Libya - Personal background

Muammar al-Qadhafi was born in 1942 in the region of Sirte, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. He was the only surviving son and the youngest child of a poor family belonging to the Qadhadhifa, an Arabized Berber tribe. In 1952, after an initial religious education, he was sent to a secular elementary school in Sirte, where his schoolmates taunted him for being nothing more than a poor bedouin. Four years later he moved with his family to the Fezzan province, where he attended the Seb'a Preparatory School. The five years Qadhafi spent at Seb'a, between 1956 and 1961, were his politically formative years. Major economic and political changes were taking place in neighboring Egypt where the charismatic Jamal Abd Al Nasir had established himself as the champion of Arab unity. Nasir's leadership had a profound impact on Qadhafi. Inspired by Nasirism, he created the first Command Committee, composed of many of those who would later become members of Libya's Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). Qadhafi was expelled from school in 1961 for his political activities. Qadhafi and his family left Seb'a and moved on to Misrata, in Tripolitania, where he completed his secondary education and prepared to enter college. In Misrata, he reestablished contact with many of his childhood friends from Sirte, with whom he promptly began talking about a new order in Libya. After graduation in 1963, Qadhafi and two of his closest friends entered the Military Academy in Benghazi. There they created the nucleus of the Free Unionist Officers Movement, which was an organization aiming at overthrowing the Sanusi monarchy and taking over power in the country.