Sewer Rat

For a man who ruled his country with an iron hand for 42 years, the end came ignominiously, and as brutally as he treated his people. Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, once dubbed “the Mad Dog of the Middle East,” begged for his life as he was dragged out of a sewer where he had hidden after an American drone struck his fleeing convoy.

His captors showed no mercy. Grainy video footage of his final moments showed Gadhafi beaten and bloodied by a frenzied mob before a bullet to the head put him out of his misery. Ecstatic people then posed for photos beside his corpse. “What did I ever do to you?” he reportedly asked.

As with the other authoritarian casualties of the Arab Spring, what Gadhafi did to his people led to his fall. Forty-two years can give someone the impression that he has a divine right to rule and luxuriate in the entitlements of absolute power. Until his final days, the North African despot acted true to form, ordering his own people killed for his own survival.

As in Egypt after the fall of another durable despot, Hosni Mubarak, jubilation erupted across Libya as Gadhafi’s death was confirmed. And as in Egypt, uncertainties are ahead over the fate of Libya after four decades under a man who made no preparations for an orderly transfer of power. For 42 years, Gadhafi’s relatives and cronies flourished, with the regime failing to spread the blessings of the nation’s massive oil production to the grassroots.

This is a key lesson from the Arab Spring: no head of state is invincible in the face of deep public discontent. That discontent can bubble up from many sources: economic hardships, social injustice, the absence of equal opportunities, stifling of civil liberties. Gadhafi’s Libya had all those problems and more: the brutality of his regime made the successful uprising in neighboring Tunisia an inspiration to long-oppressed Libyans.

Those problems will not disappear overnight with the killing of Gadhafi. Egyptians are fully aware of this, particularly the women who braved threats and joined regular protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. For now, however, Libyans can revel in the success of their revolution, and breathe the free air with the death of a dictator.