killing of Saif Al Islam GaddafiThe most prominent surviving son of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, he exudes symbolic influence among some Libyans, even as he is vilified by others as a representative of the hated regime.
The 53 years oldKilled on Tuesday in the western Libyan city of Zintan, it was an alternative to the country’s current power duopoly, following a split between the UN-recognised government in the capital Tripoli and the so-called Libyan National Army in the country’s east.
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The assassination came less than a week after Saddam Haftar, the son of eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar, and an adviser to Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dabiba were brought together for a January 28 meeting at Paris’s Elysee Palace.
Then, on Sunday, senior officials from the two rival Libyan administrations came together to discuss national integration efforts in a meeting brokered by the United States in Paris.
However, the manner of Gaddafi’s death – his political team said – was four masked men They broke into his house and shot him – Libya still faces insecurity and the blurred nature of the country’s political divisions has been highlighted once again.
Saif Al Islam as Gaddafi’s heir
Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi had some influence in Libya, despite having no significant military force under his command, and no control over the region like his rivals.
He was once seen as the heir to his father’s pro-Western, reformist views before he dramatically shed that image to help crack down on protesters during the 2011 revolution. In a televised speech at the time, he condemned the protesters and supported his father’s action by threatening “rivers of blood”.
“That speech during the blockade marked the end of Saif the reformer and the birth of (Muammar) Gaddafi’s son Saif,” Anas El Gomti, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank, told Al Jazeera.
After Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was captured by rebels in 2011, he spent six years in Zintan, a local militia. Imadeddin Badi, a senior fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and a Libya expert, said his captors were eventually more sympathetic to him “and acted as their bodyguards”.
“He was not a captive in any traditional sense and had a social life, married with children,” Badi said.
After his release in 2017, Gaddafi kept such a low profile that many speculated he might be dead. He resurfaced publicly in 2021 with a New York Times interview, where he hinted at a political comeback and then moved to pursue presidential ambitions.
When he filed for the presidency in 2021, it became a major controversy contributed Collapse the entire electoral process.
Saif al-Islam was disqualified due to previous war crimes convictions, but controversies surrounding his candidacy contributed to the loss of votes.
Still, he retained support among some factions, which were apathetic to the supposed stability of the Gaddafi era, as the Libyan civil war and rivals descended.
His father, Muammar Gaddafi, came to power in 1969, from Somalia and Sudan the same year, in a wave of coups across the Arab world on the crescent side of southern Yemen.
Gaddafi presided over a regime that, although authoritarian, saw a period of economic growth in the country thanks to Libya’s oil reserves.
The regime was also known for widespread human rights abuses, including the execution of political opponents.
“Saif al-Islam is popular among Gaddafi-era reformists who see him as a reformist candidate promising change,” Claudia Gazini, senior Libya analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
His real power was not military but symbolic, El Gomti said. The ideological bent is locally referred to as the Greens, after the elder Gaddafi’s “Green Book” outlining his political theories.
“Saif didn’t really control the army or the territory, but controlled a significant narrative and represented something for people who were nostalgic for the days of Gaddafi’s rule,” El Gomti said.
What effect does this have on Libya?
Saif al-Islam’s death is likely to be most significant in eastern Libya, because of the overlap between supporters of the man who controls that region, military commander Khalifa Haftar, and Gaddafi’s base.
Despite this overlap, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Khalifa Haftar had a deep distrust of each other, largely because Haftar had left the Gaddafi regime decades earlier and attempted a coup against Muammar Gaddafi.
Tensions between Khalifa Haftar and Saif al-Islam Gaddafi flared in 2021 when Haftar-affiliated militias blocked the latter’s election appeal after he blocked a court hearing, only to withdraw after protests by his supporters.
“They (the Gaddafi family) considered him (Khalifa Haftar) a traitor for rebelling against the Gaddafi regime and felt that Haftar was trying to replicate the system created by his father,” Gazzini said. “Haftar always feared Saif’s popularity.”
But this meant that Khalifa Haftar was trying to fill the space left by Muammar Gaddafi, but Saif al-Islam was still trying to occupy himself. In effect, this posed a threat to Saif al-Islam Haftar, as he was competing in the same constituency.
“The immediate beneficiary of the assassination is Haftar,” El Gomti said. “Saif represents an alternative to the authoritarian model created by Haftar.”
Despite its symbolic importance, analysts still expect the immediate effects of Saif al-Islam’s killing to be limited.
People who once supported the Gaddafi regime have split dramatically since 2011, with many former loyalists now working in rival Eastern and Western power structures.
“It stirs the water, but Libya will not be hit by a storm,” Ghazini told Al Jazeera, adding that while Saif al-Islam Gaddafi’s death was significant, Libya’s fundamental political deadlock was unlikely to change much after the killing.
“His death removes the last viable spoiler to Libya’s current power duo,” El Gomti said. “His assassination closes Libya’s last path out of this divided power system.”