Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- The mercurial leader of Libya, who once yearned for a bigger stage in Africa, found himself surrounded by thousands of rebels Monday, three of his sons captured, the capital city engulfed by opponents, his once tight grip on power seeming to slIp further from his grasp with each passing hour.
Months of battles with rebels and airstrikes by NATO have left Moammar Gadhafi in the most precarious position after 42 years of ruling Libya with an iron fist. He has not formally been forced from power, but his whereabouts remained uncertain Monday, and world powers were beginning to talk about his regime in the past tense.
It seemed like the final act in a long-running drama with him at the helm in the North African nation.
The 69-year-old Gadhafi came to power in a bloodless coup against King Idris in 1969, when he was just an army captain. Years later, in 2008, he had a gathering of tribal leaders grant him the title "King of Kings."
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The fighting that appears poised to dislodge Gadhafi started with anti-government demonstrations in February and escalated into a nationwide civil war. The protests started days after the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whom Gadhafi had supported. That month, Gadhafi vowed to never leave Libya and to "die as a martyr at the end."
For months, rebel fighters -- who have controlled the eastern city of Benghazi and other areas -- have been trying to move closer toward Tripoli, in the west. Recent advances allowed them to cut off some key supply routes for Gadhafi, bringing them closest yet to their goal, and by Sunday they had broken through into the capital.
On Monday morning, raucous rebel supporters packed the city's Green Square, the same place where the longtime leader's supporters had gathered for months to voice their loyalty.
When Gadhafi assumed power, he fashioned himself as a Arab nationalist. The United States tried working with him at first, but quickly found out that his brand of nationalism included opposition to the West.
By 1972 he was urging Muslims to fight Western powers, including the United States and Great Britain, and backing black militants in the United States as he pursued a leadership position in the Arab world.
Arab leaders shunned his responses, seeing him more as a "buffoon" and a "clown" than a potential pan-Arab leader, said Dirk J. Vandewalle, a Libya expert at Dartmouth University.
That rejection from Arab and African leaders, combined with his growing anti-Western sentiment left him to turn to terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s, Vandewalle said.
In 1986, Libya was implicated in the fatal bombing at a West Berlin nightclub that left one American service member dead, prompting U.S. President Ronald Reagan to dub the Libyan leader the "mad dog of the Middle East." Reagan ordered the United States to bomb Libya and imposed economic sanctions.
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Two years later, Libya was implicated in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Years later, Gadhafi appeared to moderate and seek rapprochement with the West. In 1999, he turned over suspects in the Lockerbie bombing, and in 2003 the country agreed to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
In the years before the current rebellion started, Gadhafi even hired a public relations firm to burnish his global image as a statesman and a reformer.
Starting in 2006, the leader spent about $3 million a year to execute a public relations strategy that included paying think-tank analysts and former government officials to take a free trip to Libya for lectures, discussions and even personal meetings with Gadhafi.
But early this year, as people around the Middle East and North Africa began to challenge their leaders in the so-called Arab Spring movement, Gadhafi found himself a target. But while longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted after a few weeks, and even after the eastern city of Benghazi fell to the rebels, the Libyan leader fought on and blamed outsiders, "armed gangs" and others for the violence.
In the end, Gadhafi sealed his reputation with his crackdown on protesters and attacks against rebels and civilians alike.
International leaders have accused Gadhafi's regime of committing human rights violations and killing civilians.
The U.N. Security Council subsequently issued a no-fly zone over Libya and approved "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. Libyan officials have repeatedly accused NATO of killing civilians in airstrikes.
In April, Gadhafi wrote a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, urging him to end the NATO bombing of his war-torn country. Gadhafi asked Obama to stop what he called the "unjust war against a small people of a developing country," adding that those in the opposition are terrorists and members of al Qaeda,
The NATO operations continued, and in June, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Gadhafi, his son Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, and his brother-in-law Abdullah al-Sanussi. The warrants are "for crimes against humanity," including murder and persecution, "allegedly committed across Libya" from February 15 through "at least" February 28, "through the state apparatus and security forces," the court said in a statement.