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n some ways, his brutal and tragic death was inevitable if not widely predicted. While details of how precisely Col. Muammar Qaddafi died are missing, his lynched and bloodied body was paraded by mob around the town of Sirte on Thursday, sending most Libyans to the streets to celebrate his death.

The rest of the world sighed with relief, although many remain wary of the future of oil-rich Libya following Qaddafi’s demise.

Here was one of the longest-standing and most brutal tyrants who had no qualms about killing his own people when they took to the streets early this year to demand freedom and justice. His violent repression of the uprising made the world feel uneasy and the United Nations rightly invoked the responsibility to protect principle to sanction military intervention.

NATO reluctantly took up the task. It has played a key role not only in protecting civilians but also in assisting the rebels by launching air strikes against Qaddafi’s forces. NATO even had a hand in his death. The air strikes stopped a convoy of trucks that was carrying the old colonel who was trying to flee from the rebel’s assault on Thursday. Whether NATO had gone beyond its original UN mandate of protecting civilians is probably a moot point by now.

It was Qaddafi’s brutal repression of the uprising that started in February that bucked the trend of the Arab Spring. After the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt decided to call it a day in the face of the rising street protests by going into exile or simply stepping down, there were signs that other tyrants in the Arab world would meet the same fate.

Qaddafi, however, took the demonstrators head on and used the full force of his army to quell the uprising. Hundreds of protesters were gunned down when the insurgency began in mid-February and Qaddafi vowed to hunt down the rebels “alley by alley, house by house, room by room”.

Other Arab dictators, most particularly in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, copied his method by resorting to killing, and have survived, at least for now.

One only wonders who is going to fall next.

At the height of the fight with the rebels, Qaddafi at one stage declared he would rather die a martyr than give in. He got half of his wish on Thursday. He is certainly no martyr, not judging by the way Libyans celebrated as soon as his death was announced.

Qaddafi’s death after his 42-year rule should serve as a lesson to other brutal dictators in the Arab world or elsewhere for that matter. The retribution by the tyrants’ own people will be harsh, and history will be even harsher.

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