It comes from the arabic spelling of Gadaffi: قذافي‎ The ق at the beginning is a mix between a glottal stop and a k sound (depending on the dialect). There's

It comes from the arabic spelling of Gadaffi: قذافي‎ The ق at the beginning is a mix between a glottal stop and a k sound (depending on the dialect). There's no real way to spell it in English, hence the variants. This is similar to Osama/Usama (أسامة)