethnic groups and loyalty to former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Due to developments in the First Libyan Civil War, it was briefly the capital of Libya from 1 September to 20 October 2011 as Tripoli's successor after the city's fall. The settlement was established in the early 20th century by the Italians, at the site of a 19th-century fortress built by the Ottomans. It grew into a city after World War II.

Contrary to popular belief, Sirte was not Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace. Gaddafi's birthplace was in a village 20 km south of Sirte, which is called Qasr Abu Hadi. The inhabitants of this village were farmers. Just a few significant people from the Gaddafi tribe, of whom some were born in Sirte, were appointed to government roles during the time of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya until the NATO-led invasion of Libya in 2011. Sirte was favoured by the Gaddafi government. The city was the final major stronghold of Gaddafi loyalists in the civil war and Gaddafi was killed there by rebel forces on 20 October 2011 after sustaining major injury caused by French Air Force Bombs discharged as part of the NATO intervention. During the battle, Sirte was left almost completely in ruins, with many buildings destroyed or damaged. Six months after the civil war, almost 60,000 inhabitants, more than 70 percent of the pre-war population, had returned.

The Entebbe raid, also known as the Operation Entebbe and officially codenamed Operation Thunderbolt (also retroactively codenamed Operation Yonatan), was a 1976 Israeli counter-terrorist mission in Uganda. It was launched in response to the hijacking of an international civilian passenger flight (an Airbus A300) operated by Air France between the cities of Tel Aviv and Paris. During a stopover in Athens, the aircraft was hijacked by two Palestinian PFLP–EO and two German RZ members, who diverted the flight to Libya and then to Uganda, where they landed at Entebbe International Airport to be joined by other terrorists. Once in Uganda, the group enjoyed support from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

A week earlier, on 27 June, an Air France Airbus A300 jet airliner with 248 passengers had been hijacked by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO) under orders of Wadie Haddad (who had earlier broken away from the PFLP of George Habash), and two members of the German Revolutionary Cells. The hijackers took hostages with the stated objective of compelling the release of 40 Palestinian and affiliated militants imprisoned in Israel as well as the release of 13 prisoners in four other countries. Over 100 Ugandan soldiers were deployed to support the hijackers after the flight landed, and Amin, who had been informed of the hijacking from the beginning, had personally welcomed the terrorists at Entebbe. After moving all of the hostages to a defunct airport, the hijackers separated all Israelis and several non-Israeli Jews from the larger group of passengers, subsequently moving them into a separate room. Over the next two days, 148 non-Israeli hostages were released and flown out to Paris. The 94 remaining passengers, most of whom were Israelis, and the 12-member Air France crew continued to be held as hostages.

The governorates of Libya (muhafazah) were a tenfold top-level administrative division of Libya from 1963 until 1983.

They came into being on 27 April 1963. In 1970, after the 1 September 1969 Free Officers Movement coup, there was an administrative reorganization which gave local authorities more power to implement policies of the national government, and redesignated some of the names and boundaries of the ten governorates. In February 1975, Libya issued a law that abolished the governorates and their service directorates, however they continued to operate until they were fully replaced in 1983 by the baladiyat system districts.

The 1969 Libyan revolution, also known as the al-Fateh Revolution or 1 September Revolution, was a coup d'état and revolution carried out by the Free Officers Movement, a group of Arab nationalist and Nasserist officers in the Libyan Army, which overthrew the Senussi monarchy of King Idris I and resulted in the formation of the Libyan Arab Republic. The Free Officers Movement was led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The government of Idris was increasingly unpopular by the late 1960s due to internal mismanagement, and the rise of Arab nationalist sentiment further weakened his regime. On 1 September 1969, while Idris was in Turkey, a group of Libyan Army officers under the leadership of Gaddafi launched a coup from Benghazi and quickly established control over the country. The coup was bloodless and received enthusiastic support from the public. Crown prince Hasan as-Senussi relinquished his claim to the throne, and Libya was declared a free and sovereign republic by the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). Gaddafi, in his capacity as RCC chairman, became the de facto head of state.

Khalifa Haftar (Arabic: خليفة حفتر, romanized: Ḵalīfa Ḥaftar; born 7 November 1943) is a Libyan-American politician, military officer, and the commander of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA). In 2015, he was appointed commander of the armed forces loyal to the elected legislative body, the Libyan House of Representatives. He has been the de facto ruler of the eastern part of Libya since 2017, governing the region as a military dictatorship under the LNA.

Haftar was born in Ajdabiya. He served in the Libyan Army under Muammar Gaddafi, and took part in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969. He participated in the Libyan contingent against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Haftar then participated in the Chadian-Libyan war (1978–1987), becoming promoted to Chief officer of the Libyan military in Chad in 1986 until he was captured by Chadian forces in 1987 and held as a prisoner of war, which was seen as a major embarrassment for Gaddafi and represented a major blow to Gaddafi's ambitions in Chad. While being held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Gaddafi. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades living in the U.S. in Langley, Virginia, and gained U.S. citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia in Libya, of crimes against the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and sentenced to death.

The Third International Theory (Arabic: النظرية العالمية الثالثة), also known as the Third Universal Theory and Gaddafism, was the style of government proposed by Muammar Gaddafi on 15 April 1973 in his Zuwara speech, on which his government, the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, was officially based. It combined elements of Arab nationalism, Islamism, Nasserism, anti-imperialism, Islamic socialism, left-wing populism, African nationalism, pan-Africanism, pan-Arabism, and direct democracy. Gaddafi further drew from Islamic fundamentalism; he opposed formal instruction in the meaning of the Qur'an as blasphemous and argued that Muslims had strayed too far from God and the Qur'an. However, Gaddafi's regime has been described as Islamist, rather than fundamentalist, for he opposed Salafism, and many Islamic fundamentalists were imprisoned during his rule.

It has similarities with the system of Yugoslav socialist self-management in Titoist Yugoslavia during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as developed by Edvard Kardelj. It was also inspired in part by the Little Red Book of Mao Zedong and the Three Worlds Theory. It was proposed by Gaddafi as an alternative to capitalism and Marxism–Leninism for Third World countries, based on the stated belief that both of these ideologies had been proven invalid.