by Richard Galustian
In an article in early May, I wrote "Keep in the back off your mind the potential future importance of Saif Gaddafi."
The news
of the release from a Libyan prison in Zintan of Saif Al Islam Gaddafi,
heir apparent to his late father, is surprising to many outsiders but
it nothing to what may come next - a return in some form to power.
In Libya’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising, Saif joined his father and
sons on the barricades, castigating NATO-backed rebels in a bitter
revolutionary war. While those rebels later cornered and killed his
father Muammar and brother Moatasim in Sirte, Saif was captured alive
trying to flee through the Sahara desert to Niger.
It may be his good fortune that the units capturing him were from
Zintan, a mountain town south of Tripoli, who later went to war with
Islamist led Libya Dawn which captured the capital in 2014. When a mass
trial was held of former regime figures there, Zintan refused to hand
Saif over, sparing him the brutalities inflicted on other prisoners
including former intelligence chief Abdullah al Senussi and his younger
brother Saadi, who was filmed being beaten in a Tripoli prison cell.
Zintanis were no friends of the former regime, fighting against
Gaddafi’s forces as one of the most effective rebel outfits during the
uprising that was won by NATO bombing.
But from the few accounts of those allowed to visit him in a
closely guarded compound somewhere in the town, he has been treated
well, living under what amounts to house arrest, until now.
A year ago a Tripoli court operating under Libya Dawn auspices
sentenced him, and either others including Al Senussi, to death. Up in
Zintan, not much changed for Saif, with Zintan still digging in its
heels and refusing to hand him over to Tripoli’s grim Al Hadba prison.
The shambolic UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) under a
puppet PM who operates out of Tripoli naval base, the only part of the
city they control, however appears to be responsible for the amnesty
order given in April to Saif and other prisoners removing their death
sentences and ordering them to be freed.
Since then, Saif’s location is a mystery, but Zintan’s attitude to
him is tempered by their alliance with former Gaddafi-supporting tribes,
including those from Beni Walid and Warshefani, in their brutal battle
with Libya Dawn’s Islamists. The Gaddafi tribe itself has a base south
of Zintan around Sebha, making common cause with the Zintanis against
Libya Dawn militias who control the capital and lord it over the GNA.
Before the Libya uprising, Saif criss-crossed the globe pushing an
agenda for democratization he hoped would reform the country. Whether
the drive was not serious, or whether it was frustrated by his hardline
siblings Moatsem and Khamis, is impossible to know, but he emerges from
captivity to find Libya a changed place something he predicted.
Saif al-Islam in February 2011 gave a speech foretelling of what
was to come. And he was right “There will be civil war in Libya … we
will kill one another in the streets and all of Libya will be destroyed.
We will need 40 years to reach an agreement on how to run the country,
because today, everyone will want to be president, or emir, and
everybody will want to run the country.”
Saif knew his country would be torn apart if his father regime was forced out by the West.
The brutalities of his father’s regime have since been matched by
those of some of the militias that overthrew him, most visibly the grim
beating of his brother Saadi in a Tripoli jail which his captors filmed
in gruesome detail.
Many of the tribes that once supported Gaddafi are now battling
Islamists and their opportunistic Misratan allies of Libya Dawn, and
will see in Saif a figure who can unify their demands not to be squeezed
out of Libyan political life.
Opposition to him taking a political role it can be argued is
softening because he was never part of the “muscle” of the Gaddafi
regime, spending much of his time in London moving around the gilded
circle of rich tycoons, academics and Tony Blair’s political elite.
There is, in other words, an opening for a man who was castigated
by rebels for dismissing their rebellion on Gaddafi’s green TV during
the uprising, but who never fired a shot in anger. With his release, he
might get a shot at the plan he always said he wanted; to reform his
country and unite key tribes who feel marginalized by Libya’s power
brokers.
Pieces are falling into place for him to possibly take part in some
kind of grand council. With the GNA unable to persuade either of
Libya’s other two governments to join it, there are calls for a wider
mediation effort, with Saudi Arabia and importantly Oman, offering
mediation, to be discussed in Brussels on 18th July with US Secretary of
State John Kerry.
In this battered, chaotic country, with governments fighting each
other and IS, Saif Gadaffi may find a new role as part of the solution
rather than the problem.
In the past 24 hours since the news broke he had been freed,
Libyans across the country from different towns and cities have held
pictures of Saif shouting his name. To my knowledge it's the first time
any pro-Gaddafi demonstrations have been evident in so many parts of the
country since 2011.
It's time Saif played a role with other libertarians in and outside
Libya promoting the old constitution and particularly banishing members
of the former AQ affiliate, LIFG.
Rumors are abound that Saif will give a press conference very soon. That's going to be very interesting indeed if it happens.
Posted by b on July 7, 2016 at 12:32 PM | Permalink
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