Looking back through the archives of modern geopolitics, few episodes expose the gulf between proclaimed democratic ideals and imperial ambition more starkly than the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
For four decades Libya pursued a development model that stood outside the orbit of the Banking Cartel, in other words the IMF.
Oil revenues were nationalised and redirected into social infrastructure on a scale rarely seen in Africa or the Middle East. Declassified material and documented policy records show that this experiment in economic independence did not fail on its own terms, it was dismantled.
Under Gaddafi, Libya became one of the most socially supported states in the region. Among the policies in place before the 2011 NATO intervention:
Electricity was provided free of charge.
Banks were state-owned and loans were legally interest-free.
Newly married couples received 60,000 dinars to buy their first home.
Education and healthcare were free. Literacy rose from around 25 per cent before 1969 to over 80 per cent.
Farmers were supplied with land, seeds, livestock and equipment.
If specialist medical care was unavailable domestically, the state paid for treatment abroad, including travel and accommodation.
The government subsidised 50 per cent of the cost of a new car.
Petrol cost around $0.14 per litre.
Libya held no external debt and possessed foreign reserves estimated at $150 billion, assets that are now frozen overseas, similar to what they are doing with Russia and its assets
Graduates unable to find work were paid an average wage until employment was secured.
A portion of oil revenues was paid directly into citizens’ bank accounts.
Mothers received a grant of $5,000 after childbirth.
Bread was heavily subsidised, with forty loaves costing roughly $0.15.
Around a quarter of the population held university degrees.
The state constructed the “Great Man-Made River”, the largest irrigation project on earth, delivering fossil water from the desert to the coast.
If this is the profile of a failed state, it’s a very unusual one, as Libya’s model rested on the idea that natural resources belong to the people, not foreign corporations or private banks.
Those principles placed Gaddafi and his country on a collision course with Western economic interests, known to many as the Cartel .
Gaddafi advocated for a gold-backed African currency that could free the continent from dependence on the dollar and IMF CARTEL lending mechanisms.
In 2011, NATO and its WAR DOGS intervened under the banner of humanitarian protection. The result was the destruction of Libya’s state institutions and the public killing of its head of state.
The official narrative still holds that Gaddafi was murdered by Libyan rebels during the chaos of war.
Yet mounting evidence points to a coordinated Western effort, including involvement of the CIA, and French intelligence under President Nicolas Sarkozy, aimed at neutralising a leader who threatened established financial power in Africa.
Does this Sound familiar?
French intelligence were in Ukraine in 2016 stirring up trouble.
The Murder of Gaddafi was not simply a regime change. It was the elimination of a sovereign economic model.
Fourteen years later Libya is fragmented, its people poorer, its oil sector largely back in foreign hands, its reserves frozen abroad.
The social system that once guaranteed housing, education and healthcare has been replaced by militia rule and open air slave markets.
The question that remains is not whether Gaddafi was perfect, no leader ever is, but why a country that had achieved self sufficiency outside Western financial control was selected for total obliteration.
Shouldn’t we be asking whether the same tactics are now being deployed elsewhere.
Is NATO’s stance towards Russia about defence, or is it about sustaining a geopolitical order that cannot tolerate economic independence, you decide .
Know your enemy.
Contact:
whistleblowersafe@proton.me
Clare Hocking Okell – 26th December 2025
Journalist.
