Ten years after the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, whose fall and assassination on October 20, 2011, plunged Libya into a decade of war and chaos, the quest for a certain stability in this Maghreb country will pass. now by the return to power of another Gaddafi? His son Seif al-Islam?
For several years, the main interested party no longer hides his political ambitions, on the eve of a presidential election that has become crucial to restore the unity of the country. A project that the second son of the ex-dictator considers he can carry out by now advocating a return to the past to ward off ten years of inaction and political divisions, which continue to impoverish Libya.
“They raped the country. They brought him to his knees, ”Seif al-Islam Gadhafi said this summer in the pages ofNew York Timesspeaking of the regional factions that have divided Libyan territory since the death of his father. “There is no money, no security. There is no more life here. Go to the gas station: there is no gasoline. We export oil and gas to Italy. We are lighting up half of Italy and we have blackouts here. It is more than a failure. It’s a fiasco. “
Two months before the presidential election held under the auspices of the UN and set for December 24, the man’s candidacy has not yet been formalized. But for the political scientist Rafaa Tabib, member of the Observatory of transformations in the Arab world of the University of La Manouba, in Tunisia, it is “by far the best” in the current Libyan political landscape.
“He is someone who can allow the pacification of a country where a still significant part of the population regrets the Gaddafi regime, the peace, the wealth and the stability he has managed to bring,” he said by Skype from Tunis where The duty joined him last week. Seif al-Islam is the man of possible agreements between the opposing parties and he especially gathers around him a very large alliance of the tribes that make up Libya. “
The Arab Spring was the prelude to a long winter in Libya, where a fragile peace has reigned for barely a year after the signing of a ceasefire between the Government of National Accord (GEN), in place in Tripoli and recognized by the international community, and the Libyan National Army (LNA) of Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the strong man of eastern Libya. Both sides have pledged the withdrawal from the territory of foreign mercenaries who are contributing to the instability. The UN estimates their number at more than 20,000.
Since 2011 and the end of 42 years of terror regime of the “Guide of the Jamahiriya” precipitated by France, the United Kingdom and the United States, without however concrete plan to rebuild the continuation, Russia and Turkey also feed the regional conflicts in order to maintain their political and economic influence over the country coveted for its oil and gas resources.
Bring peace
Last week, the Libyan electoral commission announced that the technical preparations for the December ballot had “been 80% or even 90% complete”, with a view to allowing the election of a first president by universal suffrage. since the country’s independence in 1951 and the 1969 coup that brought Gaddafi to power. The legislative elections scheduled for the same date were postponed for one month, to January 24, by Parliament.
“These elections cannot be seen as an outcome, but rather as the hope of triggering the start of a process likely to bring civil peace to Libya,” summarizes in an interview Luis Martinez, director of research at Sciences Po Paris and keen observer of the political mechanisms of the region. The fall of Gaddafi was driven with the naive idea that the Libyans would have the political capacity to organize themselves to put in place a transition. But ten years later, we especially have the impression that we must find a strong president, even a very poorly elected one, who will know how to monopolize resources, monopolize violence in order to force the belligerents to peace. “
This is also the role that Marshal Haftar hopes to be able to play, supported by the West, and whose candidacy for the presidency is more than foreseeable, even if it is far from being unanimous. After a failed attempt to take control of the country by force, in 2020 the election of this strongman from the eastern region of Cyrenaica could be seen as a victory by the western factions represented by the prime minister among others. interim, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, and thereby maintain the chaos from which Libya seeks to extricate itself.
The only candidate officially launched in the race, the current Libyan Minister of the Interior, Fathi Bachagha, a politician a little less divisive, affirmed last week that he would work for national reconciliation and the maintenance of security. he was elected.
Even if he is close to Turkey and the forces of the West, Mr. Bachagha could also gain the support of France and the United States, thus placing himself as a candidate of the compromise likely to bring back a semblance of peace in the country.
Above all, we have the impression that we must find a strong president, even a very poorly elected president, who will know how to monopolize resources, monopolize violence in order to force the belligerents to peace.
“Currently, there is a perfect balance of power in Libya which means that no one can win and that the war can go on for a long time,” Martinez said. Everyone arrived at this observation in 2019. We must therefore find a solution that will please everyone: a consensual president to negotiate with the Muslim Brotherhood, the nationalists and the foreign forces, and Fathi Bachagha can be that person who is open to all trends. “
Land of contradictions
The stakes are high in a country where the elections have become a source of tension, more than stability, summarizes Rafaa Tabib, pointing to the “Libyan dilemma”. “The redistribution of the oil rent constantly contradicts the electoral process,” he said.
This resource is in fact located in a territory occupied by barely a third of the population who does not agree to live with the political decisions of the two thirds who do not have it, but profit from them financially.
“Elections are not that important, what is, are the agreements that allow each group to feel that there have been concessions in their favor, that they have been treated in a respectful way. its territorial rather than demographic weight, ”he says.
Contradictions that could help bring together Gaddafi’s second son, trained in recent years both at the London School of Economics and in Western culture of democracy and human rights, and who now stands out as the savior of a Libya which was unable to negotiate a democratic turn in the aftermath of its Arab Spring.
“The Gaddafi are still a force in Libya, says Martinez, but the context is still very dangerous for Seif al-Islam” who, at the time of his father’s fall, traded in his image as a moderate reformer to defend the line duration of the diet. He avoided death by fleeing to Niger, then international justice thanks to the protection of militias and the Supreme Council of Libyan tribes.
“Fragmentation always feeds violence”, he adds before asserting: “Even in peace, Libya will never be a peaceful country. “