The sharp smell of fuel and gunpowder hung over Tripoli’s old centre.
It was September 2011, three weeks after the Libyan capital fell to rebel forces, and three weeks before its leader Muammar Qaddafi was killed.
Down a narrow alley near an international hotel, foreign journalists in protective gear filmed as a group of men tossed copies of Qaddafi’s infamous The Green Book into a fire. It wasn’t the first time the book, an economic and social manifesto-turned-collector’s item, had been burned since the uprising began that March. But this was the biggest purge yet, and those present claimed they were watching the last of them go up in flames.
Half a century after its 1975 debut, The Green Book may have vanished from homes and libraries, but its imprint on Libya’s political economy and society endures. The energy-rich country of seven million has spent the past 15 years trying to turn the page. It still hasn’t.
The book’s ideals – collective wealth, direct democracy and local governance – turned toxic long ago. Yet they linger in Libya’s fractured present: a patchwork of armed groups, an oil-fuelled spoils system and populist rhetoric propped up by fragile institutions.
When he introduced The Green Book, Qaddafi declared parliament inherently undemocratic: “The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people.” His vision of true democracy meant rule by Popular Committees and the General People’s Congress. Libya, he claimed, was the only real democracy on Earth. “There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet,” he said.
To spread this doctrine, the regime formed the People’s Establishment for Publication, Distribution and Advertising. The book was printed, translated and plastered everywhere, from schools to taxis, offices and billboards. It became an ideological infrastructure. State media broadcast its teachings. Students memorised passages. Ministry shelves overflowed with green covers. Qaddafi said his proudest achievement was helping Libyans “govern themselves by themselves” through this book.
His product, a rambling mix of political theory, economic advice and lessons on everything from menstruation to home ownership, aimed to be a new universal truth. Rejecting both capitalism and communism, he proposed a “Third Universal Theory” built on grassroots rule. But, as bizarre as the colonel himself, the book often blurred the line between intellect and irony.
In 2008, during a visit to Kyiv dressed in a white safari suit emblazoned with a map of Africa, Qaddafi claimed that Barack Obama’s election in the US had been foretold in his book. “The Green Book says society’s time will come. The Green Book says power will belong to society and its minorities,” he said, speaking from a tent pitched outside the Ukrainian presidential residence.
Despite ruling with an iron fist for more than four decades, Qaddafi fell to a sweeping uprising led in part by exiled Libyans and backed by western powers. Ironically, the rebels embodied perhaps the only principle in The Green Book that ever truly took hold: carrying guns. “If the people are truly sovereign, then they must also be armed. Otherwise, power remains with those who hold the weapons,” Qaddafi argued.
His regime collapsed in 2011. There were hopes that post-Qaddafi Libya, a strategically located country between Africa and Europe and rich in oil and gas, could open up to investment, travel and stability. Instead, militias rushed into the void. Many now function as de facto local authorities, filling the same roles once imagined for Qaddafi’s People’s Committees, only by force, not consent.
These groups mirror his model of decentralised rule, but without legitimacy or oversight. Oil wealth, once promoted as “owned by the people”, now bankrolls warlords. Calls for people-driven governance persist, but the institutions to realise them never emerged.
Even Qaddafi saw the irony: “Theoretically, this is genuine democracy. But realistically, the strong always rule.” He wasn’t wrong. Dictatorship cloaked as direct democracy gave way to chaos draped in similar slogans.
Ask most Libyans what The Green Book meant to them, and they will probably struggle to provide an answer. Centres were once set up across the country to decode the book’s contents, but some say not even Qaddafi understood what he was trying to say.
Today, Libya’s challenges are the same as they were 15 years ago: build durable institutions, distribute wealth fairly and govern by law, not ideology. The Green Book may belong to the past, but its ghost still haunts the present.
In a house in Tripoli’s upscale Andalus neighbourhood, copies of the book remain. Inside a wooden cabinet, tucked in a cardboard box, lie a few faded green covers.
The homeowner told me she saved them when the new government ordered their destruction. Because they were part of history, even if they were meaningless. Because she liked the colour green. Because one day, a collector might pay a fortune to buy them.
She gave me one. It now sits on my shelf among other collectors’ items. Fifteen years on, I’ve only managed to read two pages. But I keep it. A strange little proof that sometimes, madness passes for power.
