The death of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi brings the failure of post-2011 Libya back into the spotlight: a state dismantled without reconstruction, divided between rival militias, foreign interests and the dispute over energy resources. A chaos that fuels trafficking, regional instability and a migration crisis that continues to spill over into Europe.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafithe best-known son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafiwould have been killed in Libya in circumstances that still remain unclear. According to available information, Saif – 53 years old, whose full name means «The sword of Islam» – would have lost his life in the city of Zintanin the north-west of the country, during armed clashes between rival militias. The man was wanted by International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. Colonel’s second son, Saif al-Islam he was arrested on November 19, 2011 while trying to flee towards Nigerabout a month after his father’s death. Transferred to Zintan prison, he remained detained there until 5 July 2016. In July 2015 a Libyan court sentenced him to death for war crimes and for the repression of popular protests during the 2011 revolution. A sentence that seemed to definitively close the political parable of the heir to the regime. The picture changed in an unexpected way the November 14, 2021when Saif al-Islam announced his candidacy for Libyan presidential elections. A gesture that reopened wounds that had never healed and brought to the surface the nostalgia of a part of the population for the lost order of the Gaddafi era. But that consultation, like many other transition promises, never materialized, remaining trapped in the country’s political quagmire.
The personal story of Saif al-Islam it is intertwined with what today appears more and more clearly as one of the West’s most serious strategic errors in the Mediterranean: the 2011 military intervention against Libya. The fall of the regime Gaddafi (captured and killed in Sirte on 20 October 2011), supported by an international coalition under the umbrella of BORNwas not accompanied by any serious post-war stabilization plan. Having dismantled the state without building a new one, Libya fell into a power vacuum that favored the proliferation of armed militias, the dissolution of institutions and the permanent entry of competing foreign actors. There Libya today it is formally a unitary state, but in fact a Fragmented country. To the west, to Tripolioperates a government recognized by United Nations, supported by a mosaic of militias that guarantee security in a selective and conditional way. To the east, with center of gravity at Benghazidominates the political-military apparatus linked to the general Khalifa Haftarwhich controls large portions of territory and much of the energy infrastructure. In the south, the Fezzan a gray area remains, crossed by illegal trafficking, smuggling and presence of local and foreign armed groups. In this context of state disintegration, the Libya has become one of the main epicenters of the migration crisis towards the EU‘Europe. The absence of a effective border control and a central authority has transformed the country into a platform for human trafficking. Thousands of migrants remain trapped in informal detention centres, run by militias or criminal networks, or are pushed towards the central Mediterranean in extreme conditions. A flow that had a direct impact on Italy and the European Union, forced to manage the consequences of a state collapse that occurred a few hundred kilometers from their coasts.
The Libyan paradox is that all this happens in a potentially very rich country. Libya has Africa’s largest oil reserves and important natural gas deposits. Before 2011, it produced more than 1.6 million barrels of crude oil per day. Today, production is highly unstable, subject to blockades, sabotage and political blackmail. Oil terminals, pipelines and fields are often used as levers of pressure by the various armed factions. Energy revenues, formally managed by National Oil Corporationrepresent the heart of the political dispute. The control of resources is not just an economic issue, but an instrument of power: whoever controls oil controls the possibility of paying salaries, buying consensus and financing armed apparatus. In the absence of a shared political agreement on the redistribution of income, the oil has transformed from national wealth to a factor of permanent instability. In addition to the hydrocarbons, there Libya has extensive mineral resources that are still largely unexplored and has strategic potential in the renewable energy sector, particularly solar. But without security, credible institutions and a stable legal framework, these assets remain unused or prey to external interests. The Libyan chaos, therefore, is not a historical accident nor an inevitable fate. It is the direct result of a precise political choice: a rapid and military regime change, devoid of strategic vision. A decision that destabilized the whole North Africapowered criminal and jihadist networks, dumped the burden of the migration crisis on Europe and left Libya trapped in an endless transition. In this scenario, the death of Saif al-Islam – if confirmed – would not only represent the end of a symbolic figure, but yet another unresolved chapter of a war thatWest he helped start it without ever really taking the consequences.
