Like Father, Like Son: Those Crazy Qaddafis

The Qaddafi family of Libya treats soccer just like they treat politics: strangely. Father Muamar Qaddafi, Libya’s leader of the past forty years, has gone from international outcast and sponsor of terrorism to host of a peace conference between rebels in Daruf and the Sudanese government.

Son Al-Saadi Qaddafi, meanwhile, has signed for several Italian Serie A teams, played no more than one game for each, and been banned for drug use. Trying to understand the way that the family’s mind works, on politics or soccer, is difficult, is mind-boggling.

Father and son (photos: Getty Images/BBC and AP/BBC)

After coming to power in a military coup in 1969, Muamar Qaddafi rose to worldwide prominence as a supporter of terrorism. He is believed to have funded the Black September group responsible for the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics and the bombers of Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. In 1984, a British policewoman named Yvonne Fletcher was killed by shots fired from within the Libyan embassy during an anti-Libyan rally (during the subsequent investigation Libya invoked diplomatic immunity and the shooter was never identified).

It has been a surprise to many, then, to see Qaddafi morph in the past few years into a semi-respectable leader. He allowed suspects in the Lockerbie bombings to be extradited in 1999 and in 2003 agreed to pay up to $10 million each to families of the victims. That same year, he announced that Libya had had a covert nuclear weapons program, but that it would be scrapped.

Shortly after September 11, Qaddafi had said, “Irrespective of the conflict with America it is a human duty to show sympathy with the American people, and be with them at these horrifying and awesome events which are bound to awaken human conscience.” Most recently, Qaddafi sponsored a peace conference aimed at stopping the killing going on in the Darfur region of Sudan. Though it amounted to little, it was striking to many to see Qaddafi, the former sponsor of terrorism, working to alleviate conflict.

Muamar Qaddafi presiding over the recent Darfur peace conference in Libya (photo: Reuters/Fred Noy/U.N./Handout)

But lest one think that Qaddafi is a completely reformed man, it should be noted that he retains a dictatorial hold on Libya, despite his rhetoric about “direct, popular democracy.” He urges his supporters to “kill enemies” of his regime. And his country was in the news recently for accusing 17 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor of intentionally infecting Libyan children with AIDS and sentencing them to death on flimsy evidence (they were freed at the last minute under intense international pressure).

Qaddafi himself remains an eccentric person. Paul Vallely described the Libyan leader’s quirks in the Independent in September of 2006:

Gaddafi has always been odd. He dresses in flamboyant robes and receives visiting heads of state in a Bedouin tent. His personal bodyguard [sic] are an Amazonian corps of women, all martial arts experts. He does things like ordering the population of Tripoli to paint their rooftops green so that the desert city appears lush to visitors flying in.

Qaddafi looking absolutely fabulous (photo: The Royals Forum)

If Muamar Qaddafi’s personality and rule of Libya seem a bit odd, just wait until you hear about the soccer career of his son, Al-Saadi.

He began his career playing for Al Ahly Tripoli. In 2000, it was reported that he had signed with Maltese team Birkirkara F.C. But Al-Saadi never made the trip to Malta to join the team. He later signed with (and even joined!) Italian team Perugia in 2003, though he only played one match before failing a drug test and being suspended (this one match was apparently enough to convince many of his talents: the Observer wrote last month that he is “widely described as Serie A’s worst ever player).

This history wasn’t enough to dissuade Udinese from signing the younger Qaddafi in 2005. A bench-warmer the entire year, Al-Saadi did play 10 minutes of an unimportant late season match before being released.

Qaddafi the younger was most recently given the opportunity to train with Sampdoria, though this seemed to have as much to do with team president Riccardo Garrone, head of oil company Erg, trying to get a slice of Libya’s vast oil reserves. A friendly was arranged between Sampdoria and the Libyan national team that Al-Saadi Qaddafi said would “also add to the political and economic relations between Italy and Libya.” This was surely music to Garrone’s ears.

Libya and Sampdoria before their friendly (photo: Libyan Football Federation)

The Sampdoria president is not the only Italian boss reaching out to the Qaddafis. The family owns a 7.5% stake in Juventus, a team owned by the Agnelli family, who control Fiat, and have long ties to Muamar Qaddafi and his family. The connection between family and club seems to have as much to do with business and personal ties as it does with soccer.

The Qaddafi family normally divides up areas in which they demonstrate their strangeness: Muamar specializing in politics, Al-Saadi in soccer. But Muamar (the “Brother Leader” as he prefers to be called) recently ventured into the world of sport. Writing on his official website, he denounced FIFA and the World Cup.

It is monopolized, badly exploited and willfully adapted to serve the interests of those who monopolize and exploit it. Ostensibly, the World Cup was established to achieve a social and psychological benefit for people. Nevertheless, what The World Cup has achieved is the exact opposite.

He continued, claiming that soccer is bad for people’s health.

Those who have football (soccer) mania, and those addicted to the game are most at risk of psychological and nervous disorders. Those disorders in turn are the leading causes of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, hyper-tension and premature ageing.

Oh, and soccer creates racism, claimed Qaddafi. And human trafficking. And war.

Mostly, though, Qaddafi seemed interested in having World Cup matches staged in countries around the world (without this change, he says, “the World Cup is not international nor does it belong to all people”). Brother Leader finished with a flourish.

This is the solution. Otherwise, the World Cup should be abolished in view of the mortal danger it poses to the world physically and morally. It leads to problems, difficulties, disorders, hatred and enmity. It causes the spread of degenerate behavior and collective recklessness and irresponsibility. Socio-psychological studies have proven that the manic, fanatical addicts of the World Cup are below normal in intellectual capacity and psychological development.

In no way is Muamar Qaddafi mentally unstable (photo: Algathafi.org)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 7:21 am and is filed under Conflict, History, In the News, Middle East, Politics, Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.