Muammar Gaddafi in the context of "Third International Theory"

Tanit or Tinnit (Punic: 𐤕𐤍𐤕 Tīnnīt) was a chief deity of Ancient Carthage. She is the consort of Baal Hammon. As Ammon is a local Libyan deity, so is Tanit, who represents the matriarchal aspect of Numidian society, and whom the Egyptians identify as Neith and the Greeks identify as Athena. She was the goddess of wisdom, civilization and the crafts; she is the defender of towns and homes where she is worshipped. Ancient North Africans used to put her sign on tombstones and homes to ask for protection. Her main temples were in Thinissut (Bir Bouregba, Tunisia), Cirta (Constantine, Algeria), Lambaesis (Batna, Algeria) and Theveste (Tebessa, Algeria). She had a yearly festival in Antiquity which persists to this day in many parts of North Africa but was banned by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, who called it a pagan festival.

Tannit was also a goddess of rain, in modern-day Tunisia, it is customary to invoke Omek Tannou or Oumouk Tangou ('Mother Tannou' or 'Mother Tangou', depending on the region), in years of drought to bring rain. Similarly, Algerians and Tunisians refer to "Baali farming" to mean non-irrigated agriculture.

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 Libyan Civil War, also known as the First Libyan Civil War and Libyan Revolution, was an armed conflict in 2011 in the North African country of Libya which was fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and rebel groups attempting to oust his government. The war was preceded by protests in Zawiya on 8 August 2009 and finally ignited by protests in Benghazi beginning on 15 February 2011, which led to clashes with security forces who fired on the crowd. The protests escalated into a rebellion spreading across the country, with the forces opposing Gaddafi establishing an interim governing body, the National Transitional Council.

The United Nations Security Council passed an initial resolution on 26 February, freezing the assets of Gaddafi and his inner circle and restricting their travel, and referred the matter to the International Criminal Court for investigation. In early March, Gaddafi's forces rallied, pushed eastwards and re-took several coastal cities before reaching Benghazi. A further UN resolution authorised member states to establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, and to use "all necessary measures" to prevent attacks on civilians, which turned into a bombing campaign by the forces of NATO against Libyan military installations and vehicles. The Gaddafi government then announced a ceasefire, but fighting and bombing continued. Throughout the conflict, rebels rejected government offers of a ceasefire and efforts by the African Union to end the fighting because the plans set forth did not include the removal of Gaddafi.

The National Transitional Council (NTC) was a transitional government established in the 2011 Libyan civil war. After rebel forces overthrew the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya of Muammar Gaddafi in August 2011, the NTC governed Libya for a further ten months after the end of the war, holding elections to a General National Congress on 7 July 2012, and handing power to the newly elected assembly on 8 August.

The formation of the NTC was announced in the city of Benghazi on 27 February 2011 with the purpose to act as the "political face of the revolution". On 5 March 2011, the council issued a statement in which it declared itself to be the "only legitimate body representing the people of Libya and the Libyan state". An executive board, chaired by Mahmoud Jibril, was formed by the council on 23 March 2011 after being de facto assembled as an "executive team" since 5 March 2011. The NTC issued a Constitutional Declaration in August 2011 in which it set up a road-map for the transition of the country to a constitutional democracy with an elected government.

Benghazi (/bɛnˈɡɑːzi/) (lit. 'Son of [the] Ghazi') is the second-most-populous city in Libya as well as the largest city in Cyrenaica, with an estimated population of 859,000 in 2023. Located on the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean, Benghazi is also a major seaport.

A Greek colony named Euesperides had existed in the area from around 525 BC. In the 3rd century BC, it was relocated and refounded as the Ptolemaic city of Berenice. Berenice prospered under the Romans, and after the 3rd century AD it superseded Cyrene and Barca as the centre of Cyrenaica. The city went into decline during the Byzantine period and had already been reduced to a small town before its conquest by the Arabs. After around four centuries of peaceful Ottoman rule, in 1911, Italy captured Benghazi and the rest of Tripolitania from the Ottoman Empire. Under Italian rule, Benghazi witnessed a period of extensive development and modernization, particularly in the second half of the 1930s under the Italian Libya colony. The city changed hands several times during World War II and was heavily damaged in the process. After the war Benghazi was rebuilt and became the co-capital of the newly independent Kingdom of Libya. Following the 1969 coup d'état by Muammar Gaddafi, Benghazi lost its capital status and all government offices relocated to Tripoli.

The Arab Spring (Arabic: الربيع العربي, romanized: ar-rabīʻ al-ʻarabī) was a series of pro-democracy anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to the death of Mohamed Bouazizi by self-immolation. From Tunisia, the protests initially spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Rulers were deposed: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, all in 2011; and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in 2012. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan was deposed in 2019 after a coup d'état caused by a revolution. Bashar al-Assad of Syria was deposed in December 2024 after 13 years of civil war. Major uprisings and social violence occurred, including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām! (Arabic: الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام, lit. 'the people want to bring down the regime').

The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid to late 2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities, pro-government militias, counterdemonstrators, and militaries. These attacks were answered with violence from protesters in some cases. Multiple large-scale conflicts followed: the Syrian civil war; the rise of ISIS, insurgency in Iraq and the following civil war; the Egyptian Crisis, election and removal from office of Mohamed Morsi, and subsequent unrest and insurgency; the Libyan Crisis; and the Yemeni crisis and subsequent civil war. Regimes that lacked major oil wealth and hereditary succession arrangements were more likely to undergo regime change.

The Sanusi order or Sanusiyyah (Arabic: السنوسية, romanized: as-Sanūssiyya) are a Muslim political-religious Sufi order (tariqa) in Libya and North Africa founded in Mecca in 1837 by Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi.

During World War I the Senusi order fought against both Italy and Britain. During World War II, the order provided support to the British Eighth Army in North Africa against Nazi and Fascist Italian forces. The founder's grandson became King Idris I of Libya in 1951. The 1969 Libyan revolution led by Muammar Gaddafi overthrew him, ending the Libyan monarchy. The movement remained active despite persecution by Gaddafi's government, and its cultural legacy continues to this day in Libya, centered on Cyrenaica.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), officially known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA; Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann) and informally known as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary force that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It argued that the all-island Irish Republic continued to exist, and it saw itself as that state's army, the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected.

The Provisional IRA emerged in December 1969, due to a split within the previous incarnation of the IRA and the broader Irish republican movement. It was initially the minority faction in the split compared to the Official IRA but became the dominant faction by 1972. The Troubles had begun shortly before when a largely Catholic, nonviolent civil rights campaign was met with violence from both Ulster loyalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), culminating in the August 1969 riots and deployment of British soldiers. The IRA initially focused on defence of Catholic areas, but it began an offensive campaign in 1970 that was aided by external sources, including Irish diaspora communities within the Anglosphere, and the Palestine Liberation Organization and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It used guerrilla tactics against the British Army and RUC in both rural and urban areas, and carried out a bombing campaign in Northern Ireland and England against military, political and economic targets, and British military targets in mainland Europe. They also targeted civilian contractors to the British security forces. The IRA's armed campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England and mainland Europe, killed over 1,700 people, including roughly 1,000 members of the British security forces and 500–644 civilians.

Nasserism (Arabic: التَّيَّار النَّاصِرِيّ, romanized: at-Tayyār an-Nāṣiriyy) is an Arab nationalist and Arab socialist political ideology based on the thinking of Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the two principal leaders of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and Egypt's second president. Spanning the domestic and international spheres, it combines elements of Arab socialism, republicanism, secularism, nationalism, anti-imperialism, developing world solidarity, Pan-Arabism, and international non-alignment. According to Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Nasserism symbolised "the direction of liberation, socialist transformation, the people’s control of their own resources, and the democracy of the peoples working forces."

Many other Arab countries have adopted Nasserist forms of government during the 20th century, most being formed during the 1960s, including Algeria under the FLN and the Libyan Arab Republic under Muammar Gaddafi. The Nasserist ideology is also similar in theory to the Ba'athist ideology which was also notably practiced under Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist Iraq (1968–2003) and under the Assad family's Ba'athist Syria (1963–2024).

The Arab Union is a theoretical political union of the Arab states. The term was first used when the British Empire and French empire promised the Arabs a united independent state in return for revolting against the Ottoman Empire, with which the United Kingdom and France was at war. It never came to fruition following the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Despite this, many in the Arab world have since called for the creation of a pan-Arab state. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser made several unsuccessful attempts to unite Egypt with other Arab countries (including Iraq and North Yemen), and briefly succeeded in forming the United Arab Republic with Syria in 1958, which dissolved in 1971. The union is considered as one of the solutions to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Similar attempts were made by other Arab leaders, such as Hafez al-Assad, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Faisal I of Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Gaafar Nimeiry and Anwar Sadat.