By the time he’d noticed the massive tank vehicle in neighboring Tunisia, he had just fought off an internal coup attempt and was as paranoid as ever. Mos Espa marketplace film set, located in the Eriguet dunes north of Nefta in southwestern Tunisia. There’s probably more, but the point is that all Qaddafi saw was a sprawling camp around a massive tracked vehicle. The simple explanation that the camp was a movie set did not suffice for the paranoid dictator in Libya. Despite the cost, he moved the entire production to a new location inside Tunisia, far from the Libyan border, as Gaddafi demanded, averting a real-life war and bringing us the “Star Wars” we know and love.

Source: The North Africa Journal August 23, 2023 22:37 UTC