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 eighth 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.