Titans of History
At home, he tolerated little opposition and ruled by playing off the army and the tribes and by organizing a brutal secret police, who terrorized political opponents and Islamists alike, while assassinating any opposition in exile.
In 1977, he formally stepped down as head of state to become “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution” without any official position in his Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which was meant to be run by people’s committees. In fact he remained dictator but he spent much time communing with the people in his ornate Bedouin tents (which were often pitched amidst fortified army camps to avoid assassination). Kadaffi wrote his Green Book, a tract in the vein of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, which laid out his own special brand of popular rule, Arab nationalism, socialism, rabid anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism and was obligatory reading in all Libyan schools.
A rampant exhibitionist as well as a shrewdly pitiless tyrant, he used Libyan oil revenues to fund foreign terrorists across the world. The Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Germany and the IRA in Britain as well as radical Palestinian terror groups all received money from Kadaffi’s generous purse. In 1984, Libyan diplomats fired on dissidents protesting outside their London embassy, killing policewoman Yvonne Fletcher. In 1986, Libyan intelligence bombed a Berlin nightclub frequented by American troops, killing three and wounding 229. President Ronald Reagan called him a “mad dog” and US planes attacked Libya, almost assassinating Kadaffi. Kadaffi sought revenge by organizing in December 1988 the destruction of an American civilian airliner which exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland killing 270 innocents. Faced with American hostility, he moved closer to the Soviet Union, but Libya had become a pariah state for much of rest of the world.
He pursued his own arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons and was an ally of Saddam Hussein, but when the latter was defeated and overthrown, Kadaffi performed a diplomatic somersault. He allowed one of his own intelligence agents—Abdul Baset Megrahi—to be tried for the Lockerbie crime, paid compensation to the families and in 2003/4 he began secret negotiations with the Americans and British to return to respectability. He also admitted to the existence of and gave up his nuclear/chemical programs. Megrahi was released from Scottish prison for health reasons soon afterward, a travesty of justice that looks very like a fulfillment of one of Kadaffi’s demands. British prime minister Tony Blair flew to Libya to establish a new era in relations in a famous meeting in Kadaffi’s desert tent. As Western oil companies rushed to win new Libyan business, Kadaffi enjoyed his return to the world stage, happily giving long orations to the UN or pitching his tent in a Paris park, showing off in a variety of costumes—sometimes military uniforms with dark glasses and gold braid, sometimes Bedouin robes—accompanied by his special female bodyguards and always by his Ukrainian nurse. He had been celebrated for his radical glamour in his younger days—indeed there were recurrent stories of Western female journalists succumbing to his seductive tyrannical chic—but by the 21st century, he was clearly an unbalanced, demented and deluded dictator with blood on his hands and an unfortunate taste for facial cosmetic surgery. Like Idi Amin, he would have been funny had he not been so homicidal.
After forty years in power, Kadaffi ruled like a desert emperor, even calling himself the King of Kings, or the King of Africa. He clearly planned a dynastic succession for his sons in the tradition of the Assads of Syria. Kadaffi ruled increasingly through his sons, who served variously as military commanders, football bosses, diplomatic envoys, international playboys—and political henchmen. He played off his more conservative sons against his high-profile international envoy, Saif al-Islam, who promoted himself as the liberal reforming heir to the throne. Saif Kadaffi mixed with British bankers, tycoons and academics, corrupting and deceiving them with his promises of reform. When the convicted terrorist Megrahi was released, it was Saif who flew him back to a triumphant welcome in Tripoli.
Just as the West reconciled itself to the monstrous Kadaffi, his own people could take no more. In the spring of 2011, huge popular protests started against the dictator across Libya, but especially in the eastern city of Benghazi. Kadaffi and his sons tried to repress the revolution but when the dictator threatened to annihilate the rebels of Benghazi and dispatched an army to do so, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, backed by US President Obama, quickly put together an armed response. Eschewing any troops on the ground, the British and French bombed Libyan forces in a sustained but brave intervention that ultimately brought down the dictator. Tripoli fell to the National Transitional Council (NTC) militias on September 16, 2011. Kadaffi himself vanished but reappeared in his home city of Sirte, which held out for another month. When it fell, he tried to escape in a convoy that was hit by Western planes and then attacked by NTC fighters: Kadaffi was captured, and, begging for forgiveness, was brutally lynched, spattered in blood and then shot on camera, a scene then played across the world on twenty-four-hour news. Along with the fall of Egyptian President Mubarak, this was the most dramatic revolution of the so-called Arab Spring and the successful template for David Cameron’s new doctrine of limited intervention.
MUHAMMAD ALI
1942–
I’m the greatest thing that ever lived. I’m so great I don’t have a mark on my face. I shook up the world.
Cassius Clay, soon to become Muhammad Ali, after defeating Sonny Liston in 1964
Muhammad Ali was not just the greatest boxer of his generation, he is one of the greatest sportsmen of all time. As a fighter, he displayed a prodigious, sublime talent, but he also transcended the world of sport. Deep-felt conviction, outspoken politics, courage, wit, style, sheer chutzpah, all have combined to create a living legend. Since retiring, Ali has triumphed as an iconic figure who lit the torch at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and has spoken poignantly about nonviolent Islam in the post-9/11 world.
Cassius Clay, as Ali was named at birth, took up boxing as a twelve-year-old. He had an exceptional amateur career, winning 134 bouts and losing only seven. He went to the Rome Olympics in 1960 and won a gold medal at light heavyweight, impressing with his speed and lightning reflexes. The Miami boxing trainer Angelo Dundee took Clay on as a young professional and had little to do to improve his brazen style. He kept a low guard, relying on his speed to dance around opponents. Early in life he would proclaim himself “the greatest.” When he destroyed the great heavyweight Sonny Liston in two fights—the second a severe pounding in May 1965—it seemed that he was set to fulfill his own prophecy.
Outside the ring, Clay was undergoing a transformation that would shape the rest of his life. He became involved with Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam—a radical black Islamic movement. It appealed to Clay because of the racism he had experienced growing up in the Southern states of the USA. Soon the outspoken young man had changed his name to Muhammad Ali. By the time of the rematch against Liston and a subsequent savaging of another big-name heavyweight, Floyd Patterson, Ali was as divisive outside the ring as he was brilliant in it.
The combination of Ali’s extravagant fighting style, his forthright talk and his refusal to join the US Army in 1966 (“Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” he explained at the time) rapidly made him a hate figure for white America. He declared himself a conscientious objector, and in 1967 he was stripped of his world title and banned from fighting in America for three years. Undeterred, Ali delivered more than 200 anti-war speeches condemning the actions of the USA in east Asia.
When Ali returned to the ring, he took part in three of the most famous fights of all time: the Fight of the Century (1971), which he lost to Joe Frazier; the Rumble in the Jungle (1974), in which he reclaimed the heavyweight crown then held by George Foreman; and the Thriller in Manila (1975), which represented redemption against Frazier. In the Foreman fight, held in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Ali used his “rope-a-dope” tactics, hanging back for seven rounds and allowing Foreman to punch himself out, then countering in the ei
ghth to knock out his younger opponent.
The Thriller in Manila is probably the most celebrated of all Ali’s fights. In the build-up to the contest he taunted Frazier with various slurs and poems. The two men battered one another for fourteen rounds, until finally Frazier’s corner threw in the towel. Afterward Ali said of his own heroic efforts: “That must be what death feels like.” He had thrown everything into an incredible victory, and—history having vindicated his stance on Vietnam—he had earned redemption in the eyes of the world.
Ali fought on until the early 1980s, by which time his powers had visibly declined. However, in spite of the sad end to his career, he is rightly remembered as one of history’s greatest ever sportsmen. Only the footballer Pelé and a very few others can be said to have dominated their sports in the same manner. World champion three times, he was the quintessence of glamour and glory in his sport, thanks to his skill and guile in the ring and his psychological mastery of his opponents.
But Ali was more than just a superb sportsman. He was a principled man who stuck by his beliefs even when threatened. Though his pronouncements on race were not always well judged and he could be cruel to his opponents, Ali transcended such indiscretions and won over almost all his critics with his bravery and charisma.
Since the 1980s Ali has been progressively affected by the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The sight of his quavering hand lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996 touched the world; the transition from angry young man to symbol of world unity was complete. In 1999 he was voted Sports Personality of the Century. Despite his frailty, he still travels the world supporting a range of humanitarian causes.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Burmese opposition leader
1945–
The quest for democracy in Burma is the struggle of a people to live whole, meaningful lives … It is part of the unceasing human endeavor to prove that the spirit of man can transcend the flaws of his nature.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s words, spoken by her son, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1991
Since she returned to Burma in 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi has been consistently repressed by the Burmese military dictatorship. Under almost permanent house arrest, she has been denied access to her family and her supporters, she has been threatened, and the government has tried to bribe her. All without success: they cannot stifle her—a prisoner of conscience whose determination to fight for her country’s freedom has prompted her to sacrifice her own.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of one of Burma’s most inspirational politicians, Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947 as he led the country to independence from Britain. Suu Kyi, who was just two when her father was killed, left the country as a teenager when her diplomat mother, Khin Kyi, was posted to India. After taking a degree at Oxford University, Suu Kyi settled in the city, marrying an academic, Michael Aris, and raising two children.
The country of Burma (now Myanmar) has been ruled by a military junta since a coup in 1962 led by Ne Win, who established a one-party state, dissolved Parliament, curtailed civil rights, arrested opponents, nationalized business and set about marginalizing ethnic minorities. Ruthlessly crushing protests, riots and—in 1976—an attempted coup, he handed over the presidency in 1981 to San Yu, but remained firmly in control as chairman of the Burma Socialist Program Party, handpicking army officers and ministers.
Obsessed with numerology, Ne Win bizarrely revised the currency in 1987 into tender divisible by his lucky number—9—destroying the savings of millions. Mounting unrest led to his resignation as party chairman in July 1988. In the same year, the Four Eights Uprising, a massive pro-democracy protest, was crushed in a coup that saw a twenty-one-strong military junta—the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)—take control, led by General Saw Maung. Up to 10,000 protestors, mostly students and Buddhist monks, were killed, causing outrage in a country where the latter are revered as spiritual leaders. The SLORC subsequently instigated a twin program of deforestation—to accommodate mass opium production—and systematic genocide against groups such as the Karen, Karenni, Shan, Kachins (Jingpo), Mons, Rohingyas, Wa and Chin (Zomis). Rape, torture, forced relocation, slave labor and murder have led to over 650,000 people—including 250,000 Karen—being displaced in eastern Burma alone, and around 2 million fleeing to Thailand.
Multiparty elections were allowed in 1990, contested by Aung San Suu Kyi, but humiliating defeat saw the result ignored. The following year Suu Kyi (later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) was placed under house arrest—twice temporarily lifted but later reimposed—for “endangering the state.” A courageous and tireless campaigner for democracy, she is still held today. In 1992 Than Shwe replaced Saw Maung as chairman of the SLORC (later renamed the State Peace and Development Council) and commander-in-chief of the Tatmadaw (armed forces).
In 2002, after an alleged coup attempt by his son-in-law and three grandsons, Ne Win died in disgrace, a brief press obituary making no mention of his rule. In 2003, new prime minister Khin Nyunt unveiled a “road map to democracy” but he was replaced the following year by hard-line Soe Win. Two years later, around 100,000 protestors led by Buddhist monks demonstrated in Rangoon against massive fuel-price increases. Close to 3000 were arrested, and at least thirteen monks killed. The same year (2005), work started on a lavish new capital city—Naypyidaw (Abode of Kings)—300 miles north of Rangoon, which included the fortress-like home of General Than Shwe. The city was officially named on March 27, 2006, the annual Armed Forces Day.
Graphic proof of the regime’s paranoia, intransigence and contempt for human life came in May 2008 after Cyclone Nargis struck the country, claiming over 100,000 lives, devastating Burma’s infrastructure and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. For weeks the junta refused to allow relief supplies or foreign aid workers into the country, massively intensifying the suffering and misery of its people. It finally bowed to international pressure but continued to hamper an effective response to the crisis. Yet the regime began to experiment with a thaw, releasing Aung San Suu Kyi and promising elections.
Suu Kyi’s political career began in 1988, when a telephone call summoned her back to Burma to care for her mother, who had just suffered a stroke. “I had a premonition that our lives would change forever,” her husband later recalled. As she nursed her mother in Rangoon (Yangon), Suu Kyi was surrounded by the upheaval at the end of General Ne Win’s twenty-six-year-long dictatorship. When, instead of the referendum he had promised, Ne Win implemented another military coup, in which human rights were further eroded and thousands of unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators were massacred on the streets, Suu Kyi started to speak out. So began her road to becoming heir to her father as politician, a path also trod in the region by Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) and India’s Indira Gandhi (1917–84).
Within months of her return to Burma, Suu Kyi had helped to found the National League for Democracy (NLD). In the much-vaunted elections of May 1990, the NLD won by a landslide, gaining 82 percent of the available seats. Suu Kyi, as the NLD’s general secretary, was Burma’s democratically elected leader. But it was a result that Burma’s military government chose to overrule.
Just over a year after her return to Burma, Suu Kyi was, with her NLD colleagues, arrested without charge and placed under house arrest—a situation that has persisted, with breaks, ever since. She was released for five years in 1995 and for another year in 2002. On each occasion, however, the popularity of the nation’s chosen leader, her command over its oppressed people and her inspirational addresses prompted the military junta to re-imprison the woman whose presence and personal sacrifice represent the greatest threat to their dictatorial rule.
In 1989 Suu Kyi stood alone in front of an army unit with its rifles trained on her. She had motioned her NLD colleagues to step aside, presenting herself as a lone and easy target. Under house arrest she endured a hunger strike, refusing to accept any help from the government that had imprisoned her. This rendered her so malnourish
ed that her hair fell out, her heart began to fail, and she developed a condition in which her spinal column began to degenerate. Every time she has been released from house arrest the fearless Suu Kyi has immediately spoken out against the government, calling loudly and repeatedly for democracy and liberation in a tyrannous state that violates human rights more than almost any other in the world.
The presence of one of the world’s most famous prisoners of conscience—and one who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991—became an increasing embarrassment for Burma’s military government. In 1999 her husband died of prostate cancer, denied the chance to visit his wife one last time despite every diplomatic effort. At the cost of untold personal suffering, Suu Kyi refused every government attempt to bribe her with liberty in return for her permanent departure from the country.
“It’s no use standing there wringing your hands saying ‘My goodness, my goodness, this is terrible,’” Suu Kyi once declared when asked how she responded to suffering. “You must try to do what you can. I believe in action.” In 2012, the regime surprised the world by releasing some prisoners and allowing semi-free elections: she was released and elected to parliament—possibly the beginning of a new era in Burma.
ESCOBAR
1949–93
The ingeniousness of my brother was extraordinary.
Roberto Escobar
The most powerful, wealthy and murderous criminal of the 20th century, Pablo Escobar was the paramount Colombian drug lord who became the mastermind and kingpin of the international cocaine trade. He accrued billions of dollars, and in the process was responsible for hundreds of kidnappings and murders. A godfather figure of unrivaled magnitude, and a law unto himself, Escobar threatened the very integrity of the state of Colombia.