When Qadhafi’s rule became more bloodthirsty, violent, and repressive, and Libya was distancing itself not just from the West but from many of its Arab neighbors, the people began to call for a return of the Sanusi dynasty to rule Libya as a constitutional monarchy. Jaghbub started to become the symbol of the once and future Libya, the root of Libya’s past greatness and the source of leadership of the new Libya, should the military dictatorship fail or be overturned.

Crown Prince Sayyid Muhammad ibn al-Hasan as- Sanusi of Libya was welcomed into the capitals of many countries, and he made it clear that, with the right support from outside his country as well as within, he would assume the throne once again. Muhammad was bom in 1962, the king’s second son. Officially he, like most of the Sanusi men before him, was bom in the holy sanctuary at the Great Mosque at Jaghbub—in reality, Muhammad was bom at the American base hospital at Wheelus Air Force Base, which had far better medical equipment and medical professionals than at Jaghbub. His family had learned their lesson from the birth of the first son, al-Mahdi, who really was bom at Jaghbub but had suffered dehydration and circulation problems during delivery.

Muhammad began his schooling at the Royal Military Academy in Tripoli at the age of four and learned the basics, the Libyan “Five ‘R’s”—reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and riding—with extraordinary speed. Although his future, chosen by his father, was as a religious scholar and teacher, his real love was the military. He loved hearing stories of his grandfather, a general in the Turkish Army when Libya was still part of the Ottoman Empire, harassing the Third Reich’s Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Panzers all across the Sahara. But he soon realized that tanks in the present day, like horses in World War U, were obsolete—a strong air force was the best way to secure a nation as large as Libya, on a continent as large as Africa.

After the military coup in 1969, Muhammad attended elementary and high school classes conducted at the university in Jaghbub, then was accepted to Harvard University in 1980 and graduated in 1983 with a double major in political science and international relations. He was admitted to Harvard Law School in 1983 and was the first foreign first-year student ever named as an editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.