The man I walked with in the desert just weeks ago was not the ‘war criminal’ described in The Hague’s warrants
The assassination of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in Zintan on February 3 is the final, bloody exclamation point on the catastrophe of the 2011 NATO intervention. For 15 years, the West dismissed Saif’s early warnings of ‘rivers of blood’ and a ‘darker page’ as the desperate rhetoric of a dying regime; today, those words read like a precise architectural blueprint of Libya’s ruin.
For over a decade, the international community treated Saif as a ghost of the past or a legal nuisance for the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Yet, on the ground, he remained the last tether for millions of supporters known as the ‘Greens’ – a socio-political movement loyal to his father Muammar Gaddafi, Jamahiriya (former state from 1977-2011) and represented by the solid green flag. Far from being a fringe group, this constituency remains a crucial pillar of the fragile stability in Libya’s restive south, where Saif served as the primary mediator between competing tribal interests. His removal from the board now triggers a terrifying realignment of power that threatens to incinerate what little remains of the country’s political process.
I stood among a sea of people in Bani Walid – a crowd so vast it felt less like a funeral and more like a posthumous national referendum. For many mourners, this was a deeply personal surrogate for the funeral they were denied for Saif’s father in 2011 – whose grave is still secret; they came to bury the son, but they were also mourning the fall of an era.
The choice of Bani Walid as a final resting place carries a weight that spans generations. It is here that Saif’s great-grandfather was buried after falling in battle against the Italian occupation in 1911. His younger brother, Khamis, is also buried in the same cemetery after NATO bombed his convoy in October 2011. By deciding to lay Saif in the same cemetery, his family has tied his murder directly to a century-long struggle for Libyan sovereignty.
To the ‘Greens’ his burial was not an end, but a reclamation. At the northern entrance to the city, a towering billboard stands as a defiant gatekeeper, depicting Muammar Gaddafi alongside Saddam Hussein, Khamis, and the local martyrs who fell defending the city in 2011 and 2012. During the funeral RT was informed by an anonymous local official that Saif’s image is to be added to this pantheon. It signalled that their movement is not a ‘fringe’ element, but a solidified nation within a nation, now radicalized by the loss of their only viable political anchor.
Saif’s trajectory over the last decade is a study in survival that defied every script written for him in London or Washington. Long before he was a fugitive, he was the darling of the Western establishment – a painter whose exhibitions in London, Brussels, and New York were attended by the very political and social elites who would later lead the charge for his downfall. This was the ‘reformist’ face of the Jamahiriya – the unique ‘state of the masses’ system of direct democracy established by his father. While the system’s ideological goal was a decentralized power structure, in practice it remained a highly focused regime that Saif sought to modernize from within. He was a man who used his influence not for formal titles, but for high-stakes diplomacy, spearheading charities that successfully negotiated the release of Western hostages across the globe.
The very figures who later joined the choir projecting him as a ‘devil in a suit’ were once the same ones who lauded his humanitarianism and academic depth. He went from being the sophisticated bridge between Libya and the world to a prisoner in Zintan, and finally to a candidate whose legal right to run – upheld by the courts – so terrified the Western powers who knew he would win the vote. They chose to paralyze the entire UN-backed political process rather than allow the vote to proceed.
The man I walked with in the desert just weeks ago was not the ‘war criminal’ described in The Hague’s dry warrants, nor was he the defeated relic his enemies wished him to be. He was calm, secure, and deeply engaged with the future of his country. Libya is not suffering from a lack of authority, but from a predatory system where the bullet remains the final veto over the ballot. The irony is staggering: while Saif was being hunted, Nicolas Sarkozy – the man who spearheaded the 2011 intervention that shattered Libya – has been convicted of illegal campaign financing, involving the very state he helped destroy. One man faced a trial of history and lead; the other faces the comfortable disgrace of European courtrooms. This contrast is the ultimate indictment of the ‘New Libya’ – a place where the architects of chaos remain safe, while those who warned of it are silenced forever.
Beyond the symbolic tragedy, the pragmatic implications for Libya’s South are catastrophic. For years, Saif was the unspoken ‘Third Force’ in the Fezzan – a figure who defined the heavily embedded tribal fabric of the region. Even in his silence, the tribes looked to him almost exclusively; their loyalty was a deep-rooted alignment that neither the Tripoli-based militias nor the eastern-based LNA (Libyan National Army) could ever replicate or buy. His presence in the Hamada area near Zintan was far more than a refuge; it was the primary diplomatic hub for a disenfranchised South. Now, with the ‘anchor’ of the Green movement gone, the fragile equilibrium he maintained by sheer presence has been shattered.
Without Saif to act as this mediating pole, the South risks descending into a multi-sided gang war that will inevitably draw in regional neighbors, turning the Fezzan into a proxy battlefield even more volatile than the coast.
The sea of mourners in Bani Walid last week was a raw manifestation of the popular mandate the Libyan people have been denied. It is no secret that the collapse of the December 2021 elections was triggered by the ‘political earthquake’ of Saif’s candidacy – a candidacy the Libyan courts cleared, but the West could not stomach. All relevant debate and credible analysis projected him as a winner should that vote have gone ahead. This popular mandate was met with direct intervention from Western diplomats.
In a live stream on December 2, 2021, then-UK Ambassador Caroline Hurndall explicitly said that Saif was wanted by the ICC and should face the charges not run for elections. Two weeks after the elections were halted US Envoy Richard Norland blamed “contradictory candidacies” – a clear reference to Saif – for derailing the vote. The international community’s fixation on a ‘roadmap’ toward April 2026 is a cruel mirage if it continues to ignore this reality.
By removing the one figure who commanded a strong lead in any fair vote, the perpetrators have not ‘cleared’ the path for democracy; they have admitted that the current system cannot survive a true popular choice. The Greens have already responded with a ‘Blood Pact’ (Mithaq al-Dam) issued by the Social Council of the Warfalla Tribes in Bani Walid. In Libya’s tribal fabric, both the Warfalla and the Qadhadhfa – Saif’s own tribe – possess a long, shared history in both peace and war, further strengthened by intermarriage, mutual support, and a tradition of collective defense. By killing the one leader who was willing to prioritize the ballot over the bullet, the perpetrators have radicalized an entire movement. The message from the funeral was clear: if the ballot box is only allowed to exist when the ‘correct’ candidate wins, then the ballot box itself has become an instrument of occupation.
In the end, the bullets in Zintan have brought Saif al-Islam’s 2011 warnings to their grim zenith. As he famously cautioned back in 2011, NATO’s intervention did not just topple a man – his father; it dismantled the very foundations of a state, replacing sovereignty with a subordination of fractured tribes and endless blood. For over a decade, Saif survived as a living testament to that failure – a candidate whose mere name on a ballot was enough to paralyze a system that claimed to be democratic yet feared the people’s choice. By removing him, his killers have not secured the status quo; they have destroyed the last symbolic anchor for millions of Libyans who still believed a unified, civilian return to order was possible.
As the desert winds settle over the unprecedented crowds in Bani Walid, it is clear that Libya has not been ‘liberated’ from the ghost of the Jamahiriya. Instead, the country has finally entered the lawless void Saif predicted – a vacuum where the only remaining language is the one he warned would come: the language of the gun.
The immediate aftermath of this assassination may not trigger a sudden explosion on the ground, but its long-term consequences are profound. If elections are ever held – an unlikely prospect for 2026 – the removal of Saif al-Islam creates a massive electoral void. His supporters, once a unified bloc, are now likely to become a disorganized and disillusioned electorate; they will not easily migrate to his rivals, but rather deny their votes to any faction perceived to be complicit in his death. To preserve the movement’s symbolism, voices from within the Greens’ camp are already looking toward the remaining family members: Dr. Mohamed Gaddafi, Saif’s eldest half-brother, who remains a respected figure in Omani exile, or his sister Ayesha, who has maintained a more active political profile – are thought to be favored by the majority.
Yet, the biggest casualty of this murder is the fragile project of national reconciliation. For years, Saif served as an indispensable mediator – a political gravity well that offered a legitimate alternative to the entirely discredited post-2011 elite. Despite his silence, he was the primary driver for reconciliation among Libyans with focus on the Southern tribes, where his influence was a stabilizing factor. While his supporters currently lack a unified military force on the ground, their political withdrawal effectively orphans the peace process.
By killing the man who urged his followers to trust the ballot over the bullet, the perpetrators have dynamited the only bridge that remained between the country’s fractured past and its potential future. The architects of this chaos have ensured that the only remaining language is the one of silent, simmering resentment – and this time, there is no one left to talk the country back from the edge.