(A mon avis, un coup des israéliens. note de rené)
The death of Saif al-Islam was not the surprise, his survival was
February 4, 2026 at 9:04 am
Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al-Islam [Twitter]
There is little reason for observers to be shocked by the fate that finally caught up with him, killed in an operation that remains murky even now. Herodotus’s old saying, ‘Out of Libya, always something new’, was never a promise of wonder. Rather, it was a warning about a land where chaos renews itself endlessly. The ‘new’ emerging from Libya today is merely a repetition of the same tragedy. His death is not the surprise; the real surprise is that he survived at all after the killing of his father, Muammar Gaddafi, his brother Mutassim, and the flight of the rest of the family. Since 2011, Libya has witnessed the predictable outcome of a society that was deliberately dismantled and left to fight over fragments too small to cast the shadow of a nation.
Saif al-Islam’s survival was never the result of personal immunity or political charisma. Rather, it was the product of a fragile balance of power that kept him alive because he was useful as a possibility, not a real option. He was a reserve card held by various domestic and foreign actors and used for pressure, bargaining or blackmail far more than for any political project. Post-2011 Libya never wanted a president; it wanted more ‘cards’ in the disorderly mix. Once a card’s function is exhausted, eliminating it becomes part of the logic of the game, not a deviation from it.
Viewed in this way, the killing of Saif al-Islam fits neatly into the logic of violence that has characterised Libya since the fall of the regime. In a state that does not monopolise force or legitimacy, anyone outside a stable protection network is exposed to accumulated vendettas, such as political revenge, tribal retaliation or messages aimed at other players. His earlier survival was the result of a balance of terror among forces that were unwilling to bear the cost of killing him. Once that balance shifted, his death became a practical solution to a complicated equation rather than an exceptional event in a country accustomed to devouring its own.
Muammar Gaddafi’s regime was never a solution for Libya, and neither were the militias and state looters who inherited the post-2011 landscape. More accurately, they never wanted to be. Personal, regional and tribal interests have always taken precedence over any national idea. Today, Libya resembles what the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran once wrote: ‘Nations that fail to invent their future are condemned to recycle their past as punishment.’
When Saif al-Islam announced his presidential bid from Sabha in 2021, it was an implicit admission that Libya was no longer a country one could flee from the capital. Tripoli was not an option and Benghazi was no longer guaranteed, so he chose the desert — where his father began and ended. Sabha is not a city, but a political geography. Libyans call it a road to hell. The dry heart of the south, from which young people flee towards the coast in search of a better life. Yet Saif al-Islam wanted to use it as a platform for his political comeback, reenacting his father’s final attempt to break the siege by heading south. However, the real Libya lies between Zintan, where he was held for over a decade until his death, and Sabha, where he sought a comeback: a fractured land that recognises only small loyalties and grants no one full legitimacy.
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Those who believe in Libya’s national future, regardless of their opinion of Saif al-Islam, know that he would have repeated his father’s fatal mistake of relying on tribes rather than the nation as a whole. This convinced Libya’s political class that geography could substitute for statehood. Saif al-Islam needed to present himself as Libyan rather than as a Gaddafi, someone from Sirte or someone from the desert. But the road to nationhood in Libya is always blocked before it even begins.
In the early 2000s, Saif al-Islam presented himself to Western capitals as an acceptable face of the regime. He closed the Lockerbie case, secured the release of the Bulgarian nurses, and travelled through London, Paris and Rome as a potential reformer. His father granted him some freedom of movement, but denied him the means to effect real change. Libyan elites who had once placed their hopes in him eventually withdrew when they realised that his ‘national project’ was mere rhetoric. When eastern Libya rose up in 2011, Muammar Gaddafi declared that Saif al-Islam would go to Benghazi to negotiate. However, he convinced no one — just as his father had failed to recognise the moment of his own downfall.
Mutassim died fighting, as his father had wanted. Saadi, as Libyans expected, fled to Niger and was later extradited and imprisoned until his release in 2021. Saif al-Islam chose survival over battle. He escaped death, but he could not escape the political vacuum that consumed his project.
Before his death, Libya’s electoral map was straightforward: he received no votes in Tripoli, had no presence in Misrata, and had only a small following in Benghazi. The only areas left were the south and a few towns that remained loyal to Gaddafi-era politics. Even if he had won the south, however, this would not have made him president of Libya; it would merely have reproduced the same division. Like every other actor since 2011, he fell into the same trap: the absence of a unifying national project.
Saif al-Islam lacked the tools, support base and legitimacy required to lead a national vision. History was against him, geography was unkind, and the world never accepted him. States that had tried to rehabilitate far less controversial figures failed to do so with him.
As the Italian historian Luigi Villari wrote about Libya in 1911: “This land grants no one power; it grants only the illusion that it can be controlled.” The illusion persists. Saif al-Islam was not the answer for Libya, just as Abdulhamid Dbeibah, Khalifa Haftar, Fathi Bashagha, Ali Zeidan and Aref al-Nayed are not. However, his death adds a new layer of complexity. If Libyans cannot agree on holding elections in the first place, how will they agree on the results? With one of the most polarising figures now gone, the situation becomes even more opaque. The hope that Libyans might unite was difficult yesterday, is difficult today, and will be even more difficult tomorrow.
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